Warning: this story contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home. Concept art reveals even more multiversal madness cut from Spider-Man: No Way Home. After he's unmasked by Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) and J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) in the final moments of Far From Home, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) asks Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast a spell and make everyone forget his secret identity. Everyone except his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), and girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), causing the tampered-with spell to have the opposite effect: by bringing multiversal trespassers who know Peter is Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Newly revealed concept art from artist Maciej Kuciara shows America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), who makes her MCU debut in the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, appearing before Peter and his friends in No Way Home. In the comics, America has the power to open portals for interdimensional travel throughout the Multiverse.
The Doctor Strange sequel — once set for May and then November 2021 — moved into 2022 when Sony shifted Spider-Man from its original July 2021 release date to later that year. Holland was the first to reveal the release date swap impacted the plot of No Way Home.
Because Doctor Strange 2 was supposed to release before Spider-Man, trilogy writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers had to amend their script so the events of Multiverse of Madness would deal with the aftermath of Strange's Multiverse-unleashing spell.
"We were actually working off of things that were happening in Doctor Strange 2, and trying to incorporate them into our script," McKenna recently told Variety. "When we started writing, [Strange] knows firsthand the dangers of screwing with these things. Then we changed it so he was a person who doesn't know that much about the Multiverse. But that makes it even more frightening, to start fooling around with these things, because it's the fear of the unknown."
In the film, it's a Sling Ring-wielding Ned who inadvertently opens the magic portals to find a missing Peter Parker — only to locate his multiversal variants wandering New York, Peter #2 (Tobey Maguire) and Peter #3 (Andrew Garfield). McKenna and Sommers previously revealed an unidentified Marvel character was intended to introduce Holland's Spider-Man to the two Peters, suggesting America was the unnamed hero ultimately cut in the reworked third act.
"[Maguire and Garfield's Spider-Men] are brought by a Marvel character going, 'Here are the saving graces and they're going to help you through this,'" McKenna told Variety. "It was just more of a deus ex machina."
America Chavez arrives when Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness opens only in theaters on May 6.