Nostalgia overload is probably the main reason why moviegoers are still flocking to theaters to see Spider-Man: No Way Home. The sequel’s massive box office total (over $1 billion and counting) and glowing critical reception essentially proves that blowing up the multiverse and bringing back several characters from the franchise’s 19-year history was the right call. But according to co-writer Chris McKenna, the movie’s stacked cast of bad guys could have had much smaller roles. While speaking to The Wrap, McKenna revealed that in early story meetings, the producers considered relegating No Way Home’s villains to a post-credits scene. That way, the film’s multiversal free-for-all would have been saved for a fourth installment.
After Sony and Marvel settled their differences and agreed to co-produce another Spider-Man movie, all McKenna and co-writer Erik Sommers knew was that the next film would show Peter Parker dealing with the loss of his secret identity. And this steered the conversation about which villains to include in multiple directions.
“We go, ‘OK, we know that we’re dealing with the fallout from that. What would happen?’,” said McKenna. “And that led us down different story roads that were not this story. And then, I don’t know if it was Kevin [Feige’s] idea, the idea of doing something with the other villains and teasing that at the very end [of the movie], I think in a tag was floated.”
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“So we were coming up with different storylines that would just sort of write towards a tag like that,” added McKenna. “So inevitably we were like, ‘What if Kraven? What if [other villains?] and we were kicking around a lot of different ideas and then finally one day, for various reasons – there were reasons why we couldn’t do certain storylines – I think it was Kevin who goes, ‘Remember that idea with all the villains that we were talking about for a tag? That Sinister Six idea? Why don’t we just do it in the movie? Make this movie be about that?’ and then that just sort of blew everything open.”
Presumably, Sony rejected Kraven because the iconic villain has his own movie with Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing the role. And while No Way Home’s original ending would have given us a better idea of what to expect from a fourth film, the version we saw in theaters didn’t leave us completely in the dark. The sequel’s mid-credits scene memorably featured a dimension-displaced Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) showing up in the MCU. Unfortunately, before he could introduce himself to Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, he was suddenly whisked back to his own reality, leaving a small bit of the Venom symbiote behind in the process. Sony has long been hinting that another big-screen showdown between Venom and Spider-Man is in the works. But whether it features Hardy’s Venom remains to be seen.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is now playing in theaters everywhere.
Are you happy that Sony and Marvel introduced the multiverse earlier than expected? Let us know in the comments down below!
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