The End of Spider-Man: No Way Home answers the ultimate Peter Parker question

Above all, Peter Parker wants a father. No matter who tells the Spider-Man story, it is so marked by the loss of Uncle Ben – the original sin Peter never gets over – that it is easy to leave the loss behind, for which Peter cannot blame himself : his parents who are already missing long before the story normally begins. The further loss of his uncle Ben makes Peter long for a father figure so much that the most famous members of his villain gallery are all failed surrogate fathers. Mentors like Norman Osborn and Otto Octavius ​​in Sam Raimi’s films, teachers like Curt Connors in The incredible Spiderman, and potential role models pissed off by one force or another, like Adrian Toomes in Spider-Man: Homecoming or Mysterio in Spider-Man: Far from home.

The latest story from this web, Spider-Man: No way home, does not seem to have dealt with this story at first. The film appears to be an excuse for a multiversal mashup that will pit the current Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Spider-Man against villains from the previous Spiders-Men films. At first glance, it seems like an exciting, but fan-service that doesn’t anticipate the emotional fierceness of the Spider-Man stories for which they are known. Then in the middle No way home will extremely invested in Peter Parker and what he lost.

[Ed. note: Major spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home follow.]

One of the smaller things that make Peter’s MCU version stand out is that we don’t see any of these initial losses. Like the radioactive spider that bit him to give him his powers, it’s an element of history that we’ve seen repeatedly and that we don’t need to revisit. Instead, Tom Holland’s version of Peter Parker gets a new loss: his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), killed by the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe). It is this final wound that Peter breaks, already closed by the death of his idol Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) Avengers: Endgame, and by the betrayal of his short-term friend Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), who pegged him for a terrorist attack later that year Spider-Man: Far from home.

Shattered, he withdraws from his friends and No way home‘s true meta-magic begins when Peter Parker is raised to his lowest position on-screen by the previous two Peters, played by their original actors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.

What is surprising No way home isn’t it that Maguire and Garfield are repeating their roles, but that they are real? sign in No way home, present for much of the second half. Not only do they support the current story of Peter; they get their own bittersweet grace note. Maguire’s Peter, who has spent three films tormenting himself about the self-sacrifice as Spider-Man, is allowed to show two younger men that pain can also lead to something beautiful. Garfield’s Peter, whose film series was abbreviate and whose story never ended, has to go further: In the time between his last spider excursion The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and No way home, we learn that he got angry and has effectively given up on being Peter Parker.

Not only are these lessons to be taught to the current Peter, they help tie all three versions of the character together in three ways. One of the most moving moments in No way home occurs when Holland isn’t even present when Maguire, the best-fit Peter Parker, tells Garfield’s Peter that he’s great and tries to get him to say it too. “No, you are amazing – I have to hear that,” he says. Garfield’s Peter never does, but in a moment of vulnerability we can see he desperately wants it.

This is the only thing that can be a completely cynical reading of. difficult No way home: Not only does the script of the film use the other Peters for a cute cameo, it tries to wrestle with the slightly different shades that bring them to the current Peter Parker pain, and how their encounter could help them all to grow. Because they all still have room to grow and they are all quiet so lonely.

What sets the character’s latest version apart is that he hasn’t been for a while. He was recruited by an Avenger and assigned a constantly angry but ultimately supportive minder. He had to become part of a team and share his journey with two of his closest friends. Enjoying the advantages of having a wealthy benefactor, he let his keen young mind expand in ways that Midtown High never could. And he got an Aunt May who knew he was Spider-Man and supported him in his heroic work. But how No way homeThe tragic arc reaches its climax, Peter learns that none of this will help him in his private grief, nor will it help anyone understand him better.

But since the multiverse brings Peter a new tragedy, it does him a kind of courtesy: working with two other versions of himself makes him feel understood for a while. For a short time it gives him brothers.

With this moment of catharsis No way home arrives at the end of a winding road that began with the arrival of Peter Parker in the middle of the year Captain America: Civil Warbefore he got a fancy suit or battled his first alien. Past awkward jokes and sometimes confusing plans No way home Director Jon Watts and screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers ultimately choose to center the beating heart of the boy behind the mask, who is role-playing in being a man. This is clearly not a story about Spider-Man, but a story about Peter Parker. And so Peter has to learn another lesson about power and responsibility. One way to ensure bad things happen is to know that there is something you can do to help people but choose not to.

Spider-Man: No way home is a kind of funeral. While it brings in Doctor Strange, magic, and multiversal visitors from other Spider-Man films, it also removes any gear Spider-Man accumulated in previous MCU installments. In his quest to avert a multiverse disaster, Spider-Man loses all of his failed devices, powerful friends, and support systems. When he asks Doctor Strange to erase his memory from the world, he loses the Avengers who know and respect him, the friends who remember his name, and any sense of a found family to fall back on. The film ends with a blank slate: Peter Parker in a homemade costume, a police scanner app in hand, doing what he can just because he can.

In this, No way home can be read as a surprising warning of the dangers of cinematic universes. The continuity, the transitions, the cool things that come with superhero cross-pollination – none of this is going to help Peter get back up after he falls. And that doesn’t make him who he is either. And maybe he can’t be the best version of himself until he chooses to be free from it.

Peter Parker will never have this father, just as he will never see a world where doing the right thing does not come at a painful cost. But he can get up any day and do it anyway to believe that he is making a difference. And more importantly, because he believes that someone out there will see him and be moved to do the same.

Spider-Man: No way home is now playing in theaters.