Spider-Man: No Way Home Ending Explained: It Takes A Multiverse

Since the fellas in "Spider-Man: No Way Home" came up with a pretty good system for avoiding confusion (even if it took them a couple of tries to get it right), I shall henceforth use their system and refer to the Spider-Men as follows:

• Peter 1 — Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man (Tom Holland)
• Peter 2 — "Spider-Man" Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire)
• Peter 3 — "Amazing Spider-Man" Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield)

Intriguingly, "Spider-Man: No Way Home" reveals that Peters 2 and 3 have something in common that Peter 1 doesn't have: an Uncle Ben. When Peter 1 made his debut in "Captain America: Civil War," he appeared to make an oblique reference to the death of Uncle Ben as he explained his reasons for wanting to be a superhero to Tony Stark:

"When you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen? They happen because of you."

At the time, this was simply read as a way to fast-forward through Spider-Man's origin story, since the spider bite and the death of Uncle Ben had already gotten the big-screen treatment twice since the turn of the millennium. But "Spider-Man: No Way Home" quietly retcons that hint of a haunted past in order to give Peter 1 his own "death of Uncle Ben" scene after all. Only this time, it's not Uncle Ben who tells Peter that "with great power comes great responsibility." And it's not Uncle Ben who dies and leaves Peter guilt-ridden and rageful.

Sadly, it's time to say goodbye to Marisa Tomei's Aunt May, who gets side-swiped by Green Goblin's glider and then hit while she's down with the blast from one of the Goblin's grenades. There's a "she's okay!" fake-out (a rare cousin to the death fake-out) that lasts just long enough to make you think this movie won't have a major character body count, but then May succumbs to her injuries shortly after delivering the old "great power/great responsibility" chestnut.

The context is not the same; whereas Peters 2 and 3 lost their Uncle Bens as a direct result of letting a thief go free, Peter 1 genuinely was trying to the heroic thing by protecting Green Goblin and the other lost supervillains. Had he simply allowed Doctor Strange to send them back and die, Aunt May would have lived — but at the cost of Peter's principles. It's a tough lesson that sometimes even trying your hardest to do the right thing isn't enough to guarantee a happy ending.

There's a quote often misattributed to the philosopher Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." It goes hand-in-hand with the idea that with great power comes great responsibility, but while it fits with the death of Uncle Ben in the two previous iterations of Spider-Man's origin story, it doesn't quite tally with the death of Aunt May in "No Way Home." There is an actual Edmund Burke quote, however, that feels a lot more appropriate:

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

The pain of losing Aunt May is more than Peter can cope with alone. But between MJ and Ned rallying to his side and Spider-Men from other universes commiserating about their own personal tragedies, he's not alone. And that's just as well, because the bad men are combining.

"Spider-Man: No Way Home" has a lot of villains in it, but whether by design or by accident, Green Goblin feels like the most full-realized (all credit to Willem Dafoe for coming back after 20 years without missing a single beat). It's easy to forget, after two decades brimming over with superhero movies, just how pivotal Peter Parker's final confrontation with the Green Goblin at the end of Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" felt. It created a clear roadmap for compelling villains that the very best of the MCU movies made since have followed.

First, and crucially: Norman Osborn wasn't a stranger, but the father of Peter's childhood best friend. With their masks off, the two of them got on very well; Peter saw Dr. Osborn as a role model and mentor, while Norman was impressed by Peter's love of science — to the point that Harry Osborn became jealous that his father liked Peter more than his own son. Throughout the MCU, a similar pattern emerges where the most interesting villains are those whom the hero cannot hurt without hurting themselves, or knowing that they are causing harm to their loved ones: Loki (Thor's adopted brother), Killmonger (Black Panther's cousin), Thanos (Gamora's adoptive father) — and, of course, Adrian Toomes, AKA the Vulture. As "Spider-Man: Homecoming" approached its final act, it greatly complicated things by revealing that the villain was none other than the father of Peter Parker's prom date.

Then there's the tragedy. As entertaining as Dafoe is when he lets his villain grin loose, Norman Osborn is actually a rather tragic character. "No Way Home" draws parallels between him and Doctor Otto Octavius, another scientist whose experiments led to him losing part of his mind and surrendering control to a darker half. In "Spider-Man," the scene where Norman's unravelling mind causes him to behave rudely at a dinner is arguably even more unsettling than scenes where he's whizzing around on a glider in a green costume. And at the end of the movie, Spider-Man still believes that Norman can be saved — right up until the Green Goblin is violently impaled on his own glider in a last-ditch effort to kill Spider-Man.

Apparently not content with wrapping up one "Spider-Man" movie trilogy, "Spider-Man: No Way Home" also takes care to wrap up the unfinished business of the two previous iterations of the franchise. (Come on, that's just showing off.) As the Spider-Men are delegating the development of cures for their various supervillains, Peter 2 quietly reveals that he knows exactly how to cure Green Goblin because he's given it a great deal of thought over the two decades since Norman's death. When Peter 2 intercedes to stop Peter 1 from murdering Norman with the glider, he not only manages to save the very first enemy whom he ever watched die — he also figuratively returns to the night of Uncle Ben's death, and prevents his younger self from giving in to rage and killing for the sake of revenge.

Thanks to some accidental intervention from Ned and his borrowed sling ring, Doctor Strange returns from the Mirror Dimension in time for the final battle of "Spider-Man: No Way Home." Unfortunately, before he can press the button on his magic spell box that will put everything back to normal, Green Goblin blows up the box with one of his grenades and unleashes the spell. The sky cracks open as the spell tears rifts in the multiverse, and more people start to come through.

The shapes of the people are hard to make out, but there's a moment where the camera lingers on the emerging shape of a guy with a spear, who could very well be Kraven the Hunter. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is set to play the trophy hunter, who is one of Spider-Man's greatest enemies in the comics, in an upcoming movie, so this could be Sony's way of laying the groundwork for his arrival. The appearance of the rifts in the sky effectively gives both Sony and Marvel Studios a blanket excuse for introducing just about any character into the MCU: "Oh, they came through the multiverse rift and didn't get sent back with everyone else."

The other person in the rift who gets special attention is a broad and hulking shape that could be the Thing, given the upcoming MCU-based "Fantastic Four" reboot, but could also be Paul Giamatti's Rhino from "The Amazing Spider-Man 2." Like Maybe-Kraven, this figure is left just vague enough that it's not certain who it actually is — leaving us to speculate about the possibilities over the next few years.

Saving the multiverse from total collapse comes at a price. Since the original spell was designed to make the whole world forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, the only way to repair the damage from it is to cast a spell that makes the world forget Peter Parker ever existed at all. This time around, Peter can't beg for exceptions for his girlfriend or his best friend, so instead he simply plans to find MJ and Ned in the aftermath and explain everything to them.

Peter falters, however, when he sees MJ and Ned making plans for the next chapter of their lives: studying at MIT. And Peter comes to a full stop when MJ brushes back a strand of hair and reveals the band aid covering the cut over her eye that she got in the final battle. The injury is a reminder to Peter that being Spider-Man's girlfriend puts MJ in harm's way, and he decides he can't bear to see the people he loves put in danger like that again.

With that decision, there's a danger of Peter 1 going down the same path that Peter 3 did: pouring all of his energy into being Spider-Man, and neglecting his life as Peter Parker. But the final (pre-credits) scene of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" has an optimistic tone. As Peter gets settled into his new apartment, he unpacks items of significance: the Lego Emperor Palpatine from the Death Star model that he was working on with Ned (which gets destroyed again in "No Way Home"), and a coffee cup from MJ's workplace that says "we are happy to serve you." Rather than being a painful memory that only he can remember, Peter's connection to MJ and Ned — even from afar — will inspire him to be the best, most friendliest friendly neighborhood Spider-Man he can be.