Alright nerds, your prayers have been answered and it looks like Spiderman will be staying in the MCU to headline Phase Four of the beloved universe. All things seem to be in order, with Tom Holland continuing his legacy and Kevin Feige staying onboard as producer.
While SONY’s original proposal has been cut in half, the internet’s rage will always be around to crack corporate spines. While it’s hard to say who is the most motivated by greed—be that SONY or Disney—many fans don’t seem to care, so long as we have Peter Parker and his dorky charm to carry the MCU for the next decade or so.
Negotiations over Spidey are no new business in Hollywood. The ‘every-day,’ marketable gold mine that is Spiderman is often the target of corporate greed, the best example found in Holland’s predecessor, Andrew Garfield – who was cheated out of a third movie in his “Amazing Spider-Man” series.
Holland’s title of Spider-Man has always held more security though, what with his character being woven intricately into the main universe. It would have been hard to imagine Disney bouncing back from this monumental loss. The next phase of the franchise is already lacking in familiar faces, and the already vague future of Marvel would be nothing without the last remnants of the golden age.
All suspicions of corporate greed aside, it seems that the new deal SONY and Disney settled on may be better for fans, particularly those that fell in love with the alternate Spider-man verses like I did. There have been several hints, by SONY executives and Kevin Feige himself, that the possibility of a Venom or Spiderverse crossover with the MCU is greater now than ever before.
This isn’t to say that Holland will be side by side with Tom Hardy in the next installment of Venom (but wouldn’t that be amazing. Jesus, that’s what we NEED, put the Russo’s on the phone). But it looks like the MCU could be potentially gifted with a new hero, one arguably more loveable than good ol’ Peter Parker—Miles Morales.
While it would be a tight swing for any studio to pair these two characters together for the anticipated June 2021 release of Spider-Man 3, just the idea is enough to give hope to the fate of the MCU, which is, in all honesty, very up in the air, what with the loss of earth’s best defender.
The introduction of new characters (and hopefully The Young Avengers) is necessary for a successful continuity, though. As we saw in Far From Home, the current narrative is rooted heavily in the past, with no signs of stopping as the next few installments will be dealing with our hero’s re-learning the world post-Endgame. But an entirely new phase of a universe cannot be adequately situated in the world’s grief, we cannot expect greatness from a franchise that is riding on its past success.
A reinstated Spider-Man means nothing if you aren’t going to allow him the chance to grow, to evolve out of his grief and discover the world for himself. Holland’s Spider-Man is given an amazing chance to take the Spider-Man narrative father than it has ever gone before, but if the studio limits the character and the story in a fruitless attempt to recreate the past, then the MCU we all know and love will be lost in the shadow of the irreplaceable Tony Stark.