Tom Holland is coming back for a new Spider-Man trilogy and here’s our prediction on what that new trilogy will look like. The ink on the box office receipts of Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s record-breaking opening weekend is barely dry, but already we fans are looking ahead to the future. Sony Producer Amy Pascal has already confirmed that there will be another Spider-Man trilogy with Tom Holland, in continued conjunction with Marvel Studios’ Marvel Cinematic Universe, and considering where Peter Parker ends up at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, we can’t help but try and predict what the new Spider-Man trilogy will look like.
The epilogue of Spider-Man: No Way Home finds Peter Parker going back to basics. Fresh out of high school and straight into a typically-crummy apartment (see also; Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man trilogy), with nothing but his wit, will, and sense of responsibility propelling him forward. Spider-Man closes out the Homecoming trilogy without many friends or allies – in fact, seemingly without any. Aunt May has died at the hands of the Green Goblin, and MJ, Happy Hogan and Doctor Strange (not to mention the rest of the world) have no memory of Peter Parker at all, thanks to the spell that Strange cast to send Parker’s Multiversal villains home and save the world from an onslaught of thousands more.
Having received assurance from his inter-dimensional counterparts (played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in a stunning return) that “this is what we do”, Spider-Man – alone though he may be – continues his mission of responsibility. Armed with a police scanner and a shiny new suit (hand-stitched by Parker himself), he leaps off into the night, reinvigorated in his crusade that’s already cost him so much.
The last Spider-Man trilogy revolved around Peter Parker’s high school years, from the tender age of 15 through “graduation”. At the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, we see Parker studying for his GED, which he means he didn’t quite graduate high school. In the next Spider-Man trilogy, expect that Peter Parker will have successfully completed his GED in the intervening time; Tom Holland is 25 now, so it makes more sense to age Peter Parker up a little next time we see him. Just like with Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man, which saw Peter Parker go from high school to college, it’s likely we’ll see Tom Holland’s Peter studying science at NYU, or somewhere similar. How he’ll be able to afford it leads us into our next prediction…
Peter Parker has always had two jobs; being Spider-Man, and taking pictures of Spider-Man for the Daily Bugle. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker may have a hard time swallowing his pride (and rage) to sell pictures to J. Jonah Jameson’s Infowars-esque DailyBugle.net, but Jameson – ever craving pictures of Spider-Man, like an addict – will likely pay top (okay, medium) dollar for fresh snaps of the wall-crawling “menace”. Peter’s going to need money to pay for that college education, and the rent he is likely to be perennially late for.
That said, being that we’ve already seen Peter Parker the photographer on-screen a couple of times now, perhaps the new Spider-Man trilogy will showcase the webhead in a different day-job. In the Marvel comic books, he’s given back to the community as a high school science teacher, as well as headed up his own tech start-up, Parker Industries. It’s unlikely that we’ll see Tom Holland’s Parker end up in a teaching role while also studying at college, but perhaps he’ll find an opening as a Teaching Assistant. Ditto, Parker is likely too young (and too broke) to be engaging in any tech start-ups, but there’s a high probability he could wind up doing something science-related regardless – for example, taking a job as a researcher at Horizon Labs, like he did in the ‘Big Time’ arc of The Amazing Spider-Man comics.
Spider-Man movies are so highly anticipated that even the movie’s titles have become frenzied guessing games and publicity stunts (remember the No Way Home title reveal?). The titles of the Tom Holland/Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man trilogy all stemmed from its clever first title Spider-Man: Homecoming (because the character “came home” to Marvel Studios… get it?). Spider-Man: Far From Home – less clever – saw Spidey on a field trip to Europe, and now the trilogy has culminated with Spider-Man: No Way Home (relating to his multiversal counterparts and villains’ need, or lack thereof, to get back to their “home” universes).
Going forward, what will the new Spider-Man trilogy’s titles look like? Will they share a recurring theme, à la the Homecoming trilogy? Or will the instalments have standalone subtitles, perhaps taken from the comics as inspiration? If it’s the former, and Peter Parker is indeed at college, we might have titles like Spider-Man: Freshman Year, Spider-Man: Sophomore Year, ad infinitum. Or something worse, like Spider-Man: Midterms or Spider-Man: Finals (please, Sony, if you’re reading – don’t take this as inspiration).
They might choose to go after adapting a popular comics storyline and end up with something like Spider-Man: Big Time. In the ‘Big Time’ storyline, Peter takes a job as a researcher at Horizon Labs, tussles with a new Hobgoblin, Alistair Smythe, Mac Gargan and a slew of new spider-slayers, as well as a new villain called Massacre. He develops two dope new Spider-suits in the process, but none are enough to save J. Jonah Jameson’s wife, Marla, from dying – especially after he loses his Spider-Sense. In an unlikely about-face, Jameson blames himself for his wife’s death, but Peter still struggles with PTSD from the ever-growing number of people who have died around him. It’d be a great storyline to draw from as it’s a total whirlwind of action with a lot of cool new concepts and villains, as well as new spins on classic characters.
I’d bet dollars to donuts they’ll stick with sub-titles, as they have to delineate the films somehow, and they won’t now switch over to calling these movies Spider-Man 4, Spider-Man 5, et cetera. Time will tell what those sub-titles will be, whether they be thematic or related to the comics is anyone’s guess right now.
In one of the saddest endings to a superhero movie ever, Peter Parker is left alone at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home; his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) both have zero memory of who he is thanks to Doctor Strange. Peter approaches MJ at the café where she works with a big speech prepared, ready to tell her who he really is, but bottles it when he realizes MJ and Ned got into MIT and are essentially safer without knowing who he is. Heartbreaking though this may be, it does track with Peter’s newfound sense of responsibility and that to be Spider-Man means to also sacrifice a personal life.
When we see a new Spider-Man trilogy, we might well see the return of MJ and Ned to Peter’s lives; either by happenstance, or he changes his mind about trying to remind them who he is, or they’re brought back into the circus by some other villain with a connection to all of them. Zendaya recently mentioned that she “[doesn’t] know if we’re going to do another one” after Spider-Man: No Way Home; however, No Way Home literally only just dropped, so it’s early days to be casting the next movie. At any rate, consider it a big question mark; essentially, MJ and/or Ned will return if the writers and producers want them too. At this point, they’re part of the bedrock of the Tom Holland franchise, so a return is likely on the cards.
In a heartfelt moment, Doctor Strange says his own goodbye to Peter at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, after our boy himself suggests having the whole world forget Peter Parker to seal the Multiversal breach. Naturally, the forget-me-now spell extends to all the members of the Avengers too – what members there are left. After all, there isn’t really an Avengers team active at the moment, with Thor and Captain Marvel off-world, Hawkeye retired and trying to get home for Christmas, Bruce back to ‘Puny Banner’ size, Iron Man and Black Widow KIA, and Steve Rogers old as hell (and presumed dead, or living on the Moon). The rest are scattered to the wind, no active roster available.
The onus on Spider-Man at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home is firmly that of a friendly neighborhood hero, with Avengers team-ups far from his radar. Going forward with a new Spider-Man trilogy, we can likely expect less character crossovers with the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Parker goes it alone for the first time in this iteration. That said, a Sony exec has said that we’re staring down the barrel of a shared Sony & Marvel Universe, but this is likely more impactful for Sony, meaning they’ll be able to feature Tom Holland in their solo antihero films like Venom and Morbius rather than seeing someone like Morbius go up against Blade or anything (although, that’d be cool).
Per the mid-credits tag in Spider-Man: No Way Home, a piece of the Venom symbiote has detached from Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and is likely making its way to New York, potentially attached to Danny Rojas (Cristo Fernández) from Ted Lasso.
What’s confusing about this mid-credits tag is that Eddie Brock is sent back to the Sony-verse at the end of it, apparently wiping the possibility of Tom Holland-Parker meeting Tom Hardy-Brock off the table. Marvel Studios might consider bringing Tom Hardy into the MCU as an Eddie Brock variant, but that would be confusing for the audience, so it’s probably best that they just have the symbiote attach itself to Peter and then figure it out from there.
Mac Gargan is floating around in the MCU after Spider-Man: Homecoming, and the once-and-future Scorpion has also been a host for the Venom symbiote too, even featuring as a Thunderbolt under Norman Osborn at one point in the comics. Maybe he’ll take the place of Eddie Brock in the MCU, partnering with the symbiote after Peter rejects it, united in their hatred of Spider-Man. Currently, Gargan (Michael Mando) is incarcerated, but he was last seen hitting up the Vulture for information on Spider-Man’s real identity, so he obviously bears a grudge. His luck just ran out though, as the Vulture will have forgotten Peter’s identity following Strange’s spell.
Regardless, it’s safe to say we’ll see Peter Parker interacting with the symbiote in the next Spider-Man trilogy. What shape that takes, time will tell!
Michael Morbius, the geneticist-turned-“living vampire”, is soon to be played by Jared Leto in Sony’s frequently-delayed Morbius, the delays obviously attributed to COVID-19. The setting of this movie has been a source of confusion for fans; Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes/Vulture (from Spider-Man: Homecoming) appears in the trailer, and some graffiti of the webslinger tagged with the word “murderer” implies this follows Spider-Man: Far From Home, where Mysterio pinned his own death on Spidey.
Yet, why then can we see Oscorp Tower (from The Amazing Spider-Man movies), and why is The Daily Bugle an actual newspaper here – not DailyBugle.net? There are also references to the Rhino, who up till this point has not appeared in the MCU. Then, there are all the references to Venom, but Eddie Brock is under the impression he’s the only super-person on his planet (per the mid-credits tag of No Way Home). Phew! What a mess. Basically, no one has the slightest clue where Morbius is supposed to fit.
Tom Holland is down for Morbius to appear in one of his future instalments, but that’s irrelevant, as Sony confirmed to Gamestop that the Morbius movie is not set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So, we wouldn’t go expecting Morbius to appear in the new Spider-Man trilogy, but there’s massive potential for Tom Holland’s wallcrawler to appear in future Morbius sequels, if the film is successful enough to warrant them. Tom Holland, or maybe Andrew Garfield…?
As Doctor Strange sealed the Multiversal breach in the climax of Spider-Man: No Way Home, a number of classic Spider-Man villains could be seen about to come through; these were villains from other universes, who – per Strange’s spell – knew Peter Parker was Spider-Man. One of the figures appeared to be garbed in fur, holding a spear; it can be none other than Kraven the Hunter. Kraven is one of the all-time great Spidey villains, a Russian big-game hunter obsessed with the greatest game of all; the Spider-Man. Kraven at one time managed to bury Spidey alive, going so far as to take his place and wearing his costume, in the timeless storyline Kraven’s Last Hunt.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson was reported in May 2021 as being set to play Kraven the Hunter in a solo movie from Sony, supposedly due for release in January 2023, and Tom Holland has also been on record to say that ‘plan B’ for No Way Home was to feature a “really cool” Kraven the Hunter storyline. As we all know, ‘plan A’ – the Multiverse shenanigans currently playing in theaters as Spider-Man: No Way Home – came to fruition, placing Kraven the Hunter back on the shelf for the time being.
If Kraven the Hunter had appeared in the third part of the Homecoming trilogy, it’s likely that Aaron Taylor-Johnson would have stepped up to the plate to perform the character, as he’s already locked in for a solo movie (which already has a script, and a director in the form of J.C. Chandor). Now, he’ll either appear in his solo picture or in a future Spider-Man sequel, whichever comes first. Marvel Studios might be sore about Sony’s decision to cast Taylor-Johnson, as he already notably played the doomed Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron; it’s unknown whether this would affect Taylor-Johnson’s ability to lock horns with Tom Holland in the next Spider-Man trilogy.
After all, Marvel haven’t been shy about duplicating the casting of actors; Alfre Woodard and Mahershala Ali both starred in the Netflix Daredevil show, before respectively appearing in Captain America: Civil War and the upcoming Blade reboot as different characters. Enough time has passed that Taylor-Johnson – with a lion-skin vest and black goatee, perhaps – might not be recognized if he suddenly reappears in the MCU as Kraven the Hunter. But, this might be too much of a sticking point for Marvel Studios, resulting in their veto of having the character face off against Tom Holland. So while we’re apparently, definitely getting a solo Kraven the Hunter movie, having him appear in the next Spider-Man trilogy isn’t so certain.
Harry Osborn – Peter Parker’s best friend, sometimes-enemy, son of Norman Osborn and the once and future Green Goblin – is a staple of the Spider-Man franchise. Played in the Tobey Maguire trilogy by James Franco, and by Dane DeHaan in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (alongside Andrew Garfield), Harry Osborn has always been a kind of mirror-darkly version of Peter Parker; his devolution into villain – and sometimes-redemption – makes for a great storyline, making it unsurprising that Spider-Man filmmakers continue to go back to the well on this one.
Tom Holland himself is up for seeing the MCU’s Harry Osborn in a future installment, and even has an idea for casting; Timothée Chalamet. An inspired choice, as Chalamet has the requisite moody, emo vibe to play a poor little rich kid (with a dark side) like Harry Osborn.
Story-wise, if Harry Osborn were to show up in the next Spider-Man trilogy, Peter Parker’s spider-sense would be going off the charts. After all, he did just tussle with Norman Osborn (albeit from another universe), a man who is now responsible for the death of his beloved Aunt May. It’s hard to imagine Peter in the MCU as wanting to even risk a friendship with someone named Osborn, although he might want to adopt a “keep your friends close, and enemies closer” approach to this one.
If Harry Osborn is introduced to the MCU, they might forego the friendship angle all together. I’d put 3:1 odds on Harry making an appearance in the new Spider-Man trilogy; fingers crossed they actually lock Chalamet for the part, as he’d do a great job.
Holland recently made comments to GQ, where he implied he is not expecting to play Peter Parker past 30 years old; this carries with it the implication that if we do get a complete new trilogy with Holland, it may be the last time we see him playing the character (that is, until Peter Parker is recast and Holland is brought in from across the multiverse to interact with them in ten or fifteen years).
Barring any additional appearances throughout the MCU, including potential appearances in upcoming Avengers movies (The New Avengers, anyone?), the next Spider-Man trilogy will have to wrap up Peter Parker’s arc if it’s to be Tom Holland’s swansong. Something fans have never suffered through is seeing Parker die on-screen, and with Miles Morales (Peter’s successor in the comics) waiting in the wings, it’d be acceptable to give our current Spider-Man a heroic, sacrificial sendoff in IMAX.
Wherever the next Spider-Man trilogy takes Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, don’t expect life to get any easier for him. There’ll be ups and downs, there’ll be victories, losses and casualties. Judging by the Homecoming trilogy, the next Spider-Man trilogy will be nothing if not entertaining, and we can’t wait to see what’s in store. Especially if it ends on a note like Peter Parker dying. If you want a glimpse of how emotional it is to witness Peter Parker dying, check out Ultimate Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley.
If the new Spider-Man trilogy really is Tom Holland’s swansong as Peter Parker, you’d better believe that Sony and Marvel Studios would already be looking to a future beyond the young Brit. Where better to turn to than his natural successor in the Marvel Comics, Miles Morales?
The fan-favorite character has already made an amazingly well-received introduction in animated form in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and his existence has already been teased and alluded to in the MCU. First, we met his uncle Aaron Davis – AKA the Prowler – in Spider-Man: Homecoming, as played by Donald Glover. Glover was inspired casting, being that the actor is widely known as the inspiration for Miles Morales in the first place. Second, Electro made mention of hoping the Spider-Man he knew from his universe was black – disappointed to find that he was in fact as white as Andrew Garfield. Regardless, he invoked the wishes of fans everywhere; “There’s gotta be a black Spider-Man somewhere out there.” Just you wait, Max; Sony and Marvel Studios are working on it.
Miles may even make his live-action debut in the new Spider-Man trilogy. Knuckle in for a long wait full of casting announcements, teases, trailers, posters, leaks and spoilers, folks! Whatever shape the new Spider-Man trilogy takes, we’re in for a wild ride. Stay tuned to JoBlo.com for more information on the future of Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it develops!