Spider-Man is, for the most part, only half a hero without his iconic villains—many of whom are going to be making an appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home, but the pure joy of hearing both Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe back in action as Doc Ock and the Green Goblin will sustain me until I finally get to see the movie.
In the new trailer for No Way Home that debuted last night, we got to see more of what the actual story of the movie is going to be, and part of it looks like … Doc Ock is planning on helping Peter Parker? When Peter comes face to face with Doc Ock, Otto says, “You’re not Peter Parker” the minute he sees Tom Holland’s face and clearly realizes that he’s … not where he’s supposed to be.
So what does that mean for all the villains coming into the movie? It means that they’re all fighting a Spider-Man they never met before. And, somehow, Peter and his friends trap Otto in a cell and start asking him questions about what is going on, to which Otto Octavius says, “You’re flying out into the darkness to fight ghosts.”
Peter Parker is surrounded by death, not something he wants in his life but something that has sort of always been there. From his parents to his uncle to the constant struggle of his villains dying while he’s trying to stop them, Peter is just always confronted with death, and this time, he doesn’t want that to follow him around. It seems like Peter is going to save his villains throughout this movie, but it is important to his character to note that he doesn’t care about himself or even the fracturing of the universe. He cares about protecting lives.
“They all die fighting Spider-Man. It’s their fate. Sorry, kid,” Doctor Strange says to him, and it is clear that Peter barely thinks about it but still makes his decision to try his hardest to save everyone. I love my genius doofus of a son, but Peter Parker sees villains and thinks “I can fix them.”
And it seems like, in the trailer, every villain is giving him advice on how to live his life. “Peter, you’re struggling to have everything you want while the world tries to make you choose,” the Green Goblin says, and look, the thing about Peter’s villains is that they’re all connected to him in some way. Doc Ock was a mentor, Norman was his best friend’s father, and even Max Dillon was someone that Peter had interacted with. They all come back to him, and even though they are villains, their connection to Peter is what sometimes brings them back to the light (thinking of Otto).
So in this movie, when Peter’s entire life is up in the air and he doesn’t know what to do, and now he’s fighting a multiverse of villains coming for him? It makes sense that villains would have weirdly inspirational things to say to him, if we’re being honest, and I hope that it means that Doc Ock and the Green Goblin team up to just try to take care of this small child.
(image: Marvel Entertainment)
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