Every Big Question No Way Home Left Answered

Spider-Man: No Way Home wraps up a lot of things in Tom Holland's first trilogy, but that does not mean there are not questions still up in the air about the film. I want to go through the biggest head scratchers floating around about the movie to try to give a better understanding of it.

Full spoilers ahead, obviously.

Will Peter actually pay his rent now that he has a new apartment?

The biggest question everyone seems to have after leaving the cinema is whether Peter is going to pay his rent on time. It is an issue he has had before, and we end the film with him getting a brand new apartment, but without a job that is going to be difficult.

Peter is also studying for his GED, and because of that I think he will actually end up working for the Daily Bugle. We already know from the TikTok page that Betty Brant now has a job there, and if Peter starts supplying them with pictures of Spider-Man, it could lead to him making enough money to live on.

If you think about it, the Bugle slams Spider-Man from the start of this movie, and it would make sense that this version of Peter would try to repair his reputation. I can see him going to them to try to get them to change their minds by supplying pictures of the web head doing good deeds, though Jameson would of course twist these. It would add an interesting dynamic having Jameson trying to ruin Spider-Man's reputation while Peter is trying to repair it.

Is Peter still part of the Avengers after Strange's spell?

In the wake of the ending, another question I have seen a lot, maybe not as important as the rent one, is whether Peter is still part of the Avengers. He is not. The spell Strange casts at the end completely destroyed all the relationships he had, and it made everyone forget Peter Parker existed.

Beyond that, it includes all the Avengers, and since they knew Peter on a personal level, he would not be part of the group. In Far From Home we also learned that Nick Fury and SHIELD were well aware of who he was, so I am guessing everyone in the government is under this spell too, possibly including the Skrulls, meaning Spider-Man's identity is now hidden from absolutely everyone.

I am not sure what happens with the cabinet at school that has Peter and Spider-Man's face side by side, but the way I understand the spell working is that it hypnotizes people, in the same way a magician on stage can ask someone their name and they are unable to say it. It stops you tapping into the part of your brain that retains that information. How that would work with video recordings or Bugle reports I am not too sure, though it could go one of two ways: either someone would go into a trance and skip past it, or it would work like the Silence from Doctor Who, aliens you completely forget the second you look away from them. We probably will not learn exactly how it works until a future movie, but in the comics the spell just stopped people remembering the details.

Peter is truly just once more your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, operating much like Daredevil does, classed as a vigilante living in New York. That is hammered home by Jameson's closing report claiming Spider-Man destroyed the Statue of Liberty and that the vigilante is concealing his identity. Although it is a downer, I do think it gives the character a fresh start, letting new relationships like Harry Osborn, Black Cat and Gwen Stacy be introduced with the truth slowly revealed over time. He could also spark a friendship with Happy again, since both visit May's grave at the end. Either way, Peter is fully on his own now in a new apartment, no longer heading off with MJ and Ned to Boston. I have a suspicion Sony and Marvel put this in place in case they could not agree on future films together, since being disconnected from the other Marvel heroes still keeps him in the MCU without contractual clashes. We do know Tom Holland signed on for more movies as the web head, and I am excited for the direction of the franchise. We also do not know if the spell extends beyond the MCU. If Sony ever picked up Amazing Spider-Man 3 or a fourth film, it could add real drama to Andrew Garfield's Peter returning home to find his MJ had forgotten him too, and he could even team up with Andrew's version in the future, similar to how Spider-Gwen has another adventure with Miles.

Why does Peter's spider sense move the box away from Strange?

Just before Peter is thrown into the mirror dimension, Strange pushes him out of his astral form and he goes to grab the box, but Peter moves it out of the way. I think that is because his spider sense is naturally protecting his body from harm. His spider sense is very much his instincts just reacting, which is why he constantly keeps moving the box out of the way. It is part of his nervous system and muscle memory, so it keeps moving even when he is not fully in control of his body.

What happens to the villains, and could any of them have turned lethal?

Another question I have seen a lot centers on the villains and what happened to them. While the Lizard and Sandman were not killed in the films they appeared in, we do learn they are doomed to die, and it is clear they turn back to a life of crime in their own realities. We do not see their deaths, but we know it was their fate.

Some of the lines dropped in the movie hint that the other Spider-Men could have become lethal protectors. Andrew Garfield's Peter says that after Gwen's death he got bitter and stopped pulling his punches, and if he had come across the Lizard again, I think he would not have held back, since this is the villain who killed Gwen's father and stands as a symbol of pain for that version. In the Amazing Spider-Man films the Lizard transformation was not permanent, whereas in this film it is, so I think the version we meet here would be one from years later who had perfected the formula. In the post-credits scene he is visited by a gentleman clearly putting together a team, so we might learn down the line exactly what happened with him.

As for Sandman, he also killed Uncle Ben, and had he turned back to a life of crime, you can understand how it would have been Tobey's Peter facing him. The ending of the movie itself is about Peter almost killing the Green Goblin and making the same mistake these Spider-Men did, but Tobey's Peter is there to stop him, so he does not travel down that dark path with his enemies. The only way to really save them was to cure and reform them, and I love that the ending is about healing the villains instead of taking them down.

Because of this, most of them would not have died upon returning home. Norman Osborn would not have impaled himself on his own glider, Electro would not have overcharged, and Sandman would not have turned to a life of crime. I am not sure exactly what would have happened with Doc Ock, since he would still have had to drown that miniature sun, but he may have returned to the earlier moment he was afraid to die, regained control, and then drowned the sun anyway, since he was someone who took responsibility for his actions. How this affects those realities has already been explained in Endgame, where an alternate timeline simply branches off while the Raimi and Garfield films continue in their own reality.

How does the movie finally acknowledge the Netflix Marvel shows?

Another big thing happening in the MCU is that it is finally acknowledging the Netflix shows. Kingpin showed up at the end of Hawkeye episode 5, and Matt Murdock also appears as Peter's lawyer early on in this film. Echo went on to get her own solo show, which I thought was likely to be based on her origin story in the comics: Kingpin killed her father, and in his dying breath he asked the crime boss to take care of his daughter, and she became one of his best assassins. In Hawkeye the show pinned her father's death on Clint, whereas in the comics it was Daredevil who took the blame, though she eventually discovers the truth and turns on her surrogate father, which I believe was the main plot of her solo series. Daredevil went on to appear in the She-Hulk series as well.

Could Venom have crossed over, and what happens with Doctor Strange next?

Though the spell is supposed to have brought people across at random, Venom definitely did not, since he never actually met Peter. The multiverse is a strange thing though, and potentially, once it broke open, because a Venom in one universe knows who Peter is, every Venom in every universe had some way to travel across. The Tom Hardy version possibly only got taken over because he was currently doing something that would massively alter Eddie's consciousness.

Lastly, I want to talk about Doctor Strange and what happens next with him. He does not actually know why the multiverse is broken open, since he too would have been hypnotized into forgetting it was connected to Peter. That is why I think that in the post-credits scene, when we catch him reaching out to Wong, he is going as a friend because he is confused as to why this is happening. This could lead into the pair learning about Peter, and in doing so finding out about other versions of the character in other realities, which I thought could lead to Wanda realizing there are other versions of her children, and it ended up leading us all into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

What do you think happened to the villains once they were sent home, and did the ending get it right by choosing to heal them instead of stopping them for good?