Spider-Man: Homecoming Quietly Set Up Brand New Day's Scorpion Suit Back in 2017

Spider-Man: Homecoming is filled with details we never caught, and one of them ties straight into Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The awesome scorpion suit from Brand New Day was actually being built all the way back in this 2017 movie, revealed in just a throwaway line, and I will get to exactly where it hides further down.

Homecoming was Spider-Man's first official film in the MCU after he appeared in 2016's Captain America: Civil War. It was the first of three Spider-Man films directed by Jon Watts, and it really laid the groundwork for what audiences could expect from Tom Holland's Peter Parker. In July 2026 I went back through Homecoming, Far From Home and No Way Home for even more Easter eggs and details that we never saw before. Here is what I found in the first one.

The opening drawing shows the Battle of New York through Liz Allan's eyes

The film opens on a drawing of the Battle of New York, reflecting how this film is really a youth's point of view of the Avengers. The original crew is all represented: Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk and Black Widow, with Hawkeye way in the back, almost added like an afterthought. This kind of homemade opening happens again at the start of Spider-Man: Far From Home, with the Midtown High News recapping the events of the Blip.

We learn that the drawing was done by the child of Adrian Toomes, played by Michael Keaton. Toomes shows it to one of his crew working salvage after the battle. That crew member is Phineas Mason, aka the Tinkerer, who first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man number two in 1963, the same issue that featured the first appearance of the Vulture. Mason will be the one to build Toomes's Vulture flight suit, along with various other weapons and tools using Chitauri, Ultron and other stolen Department of Damage Control tech. We later learn that the kid who drew it is Liz Allan, Peter's future love interest and Homecoming date. The Chitauri Leviathan coming through the portal in her drawing looks almost like a spider, you could say, with all the lines emanating out.

We cut to Stark Tower after the battle, and just like in Liz's drawing, the tower has only the A remaining on it, a symbol of the building becoming Avengers Tower. As we saw in the 2012 Avengers film, Grand Central Station is located just across the elevated road leading directly to the tower, which in the MCU sits at the location of the MetLife Tower. From there we pan down to Toomes's crew cleaning up the Chitauri tech in Grand Central at the foot of the tower, including the same Leviathan that Thor and Hulk took down.

Toomes's salvage crew already includes the future Shocker

Toomes shows one of his men how to remove pieces from a Chitauri flying chariot. That is Herman Schultz, played by Bokeem Woodbine, who will use some of the Tinkerer's tech to later become the Shocker of this movie. Then the Department of Damage Control shows up to take over the operation, despite Toomes protesting that he needs the job to keep his company afloat. The DODC has been around since the first Iron Man film, and after SHIELD was dismantled at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it took over many of SHIELD's responsibilities.

In this scene the DODC is led by Anne Marie Hoag, played by Tyne Daly. Sometime after this, she is replaced by Agent Cleary, when the organization shifts to a more prosecutorial mission dealing with the containment of enhanced individuals. Toomes punches one of the Damage Control guys, and the man whistling there is Logan Marshall-Green as Jackson Brice, who will later make the same mistake with Toomes and gets a whistle signaling his knockout.

Back at Toomes's workshop you can see another of Liz's drawings, this one of the Hulk, hung up on the wall. Toomes and his crew decide to keep some of the Chitauri tech in their possession and become bad guys. As Toomes puts it: "The world's changed. It's time we changed, too."

The "8 years later" title card was a mistake Marvel later admitted

Then we jump to 8 years later, which Marvel authorities later confirmed was a mistake. The prologue is definitely set in 2012, just after the Battle of New York, and the rest of the film takes place right after Captain America: Civil War, which took place in 2016. So it really should have been 4 years later.

I think the original version of this prologue had no time jump title, since that would be kind of weird to do before the main title of the movie anyway. My guess is that a last minute studio note worried audiences might not understand the timeline, leading to a rushed last minute edit with very little fact checking. Marvel addressed the discrepancy in its 2023 book, The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline, where Miss Minutes shows up on page 173 and says: "Adrian Toomes says the Battle of New York was 8 years ago, but that event was only 4 years prior. This one's a real head-scratcher for us."

I was thinking Marvel Studios could fix this by just snipping it out of the version of Homecoming on Disney Plus. However, Homecoming being on Disney Plus is just a temporary licensing agreement between Disney and Sony. Marvel and Disney can make that kind of change to things that will forever be their own IP on the platform, like the episodes of Ms. Marvel that had the Statue of Liberty's color changed after release, but they cannot make internal changes like that to a movie that is only on their platform through a temporary licensing deal.

Adrian Toomes and Peter Parker are both self-made, and both products of Tony Stark

Regardless, it is now 2016, and Toomes's operation is in full swing, making all sorts of insane weaponry and tools and stealing more alien tech from the DODC and from various Avengers battles in the years since, like the Battle of Sokovia. Toomes's Vulture body armor is the salvaged Chitauri armor seen on Hydra soldiers in Age of Ultron, making him a scavenger of scavengers, the ultimate vulture persona. Later, his helmet hair and flight jacket collar evoke his comics look. The Vulture was originally intended to be the villain of a fourth Sam Raimi Spider-Man film that was going to come out in 2011, played by John Malkovich, but that film was scrapped and Sony rebooted the franchise with Andrew Garfield and Marc Webb.

Both the villain and the hero of Homecoming are self-made characters, really embracing the classic DIY soul of Peter Parker. They are also both, in a way, a result of Tony Stark. Stark Industries' joint venture with the DODC to clean up New York City is what pushes Toomes into becoming the Vulture, and Tony bringing Peter to Germany for the Civil War airport battle is what really ignites Peter's passion for becoming a real hero. And yes, Peter's Stark tech suit is overpowered, but that is the point of this movie. Deep down, it is a coming of age tale from toys to tech, and Peter wins because he becomes a more responsible self-made hero than Adrian Toomes.

Michael Giacchino composes the music again after scoring Doctor Strange. He introduces Avengers Tower with major chords, then inverts them to minor chords when it comes to Toomes. It is a hint at the dark consequences of the Avengers' actions, because New York City in the MCU is a tale of two cities: the bright shining Avengers Tower and an underbelly that misuses that tech in other ways. Giacchino also adapts the theme from the 1960s Spider-Man animated series into the orchestral piece we hear over the titles.

Peter's home movie revisits the Civil War airport battle

After the Marvel title card, we get a film by Peter Parker, as we are shown Peter's home movie from his time in Civil War, a really fun way to revisit the airport battle in Germany. It starts with a voiceover from Peter in a deep, heavy New York accent. Tom Holland really worked on nailing the American accent as it exists in Queens, which helps him sound authentic throughout these movies.

Peter's travel log includes a shot of the World's Fair, a callback to the Stark Expo in Iron Man 2, which when this movie came out was retconned to be Peter Parker's first appearance in the MCU. He was the kid in the Iron Man mask whom Iron Man saved, and Robert Downey Jr.'s name in the end credits features art recreating that moment. Peter also gets a shot of Happy Hogan snoring on the plane, a problem that only gets worse for Happy, since he is wearing a CPAP machine in No Way Home. There are shots of Peter exploring Berlin, and it is funny to think that Tony got him there early enough to have a day to adjust so he would not be jet lagged for the battle Tony knew was coming.

At the hotel, Peter gets the Stark designed suit he wears in the battle, and we learn he was originally going to show up in his homemade suit. So the airport battle was his first time wearing it, which explains his line in Civil War: "I could have stuck the landing a little better. It's just a new suit." We also see his Civil War entrance from another angle, where he hilariously asks who the new guy is in reference to Black Panther, because at this point in the timeline the public has never heard of Black Panther.

Afterwards, Happy and Tony drop Peter off at the Stark Internship Retreat. Tony's forehead of security joke calls back Iron Man 3. Notice that seconds before Happy honks, Peter's eyes dart left, and unlike Tony he does not jump at the honk. It is a little example of his spidey sense; he saw the near crash ahead of them. Happy also struggles with Peter's heavy suitcase, yet Peter carries it with no problem thanks to his super strength. The film switches from point of view home movie to objective framing right on the key reveal, when Peter asks if he can keep the suit, a transition that locks in Peter still learning the responsibility of toys versus tech. Tony insists his move is not a hug, and these two heroes finally get that hug in Avengers: Endgame. Peter's shirt reads "The physics are theoretical, but the fun is real," and he wears it again while being interrogated by the DODC in No Way Home.

Peter's unanswered texts prove Tony and Happy were reading them all along

We jump ahead two more months. Civil War took place over the summer of 2016, so school is back in session. Peter sends many unanswered texts to Happy, whose contact photo is that snoring shot from the plane, and I love this detail. The texts include asking how Black Widow is, or should he say Natasha, helping clear the road for an ambulance, stopping a guy trying to mug an old man, and calling himself great for the neighborhood.

There is also a text about quitting marching band, which Tony later uses to catch Peter in a lie when Peter claims he is at band practice and Tony replies, "That's odd. Happy told me you quit band 6 weeks ago." You would only notice this by rewatching the movie over and over, and it shows that Tony and Happy were actually reading these texts, which I think is so sweet. Also, if Peter had not quit marching band, he would have been even closer to the Midtown High band kids who got blipped and returned embarrassingly in Far From Home.

Notice the tiny crack in Peter's phone screen too. Each time we see his phone throughout the movie, the screen is more and more damaged, showing the increasing threat level of Peter's world and forming a spider web crack.

Midtown High is packed with comic book nods

Peter attends the Midtown School of Science and Technology, which in the MCU was established in 1962, the same year Spider-Man debuted in Amazing Fantasy number 15. The Midtown Morning News is hosted by Betty Brant, a version of the Daily Bugle's Betty Brant from the comics, a character Elizabeth Banks played in the Sam Raimi franchise. Betty's co-host is Jason Ionello, a friend of Flash Thompson in the comics. We also meet this universe's Flash, played by Tony Revolori, whose license plate reads Flash Drive, a little clue that the license plates in this movie are worth looking at.

At last summer's Comic-Con, I ran into Tony Revolori, and we had one of those moments of recognizing each other from our screens. I asked him if he could tell me whether he was in the next one, and he answered, "Obviously, no." But there is at least a photo of Eugene in Brand New Day.

The school mural shows real scientists such as Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan, astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison and mathematician Al-Khwarizmi, as well as famous MCU scientists Howard Stark and Dr. Abraham Erskine, creator of the Super Soldier Serum, played by Stanley Tucci. In No Way Home, Hank Pym has been added to the mural. There is also a photo of Bruce Banner among the famous physicists in Peter's classroom, and when I wrote this, Professor Banner was set to have an important relationship with Peter in Brand New Day.

Peter's locker number is 1184, perhaps a reference to the Homecoming storyline in the Amazing Spider-Man comics in 1984, which featured Peter returning to New York with his new black suit after the Secret Wars saga. The November issue that year, issue 11, had Reed Richards discovering the suit was actually an alien symbiote. At the locker we meet Ned Leeds, played by Jacob Batalon, Peter's best friend and future guy in the chair. Ned is holding an Emperor Palpatine LEGO minifigure, which according to the screenplay becomes a totem Peter carries into Brand New Day. I love that Peter tunes out Ned saying he will come over later, which is why Peter completely forgets Ned will be in his room and accidentally outs himself. There is also a poster for the Academic Decathlon in DC on the wall, which we see again before practice a few scenes later, foreshadowing the trip to Washington.

Peter's classroom laptop links back to Jon Watts's Waverly Films crew

In class, Peter answers a problem about the physics of pendulums, signaling that he is constantly calculating his swing trajectories in the street. Later on the cargo plane he applies some quick thinking jet propulsion physics to turn the plane, and in No Way Home he uses these kinds of geometric and trigonometric solutions to defeat Doctor Strange in the Mirror Dimension.

Meanwhile, the clip on his laptop was posted by an account called Rocket Robinson 67, a real YouTube account the production created with behind the scenes clips, including Betty and Jason mentioning a rival school with an Asgardian mascot, the Flatbush Asgardians. Midtown's mascot is the Tigers, a nod to Mary Jane's classic go get 'em tiger line, and we actually see some go get 'em tigers during decathlon practice. The URL on his screen is the same URL as the second Homecoming trailer, which dropped months before the movie came out. In the recommended list there is an entry from Allen Tutorial, an account with surrealist how to clips and a bunch of short films from Waverly Films, director Jon Watts's NYU filmmaking group.

Future Thunderbolts director Jake Schreier was also part of that group, and Schreier is directing the 2028 X-Men movie for Marvel Studios. That might be part of why Marvel Studios feels so comfortable introducing its Jean Grey for the mutant saga in a Tom Holland Spider-Man movie. Kevin Feige might just trust this whole Waverly Films crew to tell these youth coming of age stories that connect so well with younger audiences. These clips of Peter's heroics have always interested me, because they also show up in Civil War and are how Tony Stark tracked Peter down. I theorize that Peter may be posting them himself under a burner account, or that it might be someone else.

We also see Peter mixing his own web fluid labeled 3.01, maybe a nod to this being the third live action Spider-Man. It contains at least salicylic acid, which is usually used for skin care, and toluene, which Peter has spelled wrong, a fast drying solvent that evaporates quickly. Maybe that is what helps his webs organically break down over time so they are not littered all over the city; later he tells Aaron Davis the webbing will take 2 hours to dissolve. Finally there is methanol, which has a ton of applications in chemical manufacturing. In the background, the teacher discusses Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist who worked on quantum theory. Maybe Peter should be paying more attention, given his later adventures with the multiverse.

The decathlon team hides MJ, Silk and a link to The Incredible Hulk

Peter and Ned eye Liz and Betty hanging a banner in the cafeteria. While they both seem focused on Liz, Ned might actually be more interested in Betty, given their sudden romance in Far From Home. Peter's academic decathlon group includes Michelle Jones, played by Zendaya, later revealed to be the MJ of this universe. There is also a Cindy Moon on the team, aka Silk from the comics.

The team is led by Mr. Harrington, played by Martin Starr, whom Kevin Feige confirmed is the same character as Martin Starr's grad student in the 2008 Incredible Hulk film. Harrington's lore is super interesting to me in this series. He is the teacher whose wife left him during the Blip, and according to the Brand New Day scene I saw at CinemaCon, he becomes one of Ned's suspects for the identity of Spider-Man, along with Eugene Flash Thompson.

Peter's afternoon around Queens is full of cameos

Once school is out, Peter eagerly heads off to do some Spider-Manning. He hops over a fence, showcasing Tom Holland's ballet background; he was a Billy Elliot, after all. On Amy Poehler's recent Good Hang podcast, Holland talked about how he and Jon Bernthal filmed each other's audition tapes for their Marvel roles back in 2015, and how Tom did an acrobatic flip in his audition, which probably did help him get the part. That might also be part of the origin of the do a flip scene that comes a moment later.

Peter grabs a sandwich from Delmar's, and I cannot help thinking of Holland on that same podcast explaining that in England you say please and thank you repeatedly when ordering, while in America it is fine to just ask for the number two, and that his dialect coach would come in and tell him, "Stop saying please." Peter asks them to squish his sandwich down real flat, because our man loves the panini and because he needs to tuck it into his suit. Mr. Delmar asks his coworker in Spanish about how attractive Peter's aunt is, which Peter totally understands thanks to his Spanish classes. Honestly, casting Marisa Tomei as Aunt May was an inspired choice by the Russo brothers in Civil War, and a lot of people have a crush on her in this film.

Peter awkwardly changes into his Stark suit, and I love how they make Holland go through these motions in one long take, especially the way the suit vacuum seals to shrink wrap around him. He could have worn his other clothes under it, but he did not want the lumps. A suit fitting this tightly was set to be a significant contrast with Brand New Day, where Destin Daniel Cretton and the costumers went to great effort to show the wrinkles in the loose fitting parts of the suit. I also love that when he webs his backpack to the dumpster, garbage juice immediately spills all over it. When he checks his web shooters, his heads up display shows how much web fluid he has. The meter is at 100 percent here, but later, when he has to change out his fluid, it sits at 0 percent and flashes red. The text placement on Peter's bike sign forces a hyphen, as it does later on Toomes's sign, because Spider-Man is a hyphenated word.

Peter riding on the front of the elevated train recalls Tobey's Spider-Man stopping the train in Spider-Man 2. Zach Cherry plays the hot dog vendor asking for a flip. Cherry later appears in Shang-Chi during the bus fight in San Francisco and made a cameo as an animated version of his character in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. He has said his character was originally just supposed to wave up at Spider-Man, but he used his UCB improv background to ad lib a bunch of lines, which led to the do a flip that Spider-Man obliges. The guy with the boombox is a cameo by Kirk Thatcher, who played the train punk in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and Giacchino would later cast Thatcher in Werewolf by Night. When Spider-Man helps the Dominican lady who later gives him a churro, you can see the churro cart behind them.

Stan Lee cameos as a neighbor shouting from a window after Spider-Man sets off a car alarm. People shouting from their apartment windows is so New York. This cameo was likely directed by James Gunn, who directed three of four Stan Lee cameos shot in one day, including Lee's cameos for Doctor Strange in 2016 and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Gunn said he was the one who introduced Tom Holland to Stan Lee and claims Lee told Holland, "Everybody says you're great. Personally, I don't see it." During the montage, Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones plays, and the Ramones are also from Queens.

The ATM robbery and the sale of Avengers Tower

Peter stops ATM robbers wearing Avengers masks, which reminds me a lot of a particular moment in the Ultimates comics. Thor and Hulk were not in Civil War, so Peter never met them, and he has Thor punch Hulk, which is kind of payback for Hulk's punch on Thor in the 2012 Avengers. Behind Peter is a sign for identity theft, which is funny because the robbers are, in a way, stealing the Avengers' identities. They use an anti gravity gun, and Peter's enhanced grip rips up the floor tiles. Peter saves Delmar and follows the screenwriting adage of saving the bodega cat, whose name here is Murphy. When Peter calls Happy, the graffiti behind him reads Bagley, an homage to Mark Bagley, the comic book artist who worked on a number of Spider-Man issues.

Happy and Tony's robot Dum-E is being cleared out of the tower because the tower has been sold. If you remember, Tony towed Dum-E away from the ruins of his Malibu mansion in the final shot of Iron Man 3. Happy ends up keeping Dum-E, as we see again in No Way Home, and Dum-E is played in a virtual human form in Vision Quest. This is the origin of Avengers Tower being sold, a question that was not answered until 2025's Thunderbolts. We do not know if Tony sold the tower directly to Val and the OXE Group, sold it to someone else who sold it to Val, or if Val acquired it through some kind of hostile takeover. Val wants to remodel the tower into the Watchtower for the Sentry and the OXE Group, but by the end of Thunderbolts it becomes the headquarters for the New Avengers.

Ned finds out Peter's secret in his own bedroom

In Peter's room, we see he collects Star Wars figures, including an AT-AT. That interest calls back his strategy against Giant Man during the airport battle, where he specifically references the AT-ATs in The Empire Strikes Back as a way to trip him up. Peter also has a New York Mets pennant and hat; in the comics, Spider-Man is canonically a Mets fan. In a hilarious shot, it turns out Ned is already in the room, which is how he learns Peter is Spider-Man. He asks Peter if he is an Avenger and Peter says, "Yeah, basically." While he turns down becoming an Avenger at the end of the film, Tony knights him as one in Infinity War.

I love the gag of Ned dropping the LEGO Death Star on the floor. Rebuilding that set becomes a running bit in No Way Home, and a Brand New Day trailer shot showed Ned dropping his Spidey Tracker tablet on seeing Spider-Man in his room, with the same framing as the Death Star drop.

May and Peter go out for dinner and larb, and right next door to the Thai restaurant is the Korean Church of Asgard. I guess there are now active worshipers of Thor in the MCU. On the news, we see a file photo of Spider-Man coming out of a porta potty. I love that someone has this photo; it is where Peter had to rapidly change, and it was probably very uncomfortable for him. In Far From Home, a fan prints out that photo and makes Peter sign it. Aunt May tells Peter that if he ever spots something like that happening, he should turn around and run the other way. That is her trying to keep him safe, but once she learns he has powers, the idea of great power and great responsibility kicks in, to the point that she packs his suit for him in Far From Home when he tries to leave without it.

Ned pesters Peter about his powers, asking if he can spit venom or summon an army of spiders. Spitting venom maybe recalls Peter in the comics, with the symbiote leaping off him onto Eddie Brock. There is also a comic where Peter does summon a spider army, though that is kind of similar to Ant-Man controlling an army of ants.

The MCU still had not explained Peter's spider bite or Uncle Ben

Peter also mentions that he was bitten by a spider, the classic origin, but that the spider is now dead. Interestingly, in No Way Home, the Norman Osborn who comes into this reality confirms there is no Oscorp and no Norman Osborn here, and I believe Norman and the Green Goblin are telling the truth in that line. But the spider that bit Peter does not come from Oscorp in every comic, and it is still a mystery what spider bit Peter in the MCU. A theory I have had is that Peter might have snuck into the gamma lab in the old Avengers Tower before they moved out, and that a spider there, where Tony and Bruce were working, might have been exposed to gamma radiation and then bitten Peter. Maybe that's an answer that could come as soon as Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Also canonical to the Spider-Man story is the death of Uncle Ben, often after Peter decides not to intervene. These three films never explained what happened to Uncle Ben in the MCU, but a line Peter says to Tony in Civil War left many of us thinking it referred to this Peter's Uncle Ben: "When you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen. They happen because of you."

However, in 2026 the Russo brothers, who directed Civil War, initially cast Tom Holland and defined the character in that scene, said in an interview with CBR that their version of Peter was not responsible for Uncle Ben's death. In their words: "So, in our minds, no, he wasn't responsible for Uncle Ben's death, and that would have been a different interpretation." Eventually, Aunt May's death in No Way Home becomes the canon event death for the MCU's Peter, as she is the one who delivers the with great power line. Really, this Peter grew up in a world full of heroes. He saw Iron Man fight Whiplash at the Stark Expo, Hulk and Abomination tear up Harlem, and the Battle of New York, so he knows the power he has means he has to stop the bad things from happening. Still, what was the accident that killed the MCU's Uncle Ben? There are so many questions about this Peter's origin.

Captain America's school lessons were likely filmed before he went rogue

When Peter and Ned pass the ATM crime scene, Ms. Hoag from the DODC is there supervising. Back at school, a teacher lectures about the Sokovia Accords from Civil War, while Ned suggests Peter stand on the edge of a building and shoot his web as far as he can, like Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man did. Who knows what the girl in front of them thought they were talking about. Brand New Day was set to have Peter recreate that rooftop moment while mentioning Peter 2: "Organic webs. Peter 2 had them. He was cool."

The students also sit through the Captain America Fitness Challenge, introduced by the very funny comedian Hannibal Buress as Coach Wilson, who appears in all of these movies and says, "I'm pretty sure this guy's a war criminal now, but whatever." Earlier, Coach Wilson chats with Principal Morita, played by Kenneth Choi, who also played his character's grandfather Jim Morita, Cap's Howling Commando buddy. There is a photo of Jim Morita in the principal's office with his war medals and dog tags. MJ reads Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham during gym class, a classic early 20th century book about self discovery and finding life's meaning whose protagonist is an orphan living with his aunt and uncle.

Cap shows up again in a detention themed clip and in the second post credit scene, and in all of these appearances he wears his 2012 era suit. That suggests he filmed them between Avengers and The Winter Soldier, at the peak of his boy scout, unwavering patriotism and before he became a fugitive. Betty and Liz play a game of picking which Avenger to kill, and Hulk is the pick; after what Hulk did to Harlem, I really do not blame them. They also mention Spider-Man maybe having burned tissue under his mask, which might be a dig at Deadpool, whose face is scarred from the Weapon X program and is why he wears the suit.

Aunt May's license plate reads AMF 15, a nod to Amazing Fantasy 15, Spider-Man's debut in Marvel Comics, a cover that was set to be recreated in Brand New Day as May drops Ned and Peter off at Liz's party in the suburbs. She tries to reassure Peter about growing up: "I know it's really hard trying to fit in with all the changes your body's going through." Peter laughs it off now, but Brand New Day was set to put him through a kind of spider puberty. As he changes into Spider-Man, he is wearing another joke shirt, this one about finding X, which he wears again in Far From Home. He ends up ditching the party to chase a glowing light in the distance.

Peter foils an arms deal with Aaron Davis, and the Vulture grabs him

Peter foils Jackson Brice's arms deal with Aaron Davis, played by Donald Glover, one of the many community cameos in the MCU and the voice of the animated Miles Morales. The weapons include an arm from Ultron's sentries and black hole grenades from the Dark Elves in Thor: The Dark World. Aaron is also into the climbers, a nod to his role as the Prowler, and Glover later makes a brief cameo as an alternate universe live action Prowler in Across the Spider-Verse. Brice's Shocker gauntlet was crafted from Crossbones's gauntlet in Civil War, and it looked like the same gauntlet would reappear in Brand New Day, based on a trailer shot of Peter falling out of the crumbling DODC building with the Hulk webbed to the rubble behind him. Brock Rumlow's legacy never dies in the MCU.

Peter slides over a car with the license plate ASM 267, a nod to The Amazing Spider-Man 267, in which Peter heads to the suburbs. Jon Watts shot this in the style of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, specifically Ferris's sprint through the backyards, but Peter really takes a beating, smashing into a brick grill pit. The Vulture grabs Peter, and in a great shot they are briefly framed against the moon, recreating the Batman logo, a nod to Michael Keaton's roles in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman and 1992's Batman Returns. Keaton also just loves winged characters, having played Birdman in Iñárritu's amazing film.

Peter is saved by the Iron Man Mark 47, upgraded from the broken Mark 46. It is remote controlled, and I love how it keeps mirroring Tony's gestures as he talks. You can see Tony controlling the suit through the heads up display in his glasses, perhaps an early prototype for the EDITH glasses he eventually gives Peter in Far From Home. Tony is attending a wedding in India, where he has his own Audi with a custom Stark vanity plate. He tells Peter the suit has a tracker chip and heaters, the latest example of Tony upgrading to fix past mistakes: heaters for the icing problem in the first Iron Man and to avoid freezing to death in Iron Man 3, and a locator chip after one of his creations in Age of Ultron got loose and became Ultron. Not having heaters in his homemade suit was set to be why Peter wears outerwear like a vest and cap when it snows in Brand New Day.

When Peter says he was trying to take down the guy with the wings, Tony says, "Steady Crockett, there are people who handle this sort of thing," a reference to Sonny Crockett, Don Johnson's character in Miami Vice, and the joke flies so far over Peter's head that he does not even register it. Tony telling Peter to forget the flying vulture guy is the first time anyone in the film calls Toomes the Vulture. Tony tells Peter to stay local and help people like the lady with the churro, more proof Happy and Tony read his messages, and mentions having some pull at MIT. Too bad Tony died in Endgame and Peter had to turn to Doctor Strange instead. Peter very carelessly takes a piece of hybrid alien tech to school and bangs on it with a hammer in shop class with Ned. He could have killed everyone. Ned and Peter share an elaborate handshake, which they do again before Strange wipes everyone's memory at the end of No Way Home. Back at headquarters, Toomes accidentally disintegrates Brice and tells Herman Schultz he is the new Shocker, a name Brice gave himself along with a jacket matching the comics Shocker's red and yellow. After this, Schultz also starts wearing the quilted yellow sleeves.

The Washington trip unlocks Karen and a buried Ultron clue

On the trip to Washington, the school bus passes a road work sign mentioning Triskelion cleanup, referring to the Project Insight wreckage from The Winter Soldier, which Toomes's crew also brings up along with the Lagos cleanup from Civil War. In a deleted scene, the bus passes the Triskelion with a helicarrier crashed into it. During practice, Peter answers a trivia question with strontium, barium and vibranium, two actual alkaline earth metals and an Easter egg fictional one. At this point in the MCU, vibranium was in Cap's shield and Vision's body, but Black Panther was released 7 months after this movie, making it far more common. MJ is reading Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov, about a condemned man awaiting execution whose only cellmate is a spider. It kind of seems like MJ's reading material informs her suspicions and eventual deduction that this nerd in her class is Spider-Man.

Ned has a laptop sticker for the subreddit r/pcmasterrace, making him a true guy in the chair. As they hack the suit, we see the circuitry inside, something even more apparent when Peter flips the suit inside out in No Way Home. The suit AI, Karen, is voiced by former Betty Ross actress Jennifer Connelly, who is married to Paul Bettany, who played the AI voice of JARVIS before Vision. When I wrote this, Connelly had not been confirmed for Vision Quest, but it was possible she could make a surprise cameo. With Ned removing the Training Wheels Protocol, Peter gets access to all of the suit's functions, and he deactivates Instant Kill, a function he ends up using in Endgame.

Peter gets stuck inside the DODC vault, where he finds a metal ring that was actually the turn key Ultron rigged to drop Sokovia. There is also an Ultron head with its eyes still glowing red, which signified when a sentry contained Ultron's consciousness, a possible clue that Ultron lives and we are still living in the age of Ultron. I was hoping this detail would come back in Vision Quest. Peter plays with the suit's functions, including the web wings under his arms, which he uses in Far From Home to glide through a building's atrium. They were originally part of Steve Ditko's design from The Amazing Spider-Man issue one, where Spider-Man shared the cover with the Fantastic Four. He also tests the ricochet web and web grenade, which along with the taser web all get used later: the ricochet web to catch the elevator, the web wings to sail over the helicopter, the web grenade on the ferry and the taser web against Toomes.

Peter runs past the reflecting pool where Cap lapped Sam in The Winter Soldier. The park ranger in the Washington Monument elevator is played by Martha Kelly, who plays the drug dealer Rue works for on Euphoria, so maybe it is a good thing MJ did not take the tour. MJ stays at the bottom wearing a Sylvia Plath shirt, and of Plath's many poems, one is titled Spider. MJ meets Spider-Man for the first time as he arrives to save Ned and friends from the Chitauri energy core about to explode after going through the X ray machine. The rescue is kind of a nod to a battle with Titanium Man in the Road to Civil War comics. The monument gets damaged again in Captain America: Brave New World during the Red Hulk fight, damage still being repaired in Thunderbolts. At the top, Peter tells Karen he has never been this high before, which tells us he has really stuck to Queens, because the monument is less than half the height of the Empire State Building. His eyepieces glow red when using X ray, his chest drone displays an A113 Easter egg referencing the famous CalArts classroom where many VFX artists and Pixar animators trained, and he misses his chance to recreate the upside down kiss from Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man with Kirsten Dunst.

A throwaway line about the Gargan deal sets up Brand New Day's Scorpion suit

Here is the detail I promised at the top. Back with Toomes and his crew, someone asks: "We still have enough to do the gargan deal though, right?" The Gargan deal was the mechanized scorpion suit. We never see that armor in Homecoming, but Brand New Day was set to finally show the exact suit Phineas Mason and Adrian Toomes were tinkering with all the way back in this movie. I honestly never caught this line until rewatching the movie for this breakdown.

When Toomes sees the news coverage of the rescue, there is a flash of panic on his face, which we later learn is because Liz was there. There is another clue in the edit, as we cut straight to his wife hugging Liz. In the Midtown news report, a screen behind Jason Ionello shows the word vision, a nod to Brooklyn Visions Academy, Miles Morales's high school. Based on Donald Glover's lines in this movie, I think we have to assume that academy exists in the MCU's Brooklyn. Peter retrieves web fluid hidden under the lockers, and I love that you can see scratch marks on the wall from past times he lifted them.

Karen shows Peter his Baby Monitor Protocol logs, and his heart rate jumps from 84 to 93 out of shame at hearing himself. Aaron Davis's rap sheet lists his aliases as the Prowler and Brian Pinchelli, a nod to Ultimate Spider-Man creators Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, the creators of Miles Morales, and I think the word pinch was thrown in as a thieving pun. Aaron's license plate reads UCSM 01 for Ultimate Comics Spider-Man number one, Miles's debut, and Aaron alludes to Miles's MCU existence when he says, "I got a nephew who live here." In a deleted scene, Aaron tells someone on the phone, "Yeah, sorry Miles."

The ferry fight is loaded with license plate Easter eggs

On the ferry we meet Mac Gargan, played by Michael Mando, whose scorpion neck tattoo marks him as the villain Scorpion. He returns in the post credit scene with Toomes in prison, and Brand New Day was set to finally show him suiting up as a proper Scorpion. The car behind him is tagged SM1920, which could be a nod to Spider-Man number 20, where Spider-Man fights the Scorpion. Further back are cars with plates reading SM10563, a nod to Spider-Man issue five from 1963, Spider-Man's first run in with Doctor Doom. Right next to it is a long lost Howard the Duck Easter egg that nobody found until 2019, when Jon Watts said he had hidden one that no one had ever found. We took the challenge and found it: HTD003, for Howard the Duck number 3 from 2015, whose variant cover shows him on this ferry.

When Peter webs up the Shocker, he says the other guy was way better with that thing and that he is honestly shocked. I see what you did there. Peter uses the same web jump and roll move Captain America used on him in Civil War. Queens is following in Brooklyn's footsteps, following his gut rather than his head, which might be what frustrates Tony so much in this film. The Chitauri tech ends up severing the ferry in half, and Toomes warns, "You're messing with things you don't understand," the self-made villain warning the self-made hero about toys versus tech, a lesson that gets reversed later.

As Spider-Man tries to hold the ferry together in a Christ pose, the Statue of Liberty is framed in the background, the site of his pivotal fight at the end of No Way Home. Iron Man arrives to repair it with separate thrusters, and I love how each slightly indents the hull. This time Tony is actually inside the Mark 47, and he takes back the suit: "If you're nothing without this suit, then you shouldn't have it." That is a useful lesson Tony learned in Iron Man 3. With no suit, Peter has to wear a tourist I survived my trip to NYC shirt, which he wears again in No Way Home. The shirt also appeared among his clothes in the Brooklyn pop up experience recreating the set of Peter's new apartment from Brand New Day.

The Homecoming twist puts Peter in a car with the Vulture

No longer Spider-Man, Peter can focus on school life, and he asks Liz to Homecoming. In an incredible twist, we discover Adrian Toomes is Liz's father. There is great dramatic irony as Toomes holds the knife, echoing Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man with Norman Osborn carving the turkey. I love Tom Holland's acting during the dance photos, sweating bullets while staring at Michael Keaton. The nerves continue on the drive, where a stoplight's red glow casts Toomes in a menacing light before switching to green, signaling the Vulture's heads up display. It is also crazy that he casually pulls a gun out of his glove box after Liz leaves the car, right in front of a school. Flash mentions branzino to his date, maybe a nod to the branzino dinner scene in The Amazing Spider-Man. Peter takes Flash's car using his best Batman voice and totally wrecks it, and I wonder how Flash talks about that in the book he writes in No Way Home.

Happy loads the plane with "Tony's old Hulkbuster armor, prototype for Cap's new shield," and Thor's magic belt. The old Hulkbuster is the Mark 44 from Age of Ultron, and calling it old means a new one is in the works, which is the Mark 48 Bruce Banner wears in Infinity War. Cap's new shield is the one we do not see until Endgame, replacing the damaged one from Civil War. Thor's belt is Megingjord, his belt of strength from Norse mythology and the Thor comics. There is a pretty terrifying battle with the Shocker in the school bus yard, where you can really see the Crossbones punching action of the gauntlet, and I was really excited to see it come back in Brand New Day.

Peter confronts Toomes before he has proven himself. Toomes uses a speech to stall while his Vulture suit charges, the same move Tony, the self-made engineer, used on Loki, who considered Tony's tech mere toys in Avengers. Peter sensing the wings coming and flipping over them is similar to Tobey Maguire's finishing move in the 2002 Spider-Man, using Norman's own glider to kill him. But Peter ends up trapped under rubble, and in a pool of water he sees the reflection of the man without the suit. That half mask visual was used in early comics to denote his spidey sense, and it shows up again in J. Jonah Jameson's reports after Peter's identity is revealed in No Way Home. Peter rising from the rubble recreates the great visual from The Amazing Spider-Man 33. He now fights as the self-made hero, not spoiled by Stark tech, in a DIY hoodie inspired by the Ben Reilly suits.

The aerial battle reflects this transformation, as the cloaking panels on the Stark cargo plane reflect his new color scheme while he crawls along its underside. Tony likely got the cloaking idea from Harley Keener in Iron Man 3, who suggested it should be invisible, and of course from the helicarriers. Among the cargo is Tony's old Mark 42 from Iron Man 3, suggesting he kept a model for sentimental reasons. The plane crashes on the beach near Coney Island, and Happy sees it go down from Avengers Tower. Toomes jams his wings into the fuselage, damage Peter notices; in Civil War Peter saw what happens when a guy gets stuck in a broken flying suit. I love that this is how he ultimately defeats Toomes. It is not strength or vengeance or bloodlust. It is ingenuity, the limited experience he has had with Tony and the Avengers, and a sense of empathy, wanting to save his girlfriend's dad. Peter oversees the arrest from atop the Cyclone roller coaster, which came up in a memory between Cap and Bucky in Captain America: The First Avenger: "Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island? Yeah, and I threw up."

Peter turns down the Avengers, and Toomes keeps his secret

In the aftermath, MJ becomes the new captain of the decathlon team since Liz and her mom are moving to Oregon. Peter gets a text to go to the bathroom, and MJ pretends to be suspicious; we learn in Far From Home that she has been paying attention to Peter's weird behavior and at some point deduces he is Spider-Man. In a hilarious moment, the same kid who has been side eyeing Peter throughout the movie is totally weirded out by an adult man talking to a high school kid in a school bathroom. Happy then brings Peter to the Avengers compound in upstate New York, which gets destroyed in Endgame. Peter wears the same jokey electron shirt Pepper wore in Iron Man 3, though he just misses Pepper Potts here.

Tony offers Peter the Iron Spider armor, which Peter later wears in Infinity War. It is based on the armor Tony gives Peter in the Civil War comics, as is the press conference waiting on the other side of the door. Gwyneth Paltrow would later admit she forgot she was in this scene, but to be fair, they were probably filming many of these Marvel scenes at the same time as Infinity War, and in her mind she was just shooting scenes with Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau in front of green screens with no idea which movie they were for. Peter, having learned his lesson, turns Tony down, realizing power is not worth taking until one is ready for the responsibility. Aunt May phrases that better for him in No Way Home.

There is a shot of Peter as the jet takes off with the Avengers A framed behind him, signaling his future as an Avenger. Many of us have also seen it as a 4, since his shoulder cuts off the lower end of the A. We have yet to see Peter interact with the Fantastic Four in the MCU, but The Amazing Spider-Man number one in 1962 introduced Spider-Man's solo run with the Fantastic Four on the cover. Tony returns the Stark suit to Peter, this time in a paper bag instead of a fancy case, and Aunt May discovers Peter's secret, a shocked reaction that gets called back at the end of Far From Home when it happens in front of the whole world.

In the mid credits scene, Toomes meets Mac Gargan in prison. Mac says he wants to put Spider-Man's head in a dryer for messing up his face, and there is a Brand New Day shot of the Spider-Man mask spinning in a washing machine. Mac tries to get Toomes to reveal Spider-Man's identity, but Toomes denies knowing it, perhaps as a thank you for Peter saving his life. Thanks to the events of No Way Home, Sony ultimately pulls Toomes out of this universe into the Morbius universe, never to be seen again. At the very end of the credits, Captain America delivers one more lesson: "Sometimes patience is the key to victory. Sometimes it leads to very little."

Do you buy that Toomes kept Peter's identity secret as a thank you for saving his life, or was he holding it back for another reason?