Phase 4 Subtly Made Spider-Man: No Way Home’s Ending Even Darker
Warning! Spoilers ahead for Spider-Man: No Way Home.
It appears that Spider-Man: No Way Home has a bittersweet ending, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe subtly made it even darker than it seems. In No Way Home, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) asks Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to make the world forget that he's Spider-Man, and the latter's attempt to help leads to destructive consequences. As a result of Doctor Strange's failed memory wipe spell, villains from past Spider-Man films, including Alfred Molina's Doc Ock, enter the MCU and cause havoc. The film even ends with several more villains trying to break into the MCU before Peter Parker makes Doctor Strange perform another spell to make everyone forget who he is altogether.
Marvel's What If...? gave fans a taste of the Multiverse ahead of No Way Home. In the Disney+ animated series, Marvel reveals alternate MCU stories, showing how small events could change everything. For instance, in the series premiere, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) takes the place of Steve Rogers (voiced by Josh Keaton), receiving the Super Serum and becoming Captain Carter. The episode shows Carter leading the effort against Hydra and Rogers becoming an early version of Iron Man. In another episode, Doctor Strange loses Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) in a car accident and learns from the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) that Palmer's death is an absolute point and can't be changed. Nevertheless, he tries to change the accident anyway, leading to catastrophic consequences.
In No Way Home, Tom Holland's Spider-Man tries to cure the villains invading the MCU and change their evil ways, and there's evidence that it was all for naught. Doctor Strange argues in No Way Home that the invading Spider-Man villains need to get sent back to their own universes and possibly die there because it's their "fate." However, Tom Holland's character disagrees, attempting to cure the villains with the help of Tobey Maguire's and Andrew Garfield's Peter Parkers. Unfortunately, despite the Peter Parkers getting results, the villains will likely die after returning to their universes anyway. And it's all because of Marvel's "absolute points."
When Doctor Strange says the villains need to die because it's their fate, he's saying they need to die because it's an absolute point. Changing absolute points in the MCU can have devastating and world-ending consequences. After all, Doctor Strange's efforts to do so in his What If...? episode destroys his universe. Additionally, changing an absolute point required an outrageous effort from Benedict Cumberbatch's character in What If...?, resulting in him absorbing the powers from several other creatures and becoming an evil version of Doctor Strange. It took vastly more effort than simply creating last-minute cures for villains and hoping they stay on a righteous path. So despite the Peter Parkers seemingly saving the villains in the MCU, the baddies likely had to die anyway in their own universes because their deaths were unchangeable.
Of course, Marvel also likes to ignore its own plot points when convenient. For instance, the MCU shows several characters coming back from Thanos' (Josh Brolin) deadly finger snap in the same positions they were in when they left. Of course, this would be detrimental if someone disappeared while flying on a plane. Marvel's creators later backtracked on this point, saying everyone returned safely. However, with an evil version of Doctor Strange showing up in the Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness trailer, it seems What If...?'s stories have a significant impact on the MCU. And that's bad news for Peter Parker's efforts in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Source: Screenrant
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