No Way Home doesn’t let Peter get off easy And his best friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon) and his girlfriend, MJ (Zendaya), get soundly rejected from every college they apply to just for being associated with Peter. (As an aside, given that it’s the third time this plot point has come up in an MCU project this year: did none of the Avengers get paid? Come on, Tony.) Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) is forced to move after her apartment is besieged by reporters and protestors. Half the world hates Peter and thinks he murdered Mysterio. No Way Home doesn’t let Peter get off easy here, at least for the first third of the film, which eschews heroics for grinding down the costumed hero. Peter Parker’s secret identity as Spider-Man has been revealed to the world through one last trick of Mysterio, and now everyone blames the webslinger for the villain’s rampage through London. Spider-Man: No Way Home picks up right where its predecessor, Far From Home, left off. If you want to go in fully unaware, skip this review for now.
Spoiler warning: this review will reference basic plot details of the movie as revealed in the existing Spider-Man: No Way Home trailers, in addition to spoilers for Spider-Man: Far From Home. And the fact that No Way Home succeeds in pulling off as many of them as it does is impressive, especially when it comes to the fan service - but much like Peter Parker, this movie can’t have everything. And it’s a tribute to the past 20 years of Spider-Man movies. It’s the continuation of the overarching Marvel Cinematic Universe and its “Phase Four” story arc. It’s a direct sequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home, picking up where the cliffhanger credit scene of the 2019 film left off. It’s the third film in the Jon Watts-directed MCU trilogy of Spider-Man films, concluding a storyline for Tom Holland’s incarnation of Peter Parker. Spider-Man: No Way Home is a film meant to do a lot of things.