Warning: This article contains full spoilers for the latest Spider-Man movie! If you haven't already, be sure to check out IGN's review of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Cut through all the multiverse shenanigans in Spider-Man: No Way Home and what you have is a story about Peter Parker's worst nightmare coming true. The entire world knows Spider-Man's secret identity, putting both he and his loved ones at great risk. No Way Home shows us the extreme lengths Peter will go through to reclaim his identity, and the far-reaching consequences of that choice.
In other words, the movie draws very heavily from classic comic book storylines like Spider-Man: Back in Black and Spider-Man: One More Day. Let's take a closer look at how the film adapted and altered that source material. Not only is it fascinating to see what was changed along the way, but the comics may help answer some of the lingering Spider-Man: No Way Home questions surrounding Spidey's new status quo in the MCU.
2006's Civil War #2 featured what was, at the time, one of the most shocking superhero plot twists ever. Having offered his support of the Superhuman Registration Act and sided with Iron Man's faction, Spider-Man makes a public show of support by unmasking himself at a press conference. J. Jonah Jameson literally faints and everything. That's a far cry from the MCU, where Jameson is the one doing the revealing.
However noble his intentions, it isn't long before this decision comes back to haunt Peter. He quickly breaks away from Team Iron Man after seeing the moral compromises his allies are making in the name of national security. That makes Spider-Man and his family fugitives from the law. It's one thing to go public when you have the resources of one of the world's richest men at your disposal. It's quite another when you're suddenly on the run from the Avengers and every opportunistic villain hungry for revenge.
That sets the stage for Back in Black, so-named because Peter dusts off his black costume from the '80s and enters one of the darkest periods of his superhero career. He's truly pushed over the edge when an assassin hired by Kingpin mortally wounds Aunt May. At that point, Peter is willing to do anything to save her life and undo the consequences of his misguided choice. That's when a certain opportunistic demon walks through the door.
One More Day is among the most divisive and controversial Marvel stories ever published. It's essentially a story about Peter Parker making a deal with the Devil. Or Mephisto, rather, who's basically the closest thing the Marvel Universe has to a consistent Devil figure.
Mephisto appears in the form of a young redheaded girl and makes Peter an offer he can't refuse. In exchange for saving May's life, Mephisto wants Peter and Mary Jane to sacrifice their marriage. Mephisto explains he wants the pleasure of snuffing out something beautiful and wholesome. And just to twist the screws even further, Mephisto reveals at the last second that his temporary form is the daughter Peter and MJ will never have. (Note: On the bright side, more recent comics have suggested Mephisto might be wrong.)
That Faustian bargain rewrites Marvel continuity in subtle ways, with the end result being that the world has forgotten Spider-Man's secret identity and Peter returns to a more traditional status quo as a struggling photographer and bachelor. That's the premise behind 2008's Amazing Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which was effectively a soft reboot for the franchise after all the drama of Civil War. However, it would be several more years before fans learned exactly what Mephisto changed and how Peter reclaimed his secret.
In exchange for saving May's life, Mephisto wants Peter and Mary Jane to sacrifice their marriage.
It turns out Mephisto's solution was to travel back in time and alter a single event so that Peter missed his wedding ceremony with MJ. The two remained a couple, but MJ made it clear she would never marry Peter until he gave up being Spider-Man. This was Marvel's solution to undoing Spidey's marriage (long viewed by many within Marvel as something that aged the character and limited storytelling possibilities) without saddling Peter with the stigma of divorce. It also ensured that most classic Peter/MJ stories remained a part of the Marvel canon, with the only change being they were never married during the course of their relationship.
But Mephisto wasn't the key to how Peter reclaimed his secret identity. Readers eventually learned that Peter turned to Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Mister Fantastic for help. Feeling slightly guilty about how the events of Civil War panned out for Peter, the three heroes pooled their considerable brainpower and designed a hybrid magical/mechanical device that could blast the world with a case of collective amnesia. It's a slightly more complicated version of Strange's spell in No Way Home.
Thanks to that device, nearly everyone in the world forgets Spider-Man's identity, including the creators of that device. Peter's public unmasking still happened, but the world no longer remembers who is underneath the mask. The device even works to actively maintain this spell, causing mental confusion in anyone who focuses too hard on trying to remember Spider-Man's identity.
The one catch is that anyone who sees Peter unmasked will instantly regain their old memories. You can see that process play out in this Amazing Spider-Man page, as Peter reluctantly comes clean to the Fantastic Four:
Over the years, various key characters like Norman Osborn have recovered their memories about Spider-Man. And thanks to the events of 2011's Spider-Island crossover, the spell itself no longer exists to protect Peter. But even so, his secret is known to only a handful of people in the current Marvel Universe, rather than billions worldwide. That's as close as Peter Parker ever gets to an absolute win.
With Peter's identity fix having some fairly specific parameters in the comics, it's enough to wonder if future Spider-Man movies will dig deeper into the rules governing Strange's spell.
The biggest difference between the comics and the MCU (apart from the fact that Strange alone is responsible for making the world forget) is that Peter Parker himself has been forgotten. It's not just that the world no longer remembers Spidey's secret; no one alive seems to have any memory of Peter's existence. We're not even sure how Peter manages to rent an apartment at the end of the film with no paper trail, no credit history and no social security number.
We can infer from the fact that Peter brings a box of belongings to his new apartment that his past life hasn't entirely been expunged from reality. But what we don't know is whether his old relationships with characters like Ned and MJ were eliminated from the MCU timeline, or if his friends were simply made to forget.
Maybe Spider-Man 4 will answer that question. Or maybe characters like Ned and MJ are being permanently retired, leaving Peter to build an entirely new life for himself in the next trilogy. Either way, the MCU looks to be setting up its own Brand New Day for Spider-Man.
For more on Spidey's latest cinematic outing, check out our full No Way Home Ending Explained and End Credits feature and vote for your favorite incarnation of Spider-Man.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
Continue reading...
Cut through all the multiverse shenanigans in Spider-Man: No Way Home and what you have is a story about Peter Parker's worst nightmare coming true. The entire world knows Spider-Man's secret identity, putting both he and his loved ones at great risk. No Way Home shows us the extreme lengths Peter will go through to reclaim his identity, and the far-reaching consequences of that choice.
In other words, the movie draws very heavily from classic comic book storylines like Spider-Man: Back in Black and Spider-Man: One More Day. Let's take a closer look at how the film adapted and altered that source material. Not only is it fascinating to see what was changed along the way, but the comics may help answer some of the lingering Spider-Man: No Way Home questions surrounding Spidey's new status quo in the MCU.
How Spider-Man's Secret Identity Was Exposed in the Comics
2006's Civil War #2 featured what was, at the time, one of the most shocking superhero plot twists ever. Having offered his support of the Superhuman Registration Act and sided with Iron Man's faction, Spider-Man makes a public show of support by unmasking himself at a press conference. J. Jonah Jameson literally faints and everything. That's a far cry from the MCU, where Jameson is the one doing the revealing.
However noble his intentions, it isn't long before this decision comes back to haunt Peter. He quickly breaks away from Team Iron Man after seeing the moral compromises his allies are making in the name of national security. That makes Spider-Man and his family fugitives from the law. It's one thing to go public when you have the resources of one of the world's richest men at your disposal. It's quite another when you're suddenly on the run from the Avengers and every opportunistic villain hungry for revenge.
That sets the stage for Back in Black, so-named because Peter dusts off his black costume from the '80s and enters one of the darkest periods of his superhero career. He's truly pushed over the edge when an assassin hired by Kingpin mortally wounds Aunt May. At that point, Peter is willing to do anything to save her life and undo the consequences of his misguided choice. That's when a certain opportunistic demon walks through the door.
How One More Day Changed Everything
One More Day is among the most divisive and controversial Marvel stories ever published. It's essentially a story about Peter Parker making a deal with the Devil. Or Mephisto, rather, who's basically the closest thing the Marvel Universe has to a consistent Devil figure.
Mephisto appears in the form of a young redheaded girl and makes Peter an offer he can't refuse. In exchange for saving May's life, Mephisto wants Peter and Mary Jane to sacrifice their marriage. Mephisto explains he wants the pleasure of snuffing out something beautiful and wholesome. And just to twist the screws even further, Mephisto reveals at the last second that his temporary form is the daughter Peter and MJ will never have. (Note: On the bright side, more recent comics have suggested Mephisto might be wrong.)
That Faustian bargain rewrites Marvel continuity in subtle ways, with the end result being that the world has forgotten Spider-Man's secret identity and Peter returns to a more traditional status quo as a struggling photographer and bachelor. That's the premise behind 2008's Amazing Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which was effectively a soft reboot for the franchise after all the drama of Civil War. However, it would be several more years before fans learned exactly what Mephisto changed and how Peter reclaimed his secret.
In exchange for saving May's life, Mephisto wants Peter and Mary Jane to sacrifice their marriage.
The Rules of Peter's Secret Identity Reboot
It turns out Mephisto's solution was to travel back in time and alter a single event so that Peter missed his wedding ceremony with MJ. The two remained a couple, but MJ made it clear she would never marry Peter until he gave up being Spider-Man. This was Marvel's solution to undoing Spidey's marriage (long viewed by many within Marvel as something that aged the character and limited storytelling possibilities) without saddling Peter with the stigma of divorce. It also ensured that most classic Peter/MJ stories remained a part of the Marvel canon, with the only change being they were never married during the course of their relationship.
But Mephisto wasn't the key to how Peter reclaimed his secret identity. Readers eventually learned that Peter turned to Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Mister Fantastic for help. Feeling slightly guilty about how the events of Civil War panned out for Peter, the three heroes pooled their considerable brainpower and designed a hybrid magical/mechanical device that could blast the world with a case of collective amnesia. It's a slightly more complicated version of Strange's spell in No Way Home.
Thanks to that device, nearly everyone in the world forgets Spider-Man's identity, including the creators of that device. Peter's public unmasking still happened, but the world no longer remembers who is underneath the mask. The device even works to actively maintain this spell, causing mental confusion in anyone who focuses too hard on trying to remember Spider-Man's identity.
The one catch is that anyone who sees Peter unmasked will instantly regain their old memories. You can see that process play out in this Amazing Spider-Man page, as Peter reluctantly comes clean to the Fantastic Four:
Over the years, various key characters like Norman Osborn have recovered their memories about Spider-Man. And thanks to the events of 2011's Spider-Island crossover, the spell itself no longer exists to protect Peter. But even so, his secret is known to only a handful of people in the current Marvel Universe, rather than billions worldwide. That's as close as Peter Parker ever gets to an absolute win.
What Are the MCU's Secret Identity Rules?
With Peter's identity fix having some fairly specific parameters in the comics, it's enough to wonder if future Spider-Man movies will dig deeper into the rules governing Strange's spell.
The biggest difference between the comics and the MCU (apart from the fact that Strange alone is responsible for making the world forget) is that Peter Parker himself has been forgotten. It's not just that the world no longer remembers Spidey's secret; no one alive seems to have any memory of Peter's existence. We're not even sure how Peter manages to rent an apartment at the end of the film with no paper trail, no credit history and no social security number.
We can infer from the fact that Peter brings a box of belongings to his new apartment that his past life hasn't entirely been expunged from reality. But what we don't know is whether his old relationships with characters like Ned and MJ were eliminated from the MCU timeline, or if his friends were simply made to forget.
Maybe Spider-Man 4 will answer that question. Or maybe characters like Ned and MJ are being permanently retired, leaving Peter to build an entirely new life for himself in the next trilogy. Either way, the MCU looks to be setting up its own Brand New Day for Spider-Man.
For more on Spidey's latest cinematic outing, check out our full No Way Home Ending Explained and End Credits feature and vote for your favorite incarnation of Spider-Man.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
Continue reading...