The New ‘Spider-Man’ Trailer Is Here, and There’s a Lot to Unpack

August 24, 2021 | 07:30am

My Spidey sense is tingling.

The New ‘Spider-Man’ Trailer Is Here, and There’s a Lot to Unpack

Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer is here, and wow, is there a lot to unpack.

Things look pretty different in the life of Peter Parker (Tom Holland) these days. Ever since Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) revealed Spidey’s secret identity to the world at the end of 2019’s Far From Home, Peter is no longer an anonymous hero. Instead he’s highly visible, walking the school hallways as people surround him with phone cameras—and being taken in for police questioning about Mysterio’s death. The one constant: MJ (Zendaya), and their relationship, which is now exceedingly public and up for speculation.

“Does any part of you feel relieved about all this? Now that everybody knows, you don’t have to hide or lie to people,” Zendaya asks him. But it’s clear Peter is uncomfortable with the attention and scrutiny, so much so that he goes to Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) for help. Strange pretty recklessly agrees, and of course there are consequences for the space-time continuum and the multiverse (perhaps we’ll see a tie-in with the Loki series here?).

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As hijinks ensue, we see a couple familiar faces that will have your inner Marvel fan screaming. Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) appears at the end of the trailer to say hello to Peter and presumably cause chaos. The last time we saw him was in Tobey McGuire’s Spider Man 2, where he died after having a change of heart re: his powerful robot tentacles. Molina told Variety that he asked No Way Home director Jon Watts how he could come back if he was dead, to which he replied, “In this universe, no one really dies.” Fair enough.

Doc Ock isn’t the only returning character from other Spider-Man series, if reports and rumors are to be believed. Jamie Foxx is likely returning as Electro, the villain he played in Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and eagle-eyed fans noticed a glimpse of his lightning strike in the trailer. Plus, as Culture Crave noted, we hear Green Goblin’s distinctive cackle—that’s the villain played by Willem Dafoe in McGuire’s Spider-Man.

Meanwhile, fans are pretty sure they’ll see McGuire and Garfield reprise their respective characters…and a couple of leaked, unverified set photos from this week seem to hint that we haven’t seen the last of these retired spiders.