Nostalgic. Satisfying. A few words to describe Marvel’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” after its long-anticipated release in late December of 2021. In a world where Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire have all had a chance to play the roles of the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and Peter Parker, Marvel Studios created a cinematic masterpiece to set the dynamic trio to the test. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” ultimately pushed the limits of cinema and its history.

According to Variety, “ ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home‘ has grossed a stunning “$760.9 million domestically” in the United States. This brought the award-winning Avatar down to the fourth highest grossing film, putting “Spider-Man: No Way Home” up to number three, trailing behind Marvel Studios’ biggest movie, “Avengers: Endgame.” It seems safe to say that these Marvel fans were not disappointed.

With the hype in advance to the movie, standards had been set high as fans didn’t quite know what to expect. From social media fan pages to movie reviewers, rumors swirled over whether or not fans would be getting special appearances from the early Spider Man actors, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, in Holland’s movie. An idea that had become a plea from many fans at this point. Nonetheless, Marvel managed to keep the secrets undercover.

In an interview with Joshua Collins, 17, he discusses his feelings on the release of the movie. Collins said he feels “blessed” with his age because he has grown up being able to see every Spider-Man movie cast with a different actor. His hopes were high for the return of Maguire and Garfield in Holland’s movie. He said: “My prayers were answered on release day when I saw the first showing.”

While “Spider-Man: No Way Home“ seemed to break limits for fans’ expectations, there was some expressed concern before the release of the movie. Some believed that it would merely be fan service with the inclusion of Maguire and Garfield. Due to the odd circumstances of having three different Spider Man actors and series, fans had speculated on the idea. The spark for this idea was actually correlated to a popular comic meme that contained three Spider Men all in one world, leading fans to wonder if Marvel would follow the trend and set it into live-action. On the contrary, many felt as though Marvel Studios wouldn’t entertain the idea simply because it was too obvious.

In an interview conducted by DiscussingFilm, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers discuss the feature of Maguire and Garfield, along with creating the movie’s originality. The two were asked how they decided which “nods and callbacks” from the earlier films would be included in this mashup, such as iconic lines and cameos. Sommers said, “it’s a balancing act…we wanted to pay respect to Sam Raimi and Marc Webb (directors of “Spider-Man” and “The Amazing Spider-Man”) and wanted to make the fans happy. But you don’t want to just do lazy fan service for its own sake because it’ll ring false at some point.”

With the awareness of this concern, the screenwriters took extra caution to ensure that there was no takeover in the movie, allowing for Holland to still be the main focus, as  the move was part of  his trilogy . McKenna admitted that there were a lot of painful decisions to be made. He said “we had a lot of little darlings. Little moments and things that you really just love – but sometimes you have to let them go within the movie.” Summer and McKenna knew that despite the nostalgia they could bring with a lot of these extra moments, they weren’t adding anything definite to this story of Peter Parker to keep it moving.

Now that the movie has been released, tension is even higher in the multiverse of Marvel. With worries that the iconic “Avengers: Endgame” finale could never be lived up to, Marvel proved that they had a lot more to offer. What’s to come next is unknown, and fans are speculating on what Spider-Man and Peter Parker will be up against — or even all the Peter Parkers…