Andrew Garfield's Comments On Spider-Man Recast Resurface 8 Years Later, Make No Way Home Better

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Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker returned in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and some earlier comments on the role make his return even more special.

Summary

  • Andrew Garfield's return as Spider-Man in No Way Home is even sweeter considering his previous comment about stepping down and his support for Tom Holland as the new Spider-Man.
  • The movie No Way Home redeems Garfield's Spider-Man character and brings closure to his arc, including his failure to save Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
  • There is growing speculation and interest in Garfield continuing in his Spider-Man role, with potential appearances in Spider-Verse and Avengers: Secret Wars, suggesting that his comeback is triumphant and his future as Peter Parker looks brighter than ever.

Andrew Garfield returned as Peter Parker in 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home, and a previous comment he had made on stepping down from the role makes his return in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film that much sweeter. Garfield became the second big-screen Web-Slinger in 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man, only for his tenure to end much sooner than expected after the disappointment of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014. Sony subsequently brokered a deal with Marvel Studios for Spider-Man to join the MCU, with Tom Holland becoming Garfield's Wall-Crawling successor.

Garfield himself took his untimely Spidey retirement well. In an interview with ET in 2015, Garfield commended Holland as a strong choice for Spider-Man, stating, "It feels lovely, especially because Tom Holland is a really, really great actor. He was in this movie The Impossible and he was just this incredibly powerful, sensitive, just wonderful young actor." With Garfield's added comment of "I’m just really excited to just be a fan again as opposed to bearing the weight of it," his eventual return alongside both Holland and Tobey Maguire's Spideys has an even greater impact.

Andrew Garfield's Support Of Tom Holland Makes Spider-Man: No Way Home More Specialtobey maguire andrew garfield and tom holland as spider-men

While The Amazing Spider-Man was a relatively straightforward origin story, The Amazing Spider-Man 2's underperformance came partly as a result of Sony's determination to build a Spider-Man cinematic universe. Garfield has spoken on multiple occasions of his heartbreak at how The Amazing Spider-Man movies fell victim to the business side of the studio system, so his feelings of wanting to simply enjoy the Spider-Man movies as an audience member after that are understandable. Retroactively, No Way Home changed all of that.

By bringing Maguire, Garfield, and Holland's Spideys together in No Way Home's multiverse story, the movie is emphatic of the importance of all three to Spider-Man's legacy. Garfield especially benefited from this, with No Way Home seeing him save a falling MJ (Zendaya), redeeming his failure to save Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Moreover, No Way Home embraces The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as central to the arc of Garfield's Spidey. Such a Spider-Man comeback would have seemed impossible when Garfield made his comment about Holland becoming the new Spider-Man, but the doorways of the multiverse make anything possible.

Will Andrew Garfield Ever Play Spider-Man Again?

No Way Home's tremendous box office success immediately led to widespread interest in Maguire and Garfield continuing in their respective Spider-Man franchises parallel to Holland's MCU adventures. Both Maguire and Garfield have expressed enthusiasm for the prospect of suiting up again. Additionally, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse includes hundreds of Spideys and heavily tips its hat to this with Maguire and Garfield's Spideys making cameos through archival footage. The growing speculation of Garfield's Peter Parker meeting Tom Hardy's Venom also suggests that Garfield's Spider-Man tenure is far from over.

Furthermore, Marvel Studios is prepping its MCU Phase 6 team-up project, Avengers: Secret Wars. With the movie almost certainly being another multiverse story, Garfield and Maguire could both return in Secret Wars. The Amazing Spider-Man 3 would also undoubtedly make a great potential lead-in for that. Peter #3's future looks brighter than ever after Spider-Man: No Way Home, which makes Andrew Garfield's comeback that much more triumphant years after he first hung up the suit.

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Brad Curran is a Features Writer and Interviewer for Screen Rant. Brad first joined Screen Rant in 2019, and also contributes to Kung Fu Kingdom. Brad is enamored with epic storytelling in many different genres, and loves stories on both the smallest and the largest scales of filmmaking.

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