"Spider-Man: No Way Home" Was Always Meant to Conclude Tom Holland's MCU Origin Story

Tom Holland's Peter Parker completed a glorious trilogy within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) that concluded with the record-breaking "Spider-Man: No Way Home" in 2021. 

The conclusion to the movie pressed the reset button for Parker, who—after causing a multiversal tear with his efforts to conceal his now-revealed identity—sacrificed his relationships with his loved ones to go it alone as a poor student and start from scratch.

An anonymous Spider-Man, volunteering at the Daily Bugle and working his way up is the Spider-Man we all know and love, and this, it's now been revealed, was Marvel's plan all along, even if they concede they may have taken a long way round to get to that destination.

Speaking in "Spider-Man: No Way Home - The Art of the Movie", the newly released book, director Jon Watts confirmed that it was always the intention to bring Peter to this point, but they wanted to try something new with the approach before getting there.

"When we were doing ‘Homecoming’, the discussions were always about how we do something that you haven't seen before with Peter Parker… That steers you down a couple different paths and leads you to doing things like having his best friend find out his identity, and having his aunt find out, and then, at the end of the last movie, having the whole world find out. But in the end, you know, it was nice to be able to have everything coalesce into, at its essence, the simple story of Spider-Man. We just really all took our time telling the first issue of 'Spider-Man' — that origin story.”

Marvel Studios Head of Visual Development Ryan Meinerding also revealed his excitement at the final reel reveal of Peter's new suit, which the character is set to don in further MCU outings, with the artist noting that the overall design of the suit is partially influenced by the preceding suits worn by Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire.

"It's a classic red-and-blue suit with a spider that feels more grown-up—a little bit influenced by the spiders that he saw on Tobey [Maguire’s] and Andrew [Garfield’s] suits," said Meinerding. 

"Now he's more of a grown-up Spider-Man. He is owning that identity in a strong way. It's such a big movie, and ending on something like that feels right it feels like it's earned. Now we have a fully-fledged Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe who is classic."

"Spider-Man 4" is currently in the very early stages of development.