Warning! This article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home! Read at your own risk!
The talk of the town, Spider-Man: No Way Home, definitely broke the charts as it toppled down other movies in being the biggest film of the year and it is easily understandable why: the villains and the previous versions of Peter Parker came together in one whole film plus Doctor Strange and the multiverse. Here is how the multiversal bad guys arrived in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Spider-Man: No Way Home: How Did the Multiversal Villains Arrive?
Spider-Man: No Way Home picked up where Far From Home ended: with Peter Parker being revealed as the one behind the Spider-Man suit. When Doctor Strange warned Peter Parker about the arrival of multiverse trespassers, he meant that the current universe they are in is in danger and continuing with the spell he asked, Earth 616, the current universe, started to fall apart.
The spell has been botched and it became a way for the multiversal villains to arrive in the current universe looking for Spider-Man, their common enemy, who either defeated them or killed them in various ways. They got dragged into the current universe where Peter Parker has been revealed to be Spider-Man.
The catch is this: they would die upon their return in their respective universe. While Strange decides that he couldn’t put the current universe in danger with these villains, Peter Parker did not agree because he could hold such in his conscience. He took the box only to be cornered by Strange in the Mirror Dimension.
Related: Will Spider-Man: No Way Home Be on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Hulu, or Disney+?
Peter Parker’s goal is humane: he wants to have these villains to no longer be considered as such when they come back to their universe. However, Aunt May dies in the process leaving Peter heartbroken. To their surprise, not only the villains arrive in the current universe – the Peter Parker from the other universes were there as well. The three of them had to go hand-in-hand to “cure” the villains.
Doc Ock had his inhibitor chip back, the Lizard goes back to being human, Sandman was de-sanded, and Electro was taken out of his power source. While Green Goblin was left broken, all the aggressive toxins inside him disappeared.
All these was not without a price, though. With a successful spell of Doctor Strange turning everything back to normal in a world where no one knows Peter Parker as Spider-Man, he lost MJ and Ned who forgot about him as well and Peter decided not to reintroduce himself to them and continued being Spider-Man.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently out in theaters. On September 2, 2022, Sony released Spider-Man: No Way Home - The More Fun Stuff Version. This new version will have 11 minutes of new footage.