Warning! SPOILERS for Spider-Man: No Way Home
While Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Spider-Man: No Way Home may have spun its multiversal story so skillfully that it's already generated Oscar buzz, but it isn't the first multiversal Spider-Man film to do so. 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the first big-screen Marvel film to delve into the concept of the multiverse, and it even won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film for its efforts.
Granted, Spider-Man: No Way Home is a film that easily could have buckled under its own ambition. This is, after all, a world in which the only other third entry into a Spider-Man series was largely considered a disaster, as well as a waste of iconic Spider-Man villains like Venom. No Way Home's director Jon Watts, screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, and cast surely deserve high praise for shaping nearly 20 years of cinema history into a heartfelt and fun film that improves upon every movie from which it pulls. Though it's hard to imagine much more being added to an already-stuffed film, the omission of Spider-Verse is confusing, given the natural similarities between the two films.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse broke barriers when it brought Spider-People (using the term loosely) from other universes together to help a young, in-over-his-head Spider-Man. The fact that Spider-Man: No Way Home does the same thing without even a cameo from one of Spider-Verse's heroes or villains is surprising, especially as No Way Home makes a point to mix characters from Sony-Verse and MCU timelines. There were plenty of opportunities for this to happen. While Ned searched desperately for Tom Holland's Peter Parker, he could easily have opened a portal to reveal Jake Johnson's Parker or Nicholas Cage's Spider-Man Noir - a move that would have been immensely gratifying, even if it was solely played for laughs. Even seeing the immense shadow of Spider-Verse's Kingpin among the villains teased toward the end of No Way Home would have been a fan-pleasing way to tie these two very similar films together.
This certainly doesn't sound outside the realm of reality, especially as cameos by Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire, and Andrew Garfield were considered for Into the Spider-Verse. Spider-Verse producer Christopher Miller took to Twitter after the release of an early No Way Home trailer to reveal that he had pitched a tag involving all three iconic Peter Parkers. With Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and No Way Home's Tom Holland and Zendaya already lobbying to be included in the Into the Spider-Verse sequel, it's hard to see why a link between these series hasn't already been established.
Of course, there is the question of whether or not the animated characters from Into the Spider-Verse would have made a seamless transition into live-action. It may be impossible to know for sure until it happens, but No Way Home's post-credits teaser for No Way Home, it's clear that discussions of bringing animated characters to live-action have been taking place.
All in all, it's difficult to place much blame on No Way Home, as Jon Watts and co. have pulled off a near-impossible task in bringing decades of Spider-Man cinema together while closing their trilogy in a satisfying way. Hopefully, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will take advantage of the film's success and further lower the barrier between live-action and animated multiversal Spider-Man stories. Nonetheless, Spider-Man: No Way Home certainly raised the bar on ambitious multiversal storytelling, even without mention of the Spider-Verse.
