Loki, but the multiverse was explored deeper in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and the events in it will have major consequences in MCU movies.
Spider-Man: No Way Home picks up moments after what has happened to Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s versions after their movies ended, and it also seized the opportunity to mock some details about their movies.
The main villains from Maguire and Garfield’s universes were brought to the MCU, but others were left behind and with good reason. From Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man universe, Topher Grace’s Eddie Brock/Venom was not invited, nor was James Franco’s Green Goblin, and from the world of The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s Rhino was, with Andrew Garfield’s “Peter-Three” mentioning him in a laughable way, aware of how bad it was.
Rhino made his big-screen debut in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, where Aleksei Sytsevich was a criminal apprehended by Spider-Man at the beginning of the movie. Aleksei didn’t appear again until the very end of the movie, when he was broken out of prison by a now-imprisoned Harry Osborn and given a suit of armor, calling himself “Rhino” and causing chaos in the streets. Inspired by Gwen’s graduation speech, Peter confronted him, but Rhino wasn’t an exciting villain. The armor didn’t really look like a rhino, instead looking like a big pile of metal and guns, the visual effects of Aleksei inside the armor weren’t the best, the dialogue and Giamiatti’s Russian accent were bad, and the movie ends right as Spider-Man starts fighting him, so Rhino’s screen-time was cut short. The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s version of Rhino was ridiculous, and Sony subtly itted it in No Way Home by having Peter-Three talk about him in a jokey way.
Rhino was supposed to return in The Amazing Spider-Man 3, but the underperformance of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 led to the cancelation of the sequel and many spin-offs, with the Spider-Man universe later being rebooted over at Marvel. Spider-Man: No Way Home was not only the perfect chance to make the Spider-verse canon in the MCU, but also for Sony to solve some of the biggest questions around its past Spider-Men and it some of their biggest and most ridiculous mistakes from previous movies.
