Spider-Man No Way Home: Ending Explained

For all Marvel now seem interested in cashing in on some of that sweet, sweet nostalgia dollar, it's a franchise that always prioritises the future over either the past or the present. These are eyes that are always set on the next movie, the next phase, the evil looming on the horizon rather than the one that's knocking on the door. For all No Way Home wants you to remember, it ends wanting you to expect.

So where exactly do we leave things? Well, once the small matter of an inter-dimensional tear in the very fabric of reality is sealed, the movie's various guest stars and gribblies begin to return to whence they came from. Otto Octavius, now with his Good Guy Chip firmly lodged back into his brain, presumably returns to the moment in Spider-Man 2 he was so rudely plucked from to garble underwater that he's actually really chill now. Likewise, Sandman, Lizard, and Electro return devoid of the abilities that drove them mad with power, while Norman Osborn heads back to the Maguire-verse without the voice in his head telling him to throw skeleton-bombs into rooms full of people.

Oh, and as is revealed in the mid-credits scene, Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock has also been propping up the bar in this reality. Casually chewing a barman's ear off about Iron Man, Thanos, and everything else he's missed over in the Sony films, before being duly cast back to whence he came when Strange's spell kicks in. Leaving behind a small drop of Venom in the process.

Quite what implications this has for their assorted timelines is left unresolved, however. If indeed they journey back with time to set things right, then the knock-on effects for history are enormous. Without the Green Goblin's manic demise in Spider-Man 1, Octavius would unlikely have been in a position to pursue his energy tech and, thus, never become bonded with his tentacles in dramatic enough fashion for Spider-Man 2. We can say, with a degree of confidence, that were The Time Variance Authority still around, this movie's climax would have had significantly more big-pointy-melting-sticks.

But while life in the Multiverse is open to interpretation, life back in this universe is beginning to take shape...