Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s ending leaves a seemingly major plot hole – one that the writers say they have answers for, but tell us they aren’t allowed to divulge right now.
Warning: This story contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home!
As I hope you know if you’ve read this far, the climax of No Way Home sees Dr. Strange cast a spell that erases all memory of Peter Parker from the world. During IGN Fan Fest, fan Trent Sening asked No Way Home co-writers Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna writers what happened to the physical evidence that proved Peter Parker was Spider-Man after that spell was cast.
Interestingly, the writers say they do have an answer for that, but can’t say what it is – leaving an inevitable further question about whether that’s important to future MCU movies.
Part of the reason to leave a seeming plot hole in the movie comes down simply to the intent of that ending – the writers wanted to focus on the human effects of Peter’s decision, rather than spend more time explaining its intricacies.
“We talked about that a lot,” explained McKenna, “and we can’t divulge much, but just know we talked about it a lot and there were conversations about it. And I will say answering those questions by the end of the movie, felt like it would be almost too much to have to explain that, in this movie. So I would hope that it’s one of those details that I feel like would’ve been a bridge too far for us to have to explain in this movie. But we have thoughts and answers.”
“We deliberated a lot,” agreed Sommers. “Is it going to be like a Back to the Future kind of thing? Or are people going to be disappearing from photos? Are physical objects going to be disappearing? All these things. And like Chris said, ultimately, we decided that it would take so much time and real estate in the movie to explain all of that. It would just detract from the emotion of it.”
Perhaps more intriguing is why McKenna and Sommers can’t talk about those answers, even after the film has been released. “Believe me, we have answers to it,” reiterated McKenna, “but I don’t think we’re… We’re not allowed to divulge that. But we have answers.”
When FanFest host Akeem Lawanson said he’d be imagining a Back to the Future approach for now, Sommers said, “You can work with that until you get new information.”
It’s not clear if that means that new information will come, but it certainly leaves open that possibility. After all, No Way Home ends with Peter Parker swinging across New York in a brand new suit, and we’ve heard that Sony would like another trilogy of Tom Holland Spider-Man movies – perhaps it’s a discovery of some physical information that helps bring Peter back into the MCU fold down the line.
There’s also the question of whether that spell affects Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s versions of Peter. Again, the answer is inconclusive, but McKenna and Sommers say they kicked around ideas about how to show that:
“Believe me, we talked about it and we actually had ideas for ways of showing the effects, if there were any,” McKenna explained.
“Chris and I even were tempted,” Sommers continued, “we wanted to maybe pitch a tag where you got to see something, ‘Oh, what would happen if this guy goes back and this has changed, wouldn’t that be fun?’ But again, we didn’t want to distract from the emotion of what was going on with our Peter Parker.”
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.