Peter Parker (Tom Holland) was a bit too careless when asking Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast the spell that’d hide his superhero identity once more. In fact, that’s the main reason the plot to Spider-Man: No Way Home was allowed to proceed. Fast forward to the end of the flick, and Parker no longer cares about having a secret identity. Instead, the character wants to make sure everyone across the multiverse hasn’t the slight idea of who Peter Parker is.
After the death of Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), it’s likely the only way to save MJ (Zendaya), Ned (Jacob Batalon), and the billions of innocent lives in this universe. The spell works, and everyone forgets who Peter Parker is. Naturally, fans were quick to point out some real-world consequences for something like this. Does Parker still have to pay taxes? Is he able to have a driver’s license? What about all the pictures he once appeared in?
As No Way Home writers Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna suggest, the answers to those questions are something future Spider-Man storytellers will have to deal with.
“We decided, let’s try to do it in the most satisfying way and just focus on the emotion of it,” Sommers recently told Variety. “And then if people have questions about some of those details that didn’t get answered here, we’ll answer them hopefully in another movie somewhere down the line.
McKenna added that they tried to keep it as simple as possible. “Obviously, some sort of magical redaction has occurred,” the writer added. “At the end of all this, we didn’t want a lot of people trying to do magical math in their head.”
“You want to have that doughnut scene be him making the last piece of the sacrifice,” McKenna continued. “I could tell them everything. I can try to get my friends back. But I’d be going right back to the place of endangering my loved ones by bringing them into my life. And I can’t have that.”
Spider-Man: No Way Home is now in theaters.
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