**Spoilers for ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ are incoming…**
**You’ve been warned.**
Say what you will about “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the film definitely doesn’t underdeliver on the number of twists, turns, and surprising cameos. But believe it or not, if the studio went with the early drafts of the script, there could have been a lot more familiar faces showing up in the record-breaking sequel.
In an interview with Variety, ‘No Way Home’ writers Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna talked about the various iterations of the script and the multitude of ideas that were introduced but later scrapped. Basically, instead of just the five villains and two extra Spider-Men showing up in the multiversal shake-up, we could have seen at least one more villain and quite a few supporting characters from the previous ‘Spider-Man’ franchises appearing in the feature.
“Let’s write the script that is the kitchen sink and we’ll just act like we were going to get everything we wish for,” explained McKenna about the first ideas for the film. “And like Peter’s wish, it became a nightmare, and it required very, very talented people to help us not die at the end…We went down different roads with different characters that just didn’t fit. We can’t get into the details of that because it might be the kind of thing where they’ll find a way to explore those ideas. So I’d hate to spoil anything because I think we had a lot of fun.”
Sommers added, “The first draft, we bit off more than we could chew. Maybe some would argue that we still bit off more than we can chew.”
Some of those “kitchen sink” ideas reportedly included bringing back more familiar characters, such as potential appearances from Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson and Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy, from the “Spider-Man” and “Amazing Spider-Man” franchises, respectively. But that’s not all.
As if the final battle between the three Spider-Men, MJ, Ned, and Doctor Strange fighting the multiple villains wasn’t enough already, the writers admitted that they “definitely discussed” the idea of bringing in Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock/Venom into that climax. Ultimately, the writing duo knew it was important to not lose Tom Holland’s Peter Parker in the menagerie of other characters, and thus, Venom was relegated to a post-credits scene.
“The most important thing is this wasn’t just going to be a bunch of fan service. It wasn’t going to be just curtain calls for everybody,” McKenna said. “We had to figure out a way that this [movie] told the story of this Peter Parker right now, organically coming off of where we left the last movie. That was always our north star. Yeah, it’s a big fun idea. Let’s not forget Peter. You can’t get lost in the mix. It has to be his emotional journey.”
It’s safe to assume that if we have Dunst and Stone appear alongside Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, that might have been a bit too much juggling for the already-epic film to manage. And throwing in Eddie Brock/Venom in the final battle could have taken away from the box office potential of the inevitable Venom/Spidey crossover film. So, even though “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is by no means a slim film, the bloat could have been a hell of a lot worse.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” is in theaters now.