Marvel Theory Claims Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man Killed The MCU With One Move
Disney isn't the only franchise that's tapping deep into the Multiverse. Sony's animated "Spider-Verse" saga has achieved immense success, both critically and financially. The films, which follow the adventures of Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) as he encounters an endless column of heroic Spider-People, have been putting the idea of the Multiverse front and center for the last several years. And, as most fans know, with the Multiverse comes a whole treasure trove of fascinating theories, one of which seems to suggest that Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man may have interrupted a major canon event when he ventured into the world of Tom Holland's Peter Parker.
As Miguel O'Hara (Oscar Isaac) explains in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," canon events are a crucial aspect of the Multiverse; essentially, every Spider-Person must go through their own tragic trial by fire. Events like losing Uncle Ben and failing to save a certain loved one are such a core part of Spider-Man's destiny and story that straying from the terrible course can lead to some serious cosmic ramifications. From Reddit to TikTok, many fans across social media theorize that Garfield's variant preventing MJ (Zendaya) from falling to her death in 2021's "Spider-Man: No Way Home" may have actually halted a canon event meant to occur for Holland's Spidey. According to the rules introduced in "Across the Spider-Verse," this could technically spell multiversal disaster for the MCU's sacred timeline.
However, as fascinating as this theory is, it has some glaring flaws.
Many fans think Aunt May's death was Holland's canon event
To say Holland's Peter Parker goes through a lot in "Spider-Man: No Way Home" would be a colossal understatement. By the movie's end, the hero loses everyone, literally and figuratively. While Garfield's Spider-Man does indeed save MJ, she loses memory of who her beloved is, as does the whole world.
Taking such a drastic event into account, it's difficult for many fans to believe that MJ possibly dying was the canon event hovering above the MCU Spidey, especially since he experiences one of the most gut-wrenching losses the franchise has ever seen even without MJ dying. "No [Tom's] canon event was [Aunt May]," one fan wrote on TikTok. Countless other comments agreed with this sentiment in the same thread, citing May's death as the ultimate turning point for Holland's Spider-Man. This idea was echoed over on Reddit too. "It's May. His traditional Spider-Man story doesn't start until the very end of No Way Home," one Redditor wrote.
On Reddit, fans were also more dismissive toward the idea of canon events on a conceptual level, especially since most of what viewers learn of them come from Miguel O'Hara, a not so reliable and mentally stable source. "I think the canon event thing is a bit weird because Miguel doesn't absolutely know how it works. He's just doing his best to interpret the information available to him, but I think we'll see that it's not entirely correct," one fan explained.
Regardless on which Spidey event is a "canon" one of not, nobody can deny that the Multiversal webs the "Spider-Verse" has spun has led to a mighty superhero franchise, so much so that it's rumored even Kevin Feige has become interested in more animated projects thanks to Sony's animated movies.