It's been just over a year now since we were reintroduced to two of our old Spider-Pals, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, amid the multiversal maelstrom that was the plot of Spider-Man: No Way Home. That movie also saw the return of six of the Spider-Man film series' most popular villains, most notably Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin and Alfred Molina's Doc Ock. It was a bit of fun at the time — Maguire's first outing in the spandex for fifteen years, Garfield's for eight, a pleasantly potent shot of nostalgia for those of us who grew up with Tobes (and Andy) as our main guy.
It seems silly in retrospect to have ever doubted the box office bonafides of the Garfield-Maguire-Holland triple threat, but that No Way Home made almost two billion dollars at the box office worldwide, placing it firmly in the tip-top bracket of the highest-ever grossers, was the sort of flawless victory few foretold. Cinematic Spider-Man is always popular, of course, routinely exceeding a billy globally, but that this one so resoundingly exceeded its predecessors told us one thing: nostalgia sells, and it's here to stay.
Resultingly, rumours have swirled since No Way Home bowed that Maguire, Garfield and others among the coterie of returning villains may return for more appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — even their own features. It's largely bluster and speculation at this point, with nothing set in stone, but we know, now, that at least one of them would be pleased as punch to stick the mask back on.
Speaking to Marvel.com about the making of No Way Home, Maguire opened up about how thrilled he was to get the call to play his part in the MCU Spidey instalment, emphasising that he'd be more than open to doing it again. “I love these films and I love all of the different series,” he said. “If these guys called me and said, ‘Would you show up tonight to hang out and goof around?’ or ‘Would you show up to do this movie or read a scene or do a Spider-Man thing?’, it would be a ‘yes!’ Because why wouldn't I want to do that?"
Hardly ambiguous, isn't it? As fans online have astutely observed, Maguire's enthusiasm comes in the wake of last year's announcement of Secret Wars, the hotly-anticipated Avengers instalment releasing in 2026, expected to be a crossover bonanza in excess of anything we've seen in the MCU so far. Pick a name from the comic books — or, indeed, a Marvel film adaptation, even those that fell to the wayside in the tedious pre-MCU years — and they're expected to show up, be it for a split-second or line or with proper skin in the game.
Cameos, those delightful shots of dopamine-flooding familiarity, are great as a side-dish, but shouldn't ever constitute the main meal. As the former, they represent a grand opportunity to give the fans what they want — say, a scene or two with an old friend, like Maguire — but otherwise risk disrupting the evolution of a Marvel Cinematic Universe with genuine stakes, interesting new characters, or arcs and relationships that we genuinely care about. That has been a key issue with the latest phase of Marvel movies: take Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, in which the cameos became the main marketing draw, at the expense of Raimi's unique stylistic vision or a more cohesive plot.
The other option, then, would be for Maguire to return for, say, a follow up to 2007's Spider-Man 3, occupying his own universe disparate to that of the MCU (there's a whole multiverse out there!) The problem is that it'd get old very quickly: a cameo here and there is fine, but having more than one mainstay Spider-Man on the go at once — not least with rumours abound that Garfield could too return — would be an overwhelming prospect for casual audiences, if not the comic book mainstays. And once the nostalgia factor has faded, what's the point?
Say it quietly: Maguire was never that grand a Spidey. Blasphemy, we know, but he's just a bit of a dry sponge relative to the devilish, Dean-esque charm unique to Garfield's interpretation of Peter Parker, or indeed the puppy-dog innocence and exciteable whimsy of Tom Holland. Hence why the one-off nostalgia hit here and there is the better option: his Spidey movies are intertwined with some of our loveliest childhood memories, after all. But a prolonged return, the MCU shackled to the past when it must reach to the future for longevity? That'd be a mistake.
