No Way Home Can Redeem Gwen Stacy’s Amazing Spider-Man 2 Death

Spider-Man: No Way Home could redeem Gwen Stacy’s (Emma Stone) emotional death in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Directed by Marc Webb, the 2014 Sony project featured Andrew Garfield’s final reprisal of the Marvel wall-crawler. While his franchise garnered mixed reviews that led to its ultimate cancelation despite a sequel set-up, one of its best elements was the relationship between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy – something that Spider-Man: No Way Home now has the chance to rectify.

The cancellation of the Amazing Spider-Man franchise resulted in the historic partnership between Marvel Studios and Sony for the character’s reboot in the MCU. Tom Holland was cast in the main role, debuting in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. Since then, the character has appeared four more times in the franchise, with a fifth appearance all set up via Spider-Man: No Way Home. Directed by Jon Watts, the threequel has a multiversal narrative, with villains like Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), and Electro (Jamie Foxx) all set to return. Given this, there’s also an assumption that both Garfield and Tobey Maguire will appear, although there’s no confirmation for it, thus far. 

Whether or not previous iterations of Spider-Man will be involved, the threequel has a chance to redeem Gwen’s death at the end of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. In Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s second trailer, MJ (Zendaya) finds herself in the middle of what could be the movie’s third act battle where Holland’s Peter Parker battles five villains at once. The action sequence is set in a construction site, and when a part of it collapses, MJ falls down after Ned (Jacob Batalon) fails to hold onto her. Peter then jumps in an attempt to save her, then the clip cuts to a close-up shot of their hands still quite not reaching each other. Despite this, Peter can still save his girlfriend, unlike Garfield’s version who was unable to do the same for Gwen. It’s worth noting that Peter and MJ’s hands are closer, meaning that a little more push and he could grab her without needing to use his webs. In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the distance between Peter and MJ was just too far that the hero needed to rely on his webs to reach her. 

Another possibility is that Marvel Studios and Sony could use this opportunity for Garfield redeem his mistake in his own universe. Since The Amazing Spider-Man franchise was unceremoniously canceled, fans never really got the chance to see how Gwen’s death impacted Peter moving forward. Here, Spider-Man: No Way Home can show him still feeling regret over his failure to save her. But instead of just seeing him wallowing in his grief, showing Garfield learn from his mistakes and swoop in to save MJ allows him to redeem himself. Granted that it doesn’t undo Gwen’s demise, but it could be interpreted as his penance for his catastrophic error. This way, MJ lives, and she and Holland’s Peter’s story can continue in the MCU. Meanwhile, Garfield returns to his universe feeling that he’s somehow freed himself of the guilt for Gwen’s death. 

Spider-Man: No Way Home is dubbed to be a culminating project. It’s meant to bring all three Spider-Man franchises in various ways. The callback to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a nice touch, especially since depending on how the whole sequence plays out, it could serve both Holland and Garfield’s respective narratives.