Spider-Man: No Way Home Director Says Reddit Changed How Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Characters Appeared

The reveal of classic Spider-Men Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home was inspired by a Reddit post seen by the film’s director, Jon Watts.

Speaking at the Mediterrane Film Festival, Watts explained that the internet’s wild speculation about Maguire and Garfield’s return led one fan to create a mock-up of how they imagined the characters would be reintroduced — and it was eerily close to his original plan.

In response, Watts said the filmmakers completely reworked the introduction of the classic Spider-Men — placing it in the home of sidekick Ned’s grandma — to deliberately surprise fans.

"There had been rumors that Tobey and Andrew were going to be in the movie, and this was while we were shooting," Watts said (thanks, Collider). "We were writing the script, figuring out where to reveal them. It always seemed like Peter would be grieving because Aunt May had just passed, the portals would open, and the two Spider-Men would step out — probably on a rooftop. It was all vague, still coming together.

"Then I was on Reddit, and I saw fan art imagining exactly that: a rooftop, two Doctor Strange portals open, two Spider-Men emerging. I thought, 'We can’t do that. If everyone expects that, we absolutely can’t do it.'"

Watts described his approach as trusting the audience to anticipate where the story was headed, but still wanting to surprise them with how it got there. He asked himself: where would no fan expect the long-awaited return of Maguire and Garfield to happen?

"I thought, 'What if the two Spider-Men show up at Ned’s Filipino grandma’s house in Queens?'" Watts said. "I don’t think anyone was making fan art of that on Reddit. It made perfect sense in the story — it’s the first time we step outside Peter’s perspective.

"We didn’t know what had happened to [Tom Holland’s Peter Parker]. We were with Ned and MJ; they had to lie low. Where would they go? Ned’s grandma’s house. So we built the whole scene around that."

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Watts added that changing the plan became even more complicated because filming happened during Covid lockdowns — meaning the woman who played Ned’s grandma wasn’t an actor at all.

"As soon as you add his grandma, who isn’t an actor… it was the middle of the pandemic, so we had to find a woman and fly her from Hawaii to Atlanta to shoot all of this," Watts recalled. "Once we put her in that scene and shifted the location, I felt like we’d double-crossed the audience in the best possible way — giving them everything they wanted, but in a way they never saw coming."

Tom Holland will return next year in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which is set to begin filming imminently. Joining Holland will be Stranger Things star Sadie Sink in an undisclosed role, alongside MCU veteran Jon Bernthal reprising his role as Punisher. Maguire and Garfield are not expected to return — though who knows what multiversal chaos might call them back in either Avengers: Doomsday, or more likely, Avengers: Secret Wars.