Breaking down the fan theories about the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer

Yesterday, Sony officially dropped the trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home (after it unofficially leaked earlier), and fans immediately lapped up the Marvel multiverse goodness:

The plot of the movie involves Peter Parker (Tom Holland) asking Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast a spell to make people forget his secret identity, everyone having found out he’s actually Spider-Man at the end of 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home. The spell goes wrong and the two of them get caught in the multiverse, where they run into an array of Spider-Man villains past. Alfred Molina shows up at the end of the trailer as Doctor Octopus, reprising his role from 2004’s Spider-Man 2. We also hear Willem Dafoe’s distinctive laugh as the Green Goblin from 2002’s Spider-Man, and it’s confirmed that Jamie Foxx will return as Electro from 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Already, this movie is seeming like a huge Easter egg basket, and fans think they’ve spotted a lot more. So let’s go through some of the theories the internet is coming up with about Spider-Man: No Way Home.

The Lizard, Sandman and Venom are in Spider-Man: No Way Home

Once you have a few villains returning to the movie, it’s open season on others. Fans think they’ve spotted lots of villainous cameos in the dark corners of the trailer, for instance:

Venom would be a tough character to include in a Spider-Man movie since the hungry symbiote already has his own Sony movie series starring Tom Hardy. Sony surely wants to yoke these series together at some point, but with Marvel and Sony sharing custody of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, it could be tricky.

Is this Rhys Ifans reprising his role as Dr. Curt Connors/the Lizard from 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man? Or is it a a black picture with a smudge on it? Reportedly this image comes from around the 2:27 mark of the trailer, when a hulking shape crashes into a shield conjured up by Doctor Strange. And some fans claim they’ve heard “The Lizard’s roar.”

As we said above, Jamie Foxx is definitely back as Electro. Might Thomas Haden Church also be returning as the Sandman, last seen in 2007’s Spider-Man 3? It does look pretty dusty up in there.

Charlie Cox is in Spider-Man: No Way Home as Daredevil

Months ago, we heard that Charlie Cox, who played the Marvel superhero Daredevil in the Netflix show of the same name, would be reprising his role in the next Spider-Man movie. The rumor was that Daredevil, who during the day is a lawyer named Matt Murdock, would represent Peter Parker in some kind of legal dispute.

And sure enough, there’s a scene in the new trailer where Peter is being interviewed by police following the death of Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), who made it look like Spider-Man did him in:

Is the guy in the white shirt Matt Murdock? No telling.

Doctor Strange is actually Mephisto

Okay, this one’s a little wild. Fans have wanted Mephisto — a demon who rules over a hell-like realm in Marvel Comics — to show up in the MCU for a while. There was a lot of talk that he might turn up in WandaVision (he didn’t) or in Loki (ditto). Now it’s Spider-Man: No Way Home’s turn.

The new theory goes like this: in the trailer, Doctor Strange is willing to change the world and make everyone forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, even though we hear that the spell is dangerous. Why would Doctor Strange do this? Isn’t he more responsible than this?

But maybe the guy we see in the trailer isn’t Doctor Strange. Could it be Mephisto in disguise?

Or else maybe this Doctor Strange is some kind of evil variant. At any rate, his actions seem pretty irresponsible. Are you raiding the pharmacy again, Doctor?

Spider-Man: No Way Home will arrive in theaters on December 17. And by the way, we didn’t even come close to covering all the rumors related to the movie here, just some of the ones that popped up in the trailer. There’s a whole lot more where that came from:

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