Marvel artist reveals concept for deleted Sandman scene from Spider-Man: No Way Home

Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was packed with movies and television shows, so many that it was at times impossible to keep up with them all. The most successful entry was Spider-Man: No Way Home, the third movie in Tom Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy.

Cracking open the full potential of the multiverse, No Way Home featured appearances by Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange, previous Spider-Man actors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, and a slew of villains from earlier films like the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), Electro (Jamie Foxx), the Lizard (Rhys Ifans), and the Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church). It was a very full movie with a lot going on, but somehow No Way Home managed to make it all work.

That said, it’s only to be expected that with so many heroes and villains running around, some would get less screen time than others. We didn’t see very much of the Lizard or Sandman, for example, which was largely due to the fact that Ifans and Hayden Church weren’t available during filming, so their characters were created entirely using visual effects.

However, things could have gone differently. Artist Phil Langone shared some of the original exploratory storyboards for the film on Instagram, one of which depicts a scene with the Sandman, Spider-Man, and Doctor Stranger that didn’t make the final cut:

Spider-Man: No Way Home concept art imagines a different story for the Sandman

As Langone notes in the video, some storyboards are made just to explore possibilities, rather than blocking out a specific scene from the script. This animated storyboard is one such example, envisioning a different first meeting for Holland’s Spider-Man and Hayden Church’s Sandman.

In the storyboard above, we see Doctor Strange and Spider-Man discussing what to do with all the villains who have appeared on Earth-616, before Strange begins a spell. Suddenly, the spell is interrupted by a freak sandstorm. The Sandman’s face appears from within the whirling particles in front of Spider-Man, Strange peeks through a portal to see Spidey and the former villain facing one another, and then the dust settles. When it’s done, Spider-Man and the Sandman stand side-by-side before Doctor Strange.

Intriguingly, the final shot of the scene shows the Sandman in his human form, which we didn’t see much of in the movie. Langone teases that this is “just a smidgeon” of the storyboards that were created for the movie. Perhaps in a different universe, this version of Spider-Man: No Way Home exists.

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