In a recent panel interview, Jon Watts, director of 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, revealed that Reddit fan art had led to him rewriting the pivotal introduction scene of Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Men.
At the Mediterrane Film Festival 2025, Watts spoke to Collider’s Steve Weintraub and revealed that when he saw fan-rendered concept art on Reddit, which coincided with his initial vision for the characters’ introduction onscreen, he knew he had to rewrite the scene in order to blindside audiences.
Watts explained that he’d initially planned to have the two older Spider-Men step out from Doctor Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) portals to console Tom Holland’s grieving Peter Parker. However, when Watts saw that the fan art depicted the exact same scene taking place on a rooftop, he knew that they could not proceed with the original plan.
Watts referenced American comedian, Buster Keaton, explaining that he trusted his audience to cleverly foresee certain storytelling beats, hence necessitating his move to upend their expectations and “double-cross them”, thereby fulfilling the hopes of fans in an unexpected twist.
This led to the reveal eventually being in Ned Leeds’ (Jacob Batalon) grandmother’s house, which Watts knew would not be foreseen by fans. It also fit perfectly into the narrative, given that it would be the first time that the audiences were moved away from Peter’s perspective in the film, adding more emotional depth to the scene.
It was this unfortunate fan art coincidence that was ultimately woven into a web of Watts’ masterful design, delivering what many have considered to be the perfect end to the MCU’s Spider-Man trilogy, giving not one, but three Spider-Men the fanfare they rightfully deserved.
Conversation with Ting Wei is like chatting with a weird AI bot programmed only with One Piece lore and theories, sitcom quotes and other miscellaneous pop culture references. When he’s not sleeping, he’s highly likely reading manga. In fact, the only thing he reads more than manga is the Bible, and it’s honestly pretty close.
Natalie
