Spider-Man: No Way HomeSave

The film opens directly where Far From Home ended. Mysterio's posthumous broadcast — doctored to falsely accuse Spider-Man of his murder and to publicly reveal Peter Parker's identity — is replaying on every screen in New York. Peter, MJ Watson, Ned Leeds, and Aunt May are mobbed on the Manhattan streets. Within hours, Peter's life has collapsed. The Department of Damage Control raids his apartment. He and his closest people are pulled into legal proceedings. Matt Murdock — a blind defense attorney — successfully argues for Peter's release, but the personal damage is total. Peter, MJ, and Ned attempt to apply to MIT together, only to receive rejection letters. Aunt May has been forced out of her job. The pressure of being the most famous teenager in the world has erased their futures.

Desperate, Peter visits Doctor Stephen Strange at the New York Sanctum and asks for help. Strange, exiled from the Sorcerer Supreme position by Wong (now occupying the role), agrees to cast a spell that will make the entire world forget Peter is Spider-Man. Halfway through the spell's casting, Peter realizes the spell will erase him from the memories of his closest people too — MJ, Ned, May. He repeatedly interrupts Strange to add carve-outs. The interruptions cause the spell to crack open in unintended ways. Strange manages to contain it before catastrophic damage, but the damage is already done. The spell briefly drew in people from across the multiverse who knew Peter Parker — five villains and three other Spider-Men, all from realities where Peter's identity was already public.

The first villain to arrive is Otto Octavius — Doctor Octopus from the Sam Raimi Spider-Man 2 universe. He attacks Peter on a New York highway bridge, with his four mechanical arms and his memory frozen at the moment of his original death. Peter narrowly subdues him by hacking the inhibitor chip controlling Otto's arms, restoring control to Otto's true personality. The next villain to manifest is Norman Osborn — the Green Goblin from Raimi's first Spider-Man — who materializes in a Queens forest park, terrified and confused. Strange manages to capture Otto, Norman, Electro (Max Dillon from The Amazing Spider-Man 2), Sandman (from Spider-Man 3), and the Lizard (Curt Connors from The Amazing Spider-Man) and store them in extradimensional cages within his Sanctum. He plans to send each of them back to their respective universes, where each is fated to die.

Peter learns this and intervenes. He cannot in good conscience send these men — most of them victims of failed scientific experiments — back to die. He steals the spell-trapping chest from Strange, locks Strange in the Mirror Dimension, and brings the captured villains to Aunt May's apartment. There, with Aunt May's encouragement, Peter and his friends try to cure each villain of the conditions that made them dangerous. Peter rebuilds Otto's inhibitor chip; Otto regains his original gentle personality and helps with the rest. But Norman Osborn's split-personality Goblin half rejects the cure. Goblin sabotages Otto's lab, betrays Peter, and brutally fights him through Aunt May's apartment. Aunt May is critically wounded shielding Peter. She dies in his arms after delivering the line that defines every Spider-Man across every universe: with great power must come great responsibility.

Peter, broken and on the run, hides on the rooftop of his old high school. Ned, panicking, accidentally activates a Sling Ring that Strange had given him for safekeeping. The Ring opens portals based on intent. Ned wishes for Peter, and a Peter Parker steps through — but it is not the right one. It is Andrew Garfield's Peter, from Earth-120703. The two Peters realize they are different. They open another portal trying to find the original — and Tobey Maguire's Peter, from Earth-96283, also walks through. The three meet in a school hallway and begin to share their grief. Garfield's Peter has been carrying the death of Gwen Stacy for years. Maguire's Peter has been carrying the deaths of Uncle Ben and Harry Osborn. Holland's Peter is fresh from May's death. They share what they have learned. They accept each other as brothers.

The three Peters and their respective allies (MJ, Ned, plus Otto and a Lizard who has been cured) regroup at the Statue of Liberty in Manhattan, where Strange is rebuilding his cracked spell. They lure all five villains to the site for a cure-and-capture operation. The battle is the visual high point of the film: three Spider-Men swinging in coordinated formation, each fighting villains from their own universe alongside the others'. Garfield's Peter cures Electro by removing his arc-reactor power source. Maguire's Peter cures Sandman by retrieving an inhibitor he'd modified. Holland and the others handle Norman, Otto, and the Lizard. The film's most emotionally devastating moment comes when Garfield's Peter saves MJ from a fall off the Statue's torch arm — the same fall that, in his own universe, killed Gwen Stacy. He is shaking; he holds her tightly; he has been given the second chance his universe never offered him.

Strange's spell is failing rapidly. Multiverse leakage is widening. Holland's Peter realizes the only way to save reality is to expand the spell to make literally every person in every universe forget that Peter Parker exists — including the people he loves most. He tells Strange to do it. He says goodbye to MJ and Ned in a tearful conversation in the school hallway, promising to find them and re-introduce himself. The spell triggers. Maguire and Garfield are pulled back to their universes. The villains are returned to their fates. The world forgets. Peter walks into a Brooklyn coffee shop weeks later to deliver an order to MJ. She does not recognize him. He turns away without finishing the speech he had prepared. He returns home alone. Aunt May is dead and now no one but he remembers him. He sews a new homemade Spider-Man suit. He resumes patrol over Queens.

The film's mid-credits scene shows Eddie Brock at a beach bar, having been pulled into the MCU during the spell, then yanked back to his own universe by the resolution — but leaving a small piece of the Venom symbiote behind on Earth-616. The post-credits scene is the trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, released six months later. Spider-Man: No Way Home grossed $1.92 billion globally, becoming the second-highest-grossing Spider-Man film of all time and the sixth-highest-grossing film ever. Critically, it was widely praised as the perfect closing chapter to Holland's trilogy and as the most successful multiverse-cinema execution to date. The film's biggest gift was the legitimization of every prior Spider-Man on screen — Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, both long retired from the role, finally received the closure their respective franchises had denied them. The Holland Spider-Man arc continues with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, in development for a 2026 release.