Sony and Marvel Studios’ most highly-anticipated movie of the year, Spider-Man: No Way Home, officially came out on Friday, December 17, 2021, and the excitement of this movie could be seen through box office numbers. 

WARNING: Major spoilers ahead. Stop reading this article if you have not yet seen the movie. 

Spider-Man: No Way Home shattered pandemic box office records by grossing a whopping $253 million in its opening weekend in terms of ticket sales, also placing it as the third-best opening in cinematic history. 

Spider-Man: No Way Home is right behind Marvel Studios’ two most highly-anticipated movies Avengers: Infinity War ($257.6 million) and Avengers: Endgame ($357.1 million).

Spider-Man and Marvel fans rushed online and in theaters in order to buy a ticket to watch the movie, due in part to the potential spoilers that have already been leaked prior to the movie even premiering in theaters. The majority of the revenue came on Friday night, with $121.5 million in ticket sales that night alone. 

Overseas, the movie made a total of $334.2 million in 60 overseas markets, bringing the total to $587.2 million globally. 

Analysts predict audiences returning to watch the movie again in theaters, similar to what was seen following the release of Avengers: Endgame.

But, the anticipation for this movie was for good reason. 

Ever since the events of Marvel Studios’ new Disney+ shows WandaVision and Loki, fans have been not-so-patiently waiting for the official introduction to the multiverse, the idea of multiple universes, on the big screen. 

Many theories arose following the endings of these two shows and the last Spider-Man movie. 

Villains, such as Doc Ock and Electro, from the original two Spider-Man franchises, were confirmed to be in this movie, leading many to believe that we may finally get to see both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield reprising their roles as Spider-Man back on the big screen for the first time in years. 

Hilariously, we got to see Garfield stress about it every time he was asked. 

But to Garfield’s dismay, audiences around the world screamed, cheered, and cried the moment they saw Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man on-screen, Maguire’s Spider-Man following right after.

Audiences around the world got to see the interactions between three different generations of Spider-Men, allowing many childhood fantasies to come true. 

This movie allowed us to revisit these characters and see how they’ve been following the events of their movies, and we even saw Garfield’s redemption, saving MJ from falling to death, something that he couldn’t do with his Gwen. 

We also got to see how the loss of their uncles allowed them to help Holland’s Spider-Man go through the loss of his Aunt May. 

This movie truly was about Peter Parker finally realizing that he can’t be both Peter Parker and Spider-Man, not without those two lives colliding with each other. This was something shown at the end of the last Spider-Man movie, and the focal point of this one. 

Charlie Cox, who plays Daredevil, made a brief appearance at the beginning of the movie, representing Peter and helping him through his legal troubles following him being exposed as Spider-Man.

In order to save the world, and to allow people to forget the fact that he’s Spider-Man, he had to make the ultimate sacrifice: he had to let his loved ones forget him. At the end of the movie, when Peter promised MJ that he would find her, we see him come to terms with the fact that they may be better off with him. 

And in the end, we see him become Spider-Man similar to those of both Maguire and Garfield. 

The two post-credit scenes following the movie further showed the effect these last Marvel projects have caused on the multiverse. 

In the first post-credit scene, we saw Tom Hardy’s Venom cross over into the MCU, similarly to the Venom: Let There Be Carnage post-credit scene where Venom was officially introduced to the MCU. 

In the second post-credit scene, we saw an official trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which is set to come out in May of 2022. In this, we see how the events from Spider-Man: No Way Home, WandaVision, and Loki are going to dramatically affect Dr. Strange’s life, especially when he tries to find a way to stop the multiverse from fully breaking. 

All in all, even though many parts of this movie were spoiled onto the internet for a long time now, it still didn’t take away from the feeling of being able to sit next to complete strangers and cheer, laugh, and cry together at truly special moments. 

Spider-Man: No Way Home managed to exceed already high expectations, and it seems like Marvel will continue to do that.