By EMMITT MURPHY

The long-awaited trailer for “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was released to the excitement of many fans worldwide on Aug. 31. Since then, leaks and speculation have surfaced on social media focused around the villains, heroes and overall plot of the movie.

The image is the first promo of the film “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in December 2020. Ever since the release of the trailer, many speculations have been discussed.  (This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License)

So far, three villains have been confirmed for “Spider-Man: No Way Home”: Willem Dafoe as Green Goblin, Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus and Jamie Fox as Electro. 

Fans believe that the trailer shows Sandman, played by Thomas Haden Church, due to a sandstorm shown with the first strike of Electro’s lightning. 

“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” was released in the United States on Oct. 1. The film’s post credit scene has Eddie Brock, played by Tom Hardy, being transported into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and witnessing Spider-Man being named a criminal by J. Jonah Jameson. With the focus on Peter Parker being framed as a murderer by Mysterio, it is safe to assume that Venom will be in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” bringing the Sinister Six to the big screen for the first time.

The most anticipated aspect among fans is without doubt the potential of both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield reprising their roles as Peter Parker. Leaked videos and photos from the user spider.fan1962 on Instagram on set reveal both Macguire and Garfield in costume. 

These videos were thought to have been deepfaked. But, recently VFX artists on Youtube, The Corridor Crew, debunked the theory in their video “Andrew Garfield Spider-Man is Real – VFX Artists Explain Why.”

Gabriel Leon, a freshman at Citrus Valley High School, said, “I think it will be astonishing to see Tobey reprise his role as Spider-Man along with Tom Holland, as well as Willem Dafoe coming back as the Green Goblin, the movie will truly be a great experience.”

There have also been rumors of Matt Murdock played by Charlie Cox making an appearance. If true, this would officially canonize Netflix series “Daredevil,” bringing Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin into the MCU who is a major villain between Spider-Man and Daredevil.

With the plot already confirmed to be focused around the multiverse, there has been speculation on Twitter that this could possibly be how Spider-Man leaves the MCU. Sony has been building their own cinematic universe with 2018’s “Venom,” “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” and now “Morbius” set for 2022. These are all characters from the Spider-Man mythos with no Spider-Man, leaving fans to think Tom Holland’s role as Spider-Man will find a way to leave the MCU to be a part of Sony’s cinematic universe.

 Noah Jaffer, a freshman at Citrus Valley, stated, “Well, I mean that’d be pretty disappointing. With ‘Captain America: Civil War and Avengers Infinity War,’ we saw Spider-Man in the MCU for the first time with all these great character interactions with Iron Man and Doctor Strange and them all and so if he were to leave the MCU it’d just feel just so much more empty.” 

With speculation, it is important to take everything with a grain of salt because of how easy it is to spread misinformation on the internet. Nothing is truly set to happen until it is either confirmed by Sony or Marvel themselves.