Spider-Man has been shadowed by father figures that sought to replace one of his main characters, Uncle Ben, since his introduction in Civil War. The way in which the Spider-Man mythos has been interpreted over the years has never had an impact on Peter the way that the MCU's Ben Parker has. Peter has connected to alternate father figures in his three movies. Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark gave him the peculiar baggage of being the protégé of a former war profiteers and gave us a metatextual look at the relationship between Sony Pictures and the studio that made it.
There were shades of his role in Peter's life echoed first through Mysterio in Far From Home, and then in Doctor Strange in No, which was less profound but still important ways. Peter had a relationship with Uncle Ben that tied him to infrastructures and organizations like the Avengers, which changed who he was compared to in the past. The Spider-Man trilogy has left Peter Parker confused as to who he wants to be as a hero: the Spider-Man or the inheritor to a mantle he never really wanted to have. Peter is re-aligned as he moves ahead to new adventures in some smart ways, one that frees him from the awkward legacy he's grappled with in the past four years, and the other that re-enforces the emotional beats that have always made this version of the
The status quo left in No Way Home's climax is that Peter went through the multiversal highs and lows of battling familiar foes and united with alternate facsimiles of himself in order to save the day and stop the universe from ripping apart. In No Way Home, everything Peter goes through leads him to offer an alternate version of who Peter is, which is a spell where people don't just forget who Spider-Man is, but who Peter Parker is. No one, not Strange, not the Avengers, not even the love of his life, will know he exists, leaving Peter and Spider-Man alone. It's a brilliant take on the idea of One Moment in Time, where Peter asks Doctor Strange after the events of the One More Day story, one that is informed by the lessons learned and the pains of the movie.
Peter is freed to re-define Spider- because he is able to leave Ned and MJ behind and not have to worry about his personal connections to Tony Stark or the Avengers. He is allowed to be Spider-Man as he sees fit, having seen what can be achieved through the eyes of his alternate selves across the multiverse, which have been through hell and suffered through things alone.
No Way Home had an equally tragic twist, the death of May Parker, which gave the strength to make that kind of decision in the first place. The death of May midway through the film serves as a catalyst that will unite Peter with his friends and help him deal with his grief. Peter makes a mistake in believing that he has earned the trust of the villains from across the multiverse he is tasked to protect. May's death gives Peter the catalyst he needs to become a kind of Spider-Man that is fundamentally different from the one buffeted by the loss of father figures in his life like Tony Stark and Mysterio. She is an innocent caught in the crossfire, and her connection to Peter's life as Spider-Man is what puts her in that danger in the first place. Peter has a choice to move away from the connections behind him and start anew, or he can take the loss and use it as motivation to do so.
He starts with the lessons he learned from the Spider-Men of the past and the lessons he learned from No Way Home, the films he has made so far. They can be used to rebuild a Spider-Man who can stand alone from the legacies of the larger past, and be a hero for himself. That is a forward- thinking note for No Way Home to conclude on, because the film is primarily concerned with celebrating the past of Spider-Man.
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