However, the MCU Spider-Man movies have always been about telling smaller, more personal stories, and we assume the same will hold true for this sequel. After all, Peter Parker has plenty of problems of his own to deal with, what with J. Jonah Jameson implicating him in Mysterio’s drone attack and exposing his secret identity to the world. It’s not going to be easy for our Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man to keep fighting the good fight, and that may be exactly where Stephen Strange comes in.
We can’t help but wonder, is this MCU crossover a sign that Spider-Man 3 may be adapting One More Day, one of the most controversial Spider-Man comics ever published? Let’s explore the evidence and why Doctor Strange may be the key to solving Spidey’s identity crisis.
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What Is One More Day?
Back in 2006, Marvel made headlines with the release of Civil War #2. Arguably the most shocking moment in that limited series (a series which also inspired 2016’s Captain America: Civil War) comes when Spider-Man shows his support for the Superhuman Registration Act by revealing his identity at an internationally televised press conference. It isn’t long, however, before Peter comes to regret that decision. After growing disillusioned and cutting ties with Iron Man’s pro-registration faction, Spidey finds himself a fugitive from justice with a family now squarely in the crosshairs of every single villain he ever battled.
The ramifications of that misguided decision continued to play out in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man well after Civil War ended: Peter’s worst nightmare finally came true when Aunt May was shot by an assassin hired by Kingpin. That tragedy is where the One More Day storyline begins. At this point, with Aunt May clinging to life and SHIELD still hunting Spider-Man and his fellow underground Avengers, Peter decides he has no choice but to make a literal deal with the devil. The demon lord Mephisto appears in the guise of a young girl and makes Peter and Mary Jane an offer – Aunt May’s life in exchange for their marriage. As Mephisto explains, the only thing sweeter than a human soul is the destruction of someone’s personal happiness. Only after Peter accepts and reality begins to change does he realize Mephisto has taken the form of the daughter he and MJ will now never have.
At this point you might be asking why Marvel would put Spider-Man in such a bleak and emotionally scarring direction. Certainly, One More Day attracted plenty of outrage from readers who had spent two decades reading the adventures of Peter Parker, married superhero. The ultimate goal behind One More Day was to restore the franchise to a more classic status quo. One More Day spawned a new ongoing direction dubbed Brand New Day, one where Peter Parker went back to being a bachelor, a struggling photographer, and a hero with an intact secret identity. As shocking as his identity reveal in Civil War was, that plot twist was never going to last forever. Such is the nature of monthly superhero comics.
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How Did Spider-Man Restore His Secret Identity?
You might have noticed that Mephisto’s bargain never included any stipulations about restoring Spider-Man’s secret identity. It would be some time before readers learned exactly how Peter managed to put that particular genie back in the bottle.
Eventually, Marvel revealed via a flashback that Peter approached Iron Man, Mister Fantastic, and Doctor Strange for help after the events of One More Day. Despite still being a fugitive in defiance of the SHRA, Spidey reminded his onetime mentor Tony Stark that it was technically his fault the Parker family was in such dire straits. Together, the two smartest men in the Marvel Universe and the Sorcerer Supreme pooled their resources and constructed a hybrid mechanical/magical machine capable of wiping the memory of Peter’s unmasking from everyone on the planet (even themselves). No one but Peter and Mary Jane remembered what really happened, though a number of characters have since relearned Spider-Man’s identity.
However convoluted this explanation may be, it got the job done. By combining magic and science, Peter was able to undo the effects of the second-worst decision he’s ever made (that time he accidentally caused Uncle Ben’s death is pretty hard to top). And by this point, you may be getting a sense of how One More Day and Brand New Day could inform the course of Spider-Man’s story in the MCU.
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One More Day in the MCU
To be clear, we highly doubt Marvel Studios and Sony are planning a direct adaptation of One More Day. The original story was highly controversial and still tends to inspire a fair amount of vitriol online even 12 years later. We don’t necessarily see Mephisto factoring into the plot of Spider-Man 3. After all, it’s not as if Tom Holland’s Peter even has a marriage to sacrifice in the first place.
We also have yet to learn exactly what state Peter’s life is in, post-Far From Home. While we can probably assume he’s in legal trouble thanks to Mysterio’s frame job and JJJ’s outing, it’s worth remembering this version of Spidey is basically a card-carrying Avenger with a lot of friends in high places. Surely Happy Hogan can do Peter a solid by protecting Aunt May from would-be assassins. They are dating, after all.
Rather than lead to a sequel where Peter is on the run from the law and desperately seeking a fix, Far From Home may instead inspire a status quo more akin to how Daredevil’s outed identity was handled in the comics. There, Matt Murdock deals with the problem by repeatedly denying the accusation and doing his best to continue his legal practice and his nightly superhero activities. That eventually proves to be a losing battle for Matt, but it’s not like anything ever works out for that guy. Spider-Man 3 could go down a similar path, with Peter trying to maintain some semblance of a normal life and convince his classmates the crazy yelling man on TV was lying about him being Spider-Man.
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Regardless of the level of fallout, it stands to reason Peter won’t be thrilled about his new lot in life. He’ll no doubt want to undo the damage Jameson has caused, and that’s surely going to require a similar level of “outside the box” thinking as what played out in One More Day. Presumably, Strange is being positioned as Peter’s latest Avengers mentor figure in the vein of Tony Stark in Homecoming and Happy Hogan in Far From Home. Peter may see Strange as the perfect solution to all his woes – a wizard who can wave a hand and make the world forget Spider-Man’s secret. Whether Strange feels the same way, well, that may be the foundation of their dynamic in the new movie.
Even if Spider-Man 3 jettisons many elements of One More Day, it may draw from the comics in terms of Peter using a combination of magic and technology to restore his secret identity. Far From home established him as a true scientific heir to Tony Stark. That knowledge, combined with Doctor Strange’s mastery of the mystic arts, could help restore Peter’s fractured life to normal.
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Is the Multiverse the Answer to Spider-Man’s Dilemma?
Given that Spider-Man 3 looks to fall in between WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in the MCU Phase 4 release schedule, we have to assume the movie will play a part in laying the seeds for the Marvel multiverse and the plot of the next Doctor Strange movie. The fact that The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s Jamie Foxx is reportedly reprising the role of Electro suggests Spider-Man 3 itself will dabble in alternate universes and other worlds. A full-fledged, live-action Spider-Verse movie may be on the horizon.
At this early stage we can only speculate as to how much Spider-Man 3 will explore the multiverse. That said, we could easily see it being positioned as a possible solution to Peter’s problems. As we saw in Avengers: Infinity War, Strange was able to explore millions of possible timelines in the span of a few minutes, scanning the multiverse for the one reality where Earth’s heroes eventually triumph over Thanos. Could he attempt something similar in Spider-Man 3? Will he scan for a universe where Peter’s identity was never leaked and merge that reality with the MCU?
Consider what we’ve seen of magic so far in the MCU. It seems to be less about Harry Potter-esque spells and potions than the act of altering reality and unlocking other dimensions. It’s all very scientific, hearkening back to Thor’s line, “Your ancestors called it magic and you call it science. Well, I come from a place where they’re one and the same.” In that regard, the MCU is reminiscent of Marvel’s Supreme Power comic. Supreme Power features a character named Arcanna (a riff on DC’s Zatanna) who explains that “magic” is really just quantum mechanics. It’s the act of reaching out across an infinite number of quantum realities and drawing upon the one that’s different in exactly the way the situation demands. In some alternate reality, you’re holding a rabbit in your hands, so magic is the catalyst that allows you to summon that rabbit into your empty top hat.
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But if there’s one consistent theme when it comes to magic, it’s that spells always carry a cost. If Strange finds an alternate universe where Spider-Man’s identity is still secret, what’s the cost of altering his reality? Will two worlds become one? As The CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover showed us, merging multiple worlds into one inevitably results in some rough edges and cosmic mistakes. Or will Peter be faced with a choice between fleeing his world and recovering his old life in a new one or remaining in the MCU and ensuring there’s always a Spider-Man? That’s certainly one way to highlight the all-important theme of power and responsibility.
And if the multiverse is the key to restoring Peter’s identity, what does all this mean for Strange’s MCU arc? For all Iron Man gloated from beyond the grave about saving the universe, it was really Doctor Strange who did the heaviest lifting. Thanos’ act of cosmic genocide would never have been undone if Strange didn’t track down that one key timeline and fight to ensure it came to pass. He might be feeling a little overly cocky at this point, which would be a dark turn from his selfless sacrifice at the end of 2016’s Doctor Strange. If Strange grows arrogant enough to think he can manipulate time and space not just to save all existence, but to help out individual heroes, that could have dire consequences for the larger MCU. Perhaps helping Spider-Man is exactly what unlocks the door to the Multiverse of Madness. In that case, Doctor Strange, not Spider-Man, would be the real loser in this One More Day-inspired conflict.
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.