It was no secret that the younger brother of Spider-Man star Tom Holland was going to make a cameo appearance in the web slinger’s latest MCU venture Spider-Man: No Way Home. Whilst the blockbuster didn’t disappoint in so many ways, fans expecting to catch a glimpse of the burgeoning star were left wanting as his scene was removed from the final cut of the film.
In the scene, Harry Holland was set to play a minor criminal who was caught by Spider-Man doing his rounds. A behind-the-scenes peek at the clip has now emerged online, offering fans a glimpse at just what it might have looked like. The clip shows Harry swinging upside down past a New York storefront, where he was presumably webbed up by the wall-crawler.
Given the context, it’s understandable why the scene didn’t make the final cut as it’s hard to imagine where it would have fit into the larger narrative. Spider-Man: No Way Home saw Peter dealing with the fallout of Mysterio’s reveal at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, which proved particularly tumultuous for the young hero. Followed by the stakes being raised significantly as several villains from other universes are pulled into the MCU.
Taking a detour from events to stop a run-of-the-mill criminal would have been a stretch to include organically and likely unnecessarily padded the runtime. Harry Holland wasn’t the only star disappointed with a cut cameo as Lexi Rabe also filmed a scene reprising her role as Morgan Stark, where she reportedly publicly threw her support behind a struggling Peter following the fall out of Mysterio’s reveal and Stark Industries involvement in the vigilante.
In fact, according to reports after the movie’s release, it seems a lot was left on the cutting room floor, with fans almost getting an entirely different film altogether. Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Lizard, Electro and Sandman were originally slated to have much smaller roles in the film, potentially even being reduced to a post-credit sequence. Rumors suggest that Jon Watts initially intended for Kraven the Hunter to serve as a new principal antagonist.
Those plot details could be saved for a fourth installment after Kraven has had his own origin movie, and there are not many fans who’d disagree that shifting the focus to the ‘Sinister Five’ was the right decision in the long run. Among the major plot points cut, another leak suggests Marvel Studios actually wrote and shot an alternate ending in which Peter’s spell couldn’t be undone and he was forced to deal with the consequences going forward.
Interestingly in this version, Peter also reportedly distanced himself from Ned and MJ as he felt he could no longer lead the double life or risk endangering them further. It increases the likelihood that both characters will at least play a significantly smaller role in the next film, if they feature at all, as both versions of the ending saw Peter saying his goodbyes to his best friend and girlfriend.
The clean slate also represented a better way forward for the franchise, with the ending of Spider-Man: No Way Home suggesting Peter had taken on a more traditional Spider-Man role and would now distance himself further from the larger MCU. This could perhaps make room for further collaboration and crossover into the separate Sony Spiderverse, now that we know the likes of Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man and Tom Hardy’s Venom canonical exist in Tom Holland’s larger sphere.