Spider-Man: No Way Home

Peter's exposure destroys his life and, by association, MJ's and Ned's — all three are rejected from MIT. He asks Doctor Strange to make the world forget he's Spider-Man.

How does he "keep amending" the spell? Mid-cast, Peter starts adding exceptions out loud: not MJ, not Ned, not Aunt May, wait, not Happy. Each amendment destabilises the runes. Strange eventually contains it, but by then the spell has already started reaching into other universes for anyone who knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

That's the precise mechanism, and it answers the obvious question: yes, the villains knew their own Peter's identity, and yes, he was Spider-Man in their universes. Green Goblin, Doc Ock, and Sandman come from Tobey Maguire's universe; Electro and Lizard from Andrew Garfield's. Electro's line about expecting Spider-Man to be Black under the mask lands because he never actually saw his Peter's face.

All five are pulled from the exact moment of their deaths.

On Strange being able to cast something this powerful: he explicitly says he shouldn't, and Wong tells him not to. The film's own position is that he couldn't do it safely. The multiversal reach is the failure, not the feature.

Peter refuses to send them back to their deaths and tries to cure them instead. Aunt May supports him — "with great power there must also come great responsibility" — and the Green Goblin kills her for it.

Ned borrows Strange's sling ring and, trying to find their Peter, says "I wish Peter Parker were here" — and gets one. Then another. Neither is theirs. He retrieves Tobey Maguire's and Andrew Garfield's Peters essentially by amateur luck;

with the multiverse already breached and the spell scrambled, the barrier was thin.

Are there more Spider-People out there? The multiverse implies infinite ones — though the animated Spider-Verse films are a separate Sony production with no on-screen connection.

Ned and MJ don't cure anyone — Peter does, using devices he builds in Happy's condo, with the other two Peters doing most of the technical work: Tobey's for Sandman, Andrew's for Electro, and Peter designing the Goblin cure.

Garfield's Peter also catches MJ as she falls, undoing the failure that broke him.

The multiverse is tearing. The only fix is Strange casting the original spell at full strength: everyone in every universe forgets Peter Parker existed. MJ and Ned included. Peter chooses it, visits them once, and doesn't tell them.

He ends the film with no family, no friends who know him, no money, a rented apartment, and a homemade suit.