No Way Home: Garfield’s Funny Avengers Comment Is Secretly A Dig At The MCU
Andrew Garfield makes a funny remark about the Avengers in Spider-Man: No Way Home which is really a dig at the MCU. The actor revisited his Marvel role after unexpectedly ending his The Amazing Spider-Man film series in the mid-2010s. While the actor doesn't have any personal grievances about what happened, his on-screen persona in Jon Watts' Spider-Man: No Way Home made a subtle but on-point criticism of the Avengers.
Plans for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 were scrapped after the disappointing response to The Amazing Spider-Man 2. That led to Sony's collaboration with Marvel Studios resulting in Tom Holland's casting as MCU's Spider-Man. Despite the lackluster performance of his films, however, there was a general consensus that Garfield was good in the role. Fans were reminded of that when he reprised the role in Spider-Man: No Way Home where he arguably stole every scene that he was in. One of his most humorous bits included a comment about not knowing about the Avengers and comparing them to a band after Holland's wall-crawler talked about being part of Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
As funny as this comment was, it's actually a subtle criticism at the MCU's Avengers. In Avengers: Infinity War, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) informed Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) that the team "broke up." Hulk's alter-ego, confused, asked if he meant "like a band? Like The Beatles?" But that shouldn't be the case. The Avengers have a sworn responsibility to protect Earth from threats. They can't just disband if they encounter internal conflicts. Instead, they need to move past it to continue doing their jobs. Garfield's quip about this in Spider-Man: No Way Home highlights how ridiculous it was that the whole Avengers team collapsed because two members had a falling out. The rest of the squad wasn't really involved in their personal conflict, and they were the ones who should have been able to carry out their jobs.
Ultimately, the Avengers learned this. But it took them five years and Thanos' (Josh Brolin) catastrophic snap in Avengers: Infinity War to figure out that they needed to set aside their differences for the common good. When Tony Stark and Steve Rogers reunited after half a decade, both of them had moved past their personal conflict. While they had a heartfelt conversation about it, the discussion was brief, and neither got into the specifics of what happened. For what it's worth, the fact that Tony continued to let Steve use the Avengers compound and Captain America chose to return to the Upstate HQ were signs that they only really needed more time to process their emotions.
Spider-Man: No Way Home effectively established that the Avengers don't exist in either Garfield or Tobey Maguire's worlds. So, understandably, both don't have the same knowledge that Holland has in terms of working together as a team in battles. But, it's curious what the previous Spider-Man versions would have done if they also found themselves in the middle of two prominent superheroes who are supposed to be focused on protecting Earth.