Did This Spider-Man Star Just Tease His Character’s Future?
Three is a magic number! Spider-man: No Way Home opened the door to the multiverse and treated fans with an exciting collaboration of the three versions of Spider-Man played by Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland. Now, even three versions of our friendly neighborhood superheroes put together couldn’t save earth 616 without a little help from their friends,
Ned Leeds (played by Jacob Batalon) and MJ (played by Zendaya). Fans have long theorized that Batalon’s Ned Leeds could turn into the notorious Spider-man supervillain, Hobgoblin, as he does in the comics, but that did not happen in No Way Home. However, as Sony producer Amy Pascal confirmed, there are at least three more Spider-man movies in the works, which open the possibility of seeing Ned Leeds turn into Hobgoblin.
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In his recent Instagram post, Ned Leeds has teased fans by posing with a Hobgoblin action figure hinting at Ned Leeds’ probable future in the upcoming Spider-man movies.
Jason Batalon, in a 2019 interview with Screen Rant, had expressed his hope of playing Hobgoblin saying that it would be great if his character survives, becomes Hobgoblin, and joins the Sinister Six. Though in a more recent interview with Variety, he was more careful not to reveal any details when asked if there was a chance of a live-action appearance of Hobgoblin: “From all my years of working for Marvel, I feel like I’ve learned to just not say anything. I can’t really speak on things and then say something that might actually be true and then I ruin something, you know what I mean?” This definitely makes things more intriguing considering that Ned Leeds becoming Hobgoblin was foreshadowed in No Way Home.
In the scene in No Way Home where the three versions of Spider-man, Ned, and MJ are trying to come up with cures for the supervillains from different worlds of the multiverse, we see Toby Maguire’s Peter Parker telling a terrified Ned that he had a best friend too, in his world, who betrayed him and died in his arms. While we know that he is referring to Harry Osborn (played by James Franco) who had turned into Green Goblin in the movie, Ned Leeds of this world gets visibly perturbed and promises his best friend, Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, that he won’t turn into a supervillain and try to kill him. However, Tom Holland’s Peter Parker makes a huge sacrifice to save the multiverse, allowing Dr. Strange to erase his memory from the hearts of all those who knew Spider-man to be Peter Parker thus forgoing all his relationships and his very identity. Now, as devasting as this was, Peter’s selfless act has wiped the slate clean and Ned Leeds no longer remembers him or the promise he made to him, which allows for the possibility of him going rogue.
The Ned Leeds version in the comics who turns into Hobgoblin is quite different from the one portrayed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The comic-book version was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and made his first appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #18 (November 1964). He works with Peter Parker at the Daily Bugle and the two compete for the love of Betty Brant. Though Ned ends up marrying Betty, Peter and Ned remain friends. Poor Ned becomes a victim of Roderick Kingsley’s Hobgoblin and is brainwashed into playing Hobgoblin in his place, which gradually leads him to lose his mind and believe himself to be Hobgoblin. With Ned and Peter no longer being thick buddies in the MCU, a similar scenario could surely play out on the big screen too.
Ned Leeds in No Way Home was also seen, to Dr. Strange’s dismay, mysteriously displaying magic abilities not just limited to the tingling in his hands but where he could actually open portals with the sling ring. This could also be foreshadowing the Ned Leeds arc in the Symbiote Spider-Man: Alien Reality, where we see a gobsmacked Spider-man, in his symbiotic black suit, fighting Hobgoblin, who is now the Sorcerer Supreme’s acolyte. In this arc, Ned teams up with Baron Mordo to alter reality and together they steal the book called Word or God from the Sanctorum, which leads to Mordo becoming the Sorcerer Supreme and the Hobgoblin his apprentice until Spider-man and Dr. Strange manage to save the day. Though Marvel is known to significantly alter plots from the comic books, fans can only hope for another Spider-man-Dr. Strange reunion.
While we wait to see how Ned Leeds’ future unveils, we can revel some more by watching the re-release of Spider-man: No Way Home, now being called “the more stuff version” coming to the theatres on September 2.
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