What could the Spider-Man 3 title mean for the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

After a year without any Marvel movies, fans are grasping for any new information they can get — and this week delivered some exciting news, with the studio finally revealing the title of Spider-Man 3: Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Marvel Studios hyped up its big reveal by having the three main stars of the franchise — Tom Holland (our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man himself), Zendaya (Mary Jane), and Jacob Batalon (Ned) post three different fake titles to their social media accounts on Tuesday. From “Home Slice,” to “Phone Home,” to “Home-Wrecker,” the trolling was a fun way to tease the upcoming title for fans — and it played on the trilogy’s tendency to include the word “home” in its titles.

When it finally did decide to drop the title, Marvel Studios injected more humor into the situation by posting a video to Instagram, showing the three cast members expressing disappointment over receiving another fake title. As they lament over Holland’s infamous tendency to spoil things, the camera zooms in on an idea board with the film’s real title in big letters.

Slated to arrive around Christmastime this year, Spider-Man: No Way Home will follow up on the events of Spider-Man: Far From Home, which ended with Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio outing Peter Parker as Spider-Man (and blaming him for a ton of destruction in the process).

What the Spider-Man 3 title might mean for the MCU

Although fans don’t know much about the plot of the upcoming Spider-Man 3 — apart from the fact that it will likely build on the previous storyline — the new title may provide some hints about where the studio intends to take this franchise (and the rest of its stories for that matter).

After the reality-bending events of Marvel’s first Disney+ series, WandaVision, many are speculating that Marvel’s next phases will be heavily focused on creating a multiverse, introducing different timelines, stories, and faces of the same character into the franchise. Rumors of former Spider-Man actors Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield being involved in the sequel (though Holland adamantly denies them) seem to support the multiverse theory, as does the title for the next Doctor Strange installment: Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.

Bearing all that in mind, the Spider-Man 3 title could allude to Holland’s character — or all of the Marvel characters, really — being stuck in a reality that isn’t theirs. That would certainly make sense of the sentiment that they can’t return to home, or back to normal.

Given all the “evidence,” the multiverse theory is seeming more and more likely, but fans will have to wait until the new Spider-Man film and the rest of Marvel’s planned releases for 2021 to see if the studio actually follows through. (We’ll be crossing our fingers until then!)

Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently slated for theatrical release on December 17, 2021.