See The Ridiculous Plan For Green Goblin Iron Man Suit In Spider-Man: No Way Home
There were a ton of multiverse shenanigans in Spider-Man: No Way Home, drawing villains and Spider-Men from all of the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield Spider-Man films. One of the biggest and most exciting additions to the villain roster was Willem Dafoe’s Norman Osborne/Green Goblin. Dafoe ended up getting to don a more comic-book-accurate Gobby suit, but there is also some concept art out there that indicated there may have been plans to stick him in Iron Man armor as well:
New Spider-Man: No Way Home concept art shows Green Goblin in Iron Man armor.
It’s hard to tell if this concept art would have made Green Goblin look cool or just goofy. Dafoe’s original costume was certainly a departure from the comic books and would often be compared to Power Ranger armor. Dafoe’s ultimate look in Spider-Man: No Way Home ended up being great, so it’s good that his Iron Man idea was eventually shot down.
Still, there would have likely been some interesting story beats if Green Goblin has Iron Man armor on in Spider-Man: No Way Home. For one, it would have been a neat reference to the fact that Norman Osborne was the original Iron Patriot in the comics. More importantly, it would have tested Tom Holland‘s Peter Parker even more because he had such a close relationship with the MCU’s Tony Stark/Iron Man.
Part of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man journey is his character learning to be a superhero and live up to the expectations of Tony Stark. While Holland’s Peter Parker has already lost Tony by the start of Spider-Man: No Way Home, he loses everything by the end of the film — partially because of Green Goblin. Having Green Goblin wearing Tony Stark’s armor would have been an even bigger blow to Holland’s Spider-Man.
If Green Goblin used Iron Man’s suit in Spider-Man: No Way Home, it would have been a representation of Tom Holland’s Peter Parker growing out of Tony Stark’s shadow.
In the end, it seems like things turned out for the best. Spider-Man: No Way Home quickly became one of the most popular MCU movies of all time and made over $1.9 billion at the box office, putting it at number seven on the highest-grossing movies of all time list.
The film also brought Tom Holland’s original MCU arc to a satisfying conclusion and perfectly set his character up to have a more traditional, standalone Spider-Man trilogy in the future. With everyone forgetting who Peter Parker is, we should get to see Holland’s Spidey truly stand on his own without the other gears of the MCU getting in the way.
In the comics, Norman Osborne did wear Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor as Iron Patriot, leader of the Dark Avengers.
While Spider-Man: No Way Home has given Holland’s Spider-Man a clean slate, there’s no telling when we’ll get another web-head film in the MCU. There haven’t been any announcements about Spider-Man 4 being in the upcoming phases of the MCU. In fact, we don’t even know if Holland’s Spider-Man will pop up in the two big upcoming Avengers movies, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars.
You would assume that they would find a way to get Holland into both of these films, but you never know. In any case, we’ll just have to wait and see until Marvel makes an official announcement about when we can see Spidey next. You can stream Spider-Man: No Way Home on Starz in the meantime.
