Everything you need to know about ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’s villains

It’s finally here. Spider-Man: No Way Home is the MCU’s first truly multiversal adventure, incorporating villains from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy and The Amazing Spider-Man duology to fight the Avengers-adjacent Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland. From Green Goblin and Doc Ock to Electro, Sandman, and the Lizard, there’s a lot of backstories in play. 

For those who didn’t have time to watch a full Spider-Thon before seeing the new movie, here’s a refresher on who those villains are, which films they were in, and where they left off therein.

Norman Osborn / Green Goblin

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Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man wasted little time in having Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) face off with his greatest enemy, the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe). The Green Goblin is Norman Osborn, a billionaire scientist who owns Oscorp and is also the father of Peter’s high school BFF, Harry. In the movie, Oscorp develops a performance-enhancing serum for potential military use. But when it looks as if the contract will fall through, Norman tests the serum on himself. The experimental serum splits Norman’s personality into his affable original persona and the homicidal Green Goblin, who uses a prototype Oscorp hovercraft and orange pumpkin bombs to terrorize New York and attack Spider-Man. 

Knowing that Peter is Spider-Man, the Green Goblin personality attempts to trick him into thinking Norman Osborn is in control in their final battle. While feigning regret, the villain prepares to impale Peter with the spikes on his hovercraft. Spidey dodges the hovercraft, which sails past him and stabs Green Goblin instead. He dies in Peter Parker’s arms. 

Dr. Otto Octavius / Doc Ock

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Spider-Man 2 is considered one of the greatest superhero films of all time, and Alfred Molina’s performance as Doc Ock is a huge part of its appeal. Otto is a well-intentioned scientist who desires to generate a limitless supply of energy with a new machine that can put “the power of the sun in the palm of his hand.” To manipulate the energy source, he builds a set of four metallic arms that he can control with an inhibitor chip in the back of his head. In his first demonstration, everything goes wrong when the energy source overloads. The resulting chaos kills Otto’s wife, welds the metal arms to his spine, and fries the chip, which rewires his brain.

Now operating as Doc Ock, Otto becomes obsessed with repeating his experiment. He steals, kills, and otherwise crimes his way into getting enough material for a second try. When Spider-Man tries to stop him, the machine almost overloads again and Otto’s conscience resurfaces. He recognizes Spider-Man as his friend Peter Parker. Then, Otto sacrifices himself by drowning his machine in the river. Unlike many of Spider-Man’s great villains, Otto Octavius dies a hero. 

Flint Marko / Sandman

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Sandman is one of three antagonists in Spider-Man 3. At the beginning of the movie, Flint (Thomas Haden Church) is a human felon who was sent to prison for stealing money to pay for his beloved daughter’s medical treatment. After escaping from a prison transport truck, he falls into an experimental particle accelerator that scrambles his mass, transforming into a sandy shapeshifter who can absorb and control sand. 

Flint is also a bit of a retcon in the original Spider-Man series. In Spider-Man, a criminal named Dennis Carradine was found responsible for Uncle Ben’s death. Spider-Man 3 reveals that Dennis and Flint were partners in a robbery, during which Flint accidentally pulled the trigger and shot Peter’s uncle. After a climactic battle, Peter learns the truth about the accident and forgives Flint, who escapes by blowing away, never to be seen again. This makes Flint Marko the only villain to survive his original Spider-Man movie, though he’s still, you know, made of sand.

Dr. Curtis Connors / The Lizard

Credit: Sony

Honestly, what it says on the tin. He’s a doctor and a lizard, though to be fair the lizard part came after the doctor part. In The Amazing Spider-Man, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) worked at Oscorp Industries as a geneticist whose specialty was researching how animal DNA could be used to improve the human genome. It’s one of his experiments with spiders that gives Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) his powers. But Connors became a bigger problem when testing one of his experimental serums on himself. 

Dr. Connors was a right arm amputee. The serum was intended to give him a reptile’s ability to regrow missing limbs, and it totally worked! Until it didn’t. The serum transformed him into an ultra-aggressive human-lizard hybrid with a British accent. The Lizard then gets the notion that all of humanity would be improved if they were lizards like him. Spider-Man has to thwart a plan to unleash an aerosolized version of his serum that would make lizards out of everybody in New York. And we thought giant alligators in the NYC sewer system were a myth.  

Max Dillon / Electro 

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This is a sad one. In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) was an electrical engineer who considered himself a nobody until Spider-Man randomly saved his life. Max began to think of Spider-Man as his best friend and became obsessed with the hero. That obsession only deepened when Max fell into a vat of electric eels and transformed into a being of pure electric energy. Feeling snubbed by Spider-Man, Max threatened to take out New York’s power grid to show the people in the city how it felt to “live in my world, a world without power.” 

Spider-Man and his girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) fight Max at a power station and eventually defeat him; he explodes in a ball of electric energy and vanishes forever. Shortly afterward, Peter Parker experiences the great tragedy of Gwen Stacy’s death, when she falls from the top of a tower and Peter isn’t fast enough to catch her. 

Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Sandman, Electro, and the Lizard all appeared in the trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home, and will likely face off against Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Will MCU Spidey be able to fight off the sum total of every previous Spider-Man’s movie foes? Guess we’ll find out. See you in the multiverse.  

How to Watch: Spider-Man is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.

How to Watch: Spider-Man 2 is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.

How to Watch: Spider-Man 3 is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.

How to Watch: The Amazing Spider-Man is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.

How to Watch: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is in theaters.