How Can Green Goblin Work In The MCU?

Spider-Man: Homecoming sets up a lot of major parts of the web-slinger's world in the MCU - and does that include a version best friend and future Green Goblin Harry Osborn? The film is absolutely full to the brim with important comic characters, ranging from Peter Parker's school friends - including 1960s stalwarts Liz Allan and Ned Leeds as well as long-standing love interests Betty Brant and "MJ" - to future villains - Vulture is backed up by two Shockers, The Tinkerer and Scorpion - and countless more obscure cases in the background. As such, the most obvious omission is best buddy industrialist-son and future arch-antagonist Harry Osborn.

The immediate explanation for this is that for the third reboot of the character this century, Marvel and Sony wanted to do something fresh. They've continually expressed a desire for Homecoming to have previously unseen villains - hence why all every bad guy is a big screen debutant - and even seeding the second Green Goblin would work against that. And avoiding the past is very important for NYC's glider fiend - at this point he's severely overdone (he was the villain in three out of five previous films) and the lethargy that smothered pre-MCU Spidey could easily be felt by just mentioning him; nobody wants memories of Dane DeHaan. This will also in part be why Gwen Stacy was absent with only a clothing Easter egg for Betty Brant - after Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man (especially the sequel adapting the iconic The Night Gwen Stacy Died) she's been plundered for all she's worth.

But what if Harry is in the film and we just didn't notice? Green Goblin is Spidey's arch-nemesis and an essential point in his development - deadly impact on life aside, he's the ultimate dark mirror - so to not have either father or son version present in what is trying to be the definitive screen take in the character would feel like a real missed opportunity.

Obviously, there isn't any direct reference to Harry, Norman or Oscorp in the film, but instead we think there are a couple of strong contenders for a Harry Osborn parallel amongst the existing characters who, using the logic of the Homecoming world, could go bad; not Harry per se but something inspired by him. After all, we've already seen that long-standing conventions are free-floating - while most characters have a rooted legacy in the comics, the film is more than willing to make variations; the less-bullish Flash, or Michelle "MJ", or our first Green Goblin candidate.

Is Liz Allan A Future "Green Goblin"?

Liz tells Peter she'll go to Homecoming with him

Liz was introduced as Peter Parker's primary love interest in Homecoming, so everyone assumed she was simply Liz Allan - an early object of comic Spidey's affections. However, as the film's jaw-dropping twist reveals, she's actually Liz Toomes, daughter of the Vulture. She still pretty much operates as Allan - we get the same heartbreak from Spidey being unable to balance his superheroic and personal life - but the relationship to the supervillain seeds the potential for her to become one herself down the line.

Vulture and Green Goblin are intrinsically different characters, but they do have technological and ideological similarities, especially in the film, which lays the groundwork for Liz to continue Adrian's legacy. After the events of the movie, she's moved away from Queens and her father's locked away in prison. That's a seismic life change and one she could come to blame on Spider-Man. Kevin Feige's talked about how the Keaton-at-the-door moment is the turning point of the film, bringing both sides of Peter's life together, and having Liz turn on her former crush would be the natural thematic extension of that.

The twist on Harry here is that the former friend gone bad in the lineage of their father is a love interest. Given how respectful the film was towards its female characters, treating them considerably less damsel-y than previous iterations, this would be an interesting extension and introduces a fresh challenge for Peter.

The setup of Liz is pretty analogous to Harry, so there's definitely narrative potential. The only explicit knock against it is that Laura Harrier herself has said she'd like to see Liz develop her Firestar powers like in the comics, which would seem like a step away from this. That said, the actress could be speaking out of turn or perhaps even be unaware of what the writers have in store for her.

Of course, the main drive for the Liz theory is the name change, which could take us down another path; between her and Michelle/MJ, it's clear that when the filmmakers used different names or held things back it has some greater franchise purpose - and there's another character whose surname isn't accounted for.

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Is Ned A Future Villain?

Who is Ned? Yes, he's Peter's best (and only friend) who stays with him through thick and thin. However, like Liz and Michelle, he's a character with no given last name. Many have assumed that it's Leeds, which puts him on track to wind up with Betty Brant and later fall afoul of the Hobgoblin, but as with Liz Allan it's a case of assuming fans rather than Marvel misdirection. Eric Caroll talked to Screen Rant about this, making clear we're not dealing explicitly with Ned Leeds:

"We don’t say in the script right now. For some of the characters, we didn’t. We definitely started with the Ned Leeds character as sort of the idea. But they’re all kind of composites of our favorite characters from those comics, so him especially, especially once we cast Jacob we just kind of never put the word ‘Leeds’ in the script."

One obvious explanation is that this is because our Ned is really an amalgamation of Leeds and Ganke Lee - as in, they've taken the name of the former and character of the latter - and that to avoid expectations of that Brant/Hobgoblin future (because he's more Lee than Leeds) they've slightly distanced themselves from that. But that's hardly as seismic as Liz Toomes or MJ, especially given how neither source character is as high in the Spidey pantheon, and we're inclined to say there's something more.

It really could be that Ned Leeds developed into the MCU's approximation of Harry Osborn - he's Peter's best friend, after all, and we know very little about his family beyond that he does have the money to casually afford a $500 Lego Death Star. A bit of cross-promotion product placement is not an immediate show of wealth, but it along with the ambiguity about his home life definitely feels like an intentional oversight. How that would transfer into villainy is a bit up in the air, of course, but it's noteworthy parallel.

This would be a twist completely out of left-field and has less heft than with Liz from how Homecoming establishes the relationship, but it's not without some grounding. After all, in print Ned becomes a stand-in for Hobgoblin, a figure derived from the Green Goblin, and the friend-turned-foe arc is a stable of superheroes. A good way to get past the Green lethargy and the fact that so much of Osborn's iconography has been done would be to sidestep into the Hobgoblin. After all, a villain-inspired villain is also very fitting of the MCU.

By this point, though, we're taking massive steps away from Harry's core character and simply using the idea of a close friend gone bad. Maybe we need to tighten our parameters.

Will The MCU Use Harry Osborn Properly At All?

In the comics, Harry and Peter meet at University, with an initially antagonistic relationship turning into a strong friendship. College is still a long way off for this sophomore Parker, so the other explanation is that Harry's being held back (if we are going to get that far). This would certainly be the simplest handling of the fear of him being overdone, allowing new Spider-Man to grow in its own way before calling back to anything too well-known.

However, this in turn questions the MCU's ultimate plans for Spidey. As Feige tells it, the current arc goes through to Homecoming 2 (although we know Holland is contracted and expecting to do a third). This means the trilogy and three Avengers-centred team-ups may be the extent of the web-crawler's time in the MCU - especially if Sony's villain universe takes off and they decide to take Spidey back fully. While no villain is set for the sequel, Scorpion and possibly the Sinister Six are a strong bet, meaning it could simply be the case we don't get Green Goblin in the "definitive" Spider-Man at all. We'll have to wait and see what 2019 holds.