Warning: The following article contains SPOILERS for Spider-Man: No Way Home

The MCU's villains have become more looming and larger than life over the years, most recently with Thanos executing his snap that erased half of the world's population, but an old favorite, Green Goblin, was actually made worse than Thanos in Spider-Man: No Way Home. The MCU is now into Phase 4, stepping away from the mad titan's reign as the big bad and into the multiverse, something even bigger and more exciting. Recently, Marvel films seem to operate by the logic of villains having to be near an Avengers-level threat to be impactful, but No Way Home proves that's not always the case.

Spider-Man's iconic foe Green Goblin was first introduced in Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, portrayed perfectly by Willem Dafoe. Norman Osborn, head of Oscorp, after experimenting on himself with an unstable formula develops an unquenchable thirst for chaos, becoming the Goblin. Yet, he appears to be in flux multiple times throughout the film, with the Goblin attempting to corrupt Norman, and Norman trying to fight it. Despite Peter's awe of Norman, his Goblin side is ruthlessly tormenting and seems to only want destruction at whatever the cost.

Related: When Spider-Man: No Way Home Will Come To Disney+ For Free

In No Way Home, Peter suffers more from Green Goblin than he did from Thanos, making this old favorite villain worse than the mad titan. In the MCU, Tom Holland's Spidey has gone to space, fought aliens, and been snapped out of existence, which would seemingly pitch him above other incarnations of the character in terms of the threat level's he's faced. Old Spidey villains like Goblin, or The Lizard, really only posed an immediate threat to New York, not the entire world. Under these circumstances, it would be expected that the Goblin wouldn't have too much effect on Tom's Spider-Man as he's fought much bigger, but this is incorrect.

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The Green Goblin both physically and emotionally crushed Peter. After a lengthy combative scene where the two fight, the Goblin murders Peter's only surviving relative, Aunt May, leaving him with a new sense of loneliness and grief. Peter has already mourned the death of Tony Stark when they battled Thanos, but this loss pushes him to a wave of unbridled anger. He is unstoppable in his determination to seek revenge on the Goblin, and outright says that he will kill him. For this character, audiences have so far only seen him as a naively optimistic teenager, thus the Goblin has brought out a side to Peter that has so far been hidden, a side which didn't even rear its head in a war against a titan. The climactic scene of No Way Home shows Tom's Spider-Man engaging in one of the most personal and emotional conflicts the character has been involved in onscreen. The mercilessness he shows the Green Goblin is clear, as he starts repeatedly beating him in the head. Only when Tobey's Spider-Man intervenes does he stop, if not, Tom's Spidey could have really gone through with killing him.

The world-building of the MCU has come so far since its beginnings in 2008, and sometimes it seems as though the films are merely trying to up the stakes for the sake of shock and excitement. Thanos' introduction was built up throughout a variety of films, and eventually came to a dramatic head when he wielded the infinity gauntlet. The titan was the MCU's big bad for many years and set an expectation for what a villain could be. Now, the MCU moves into the multiverse and introduces Kang and his many variants, because that's the only way the MCU can get bigger than Thanos. Yet, Spider-Man: No Way Home proves that sometimes the older villains, though they are perhaps simpler at surface level, can be even more haunting.

Next: Does Spider-Man: No Way Home Have An After-Credits Scene

Spider-Man: No Way Home is available to watch now in theaters.

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