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Far from right: Who’s to blame for Spidey getting booted out of the MCU?

Negotiations between Sony, which has owned the rights to Spider-Man since 1999 and Disney, which controls the Marvel Cinematic Universe, recently fell apart. Which means that Spidey will no longer be a part of the MCU.

Which also means no more moments like this.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz5l5XZFmj2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

There have been a series of stops and starts with Sony’s Spidey, and the ownership of the web-slinger has been complicated, to say the least. First, there was the Tobey Maguire-led trilogy in the aughts. Then, Andrew Garfield– who was already in his 30’s– embodied your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man in the 2012 moderate hit and its less successful 2014 follow-up.

The movies got drastically better when Spidey was allowed to join the MCU, through a 2015 compromise between Sony and Disney. Under this agreement, the hero could appear in Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. Marvel, led by Kevin Feige, also became a producer on Sony’s Spidey movies, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Far From Home.

Not to mention, we were all gifted with the best Spiderman yet, Tom Holland.

But Disney apparently wanted more, seeking out a 30 percent stake of future Spider-Man profits, with some reports as high as 50 percent, a drastic uptick from their previous 5 percent stake. Sony is made out to be the bad guy for the deal falling through, with some people even calling for a boycott, but it’s kind of easy to see why they would say no to those demands.

The failure of the negotiations also doesn’t mean yet another Sony Spidey reboot or the end of the road for Tom Holland as Spider-Man, contrary to people’s initial reactions that the young Brit was now effectively jobless.

https://twitter.com/fiImluver/status/1163953965169631232?s=20

Sony still hopes for at least two more Tom Holland-helmed Spider-Man movies. But if they’re anything like the Amazing Spiderman 1 and 2, do we even want them?

https://twitter.com/israr209/status/1163912905349373952?s=20

In the wake of this news, an old Tom Holland interview resurfaced, where he was asked about the possibility of a Spider-Man/ Venom movie– a film that would exist outside of the MCU.

Tom Holland declared his loyalty to the cinematic universe, stating, “I’m not giving up my ticket in the MCU.” For him, it’s not just about being Spider-Man, but belonging to this ecosystem of superheroes.

And one of these heroes pledged their support: Jeremy Renner, who has long played Hawkeye in the films, Instagrammed as his character, tagging the late Stan Lee and all of Marvel, asking for Spider-Man back.

#SaveSpiderMan (from Sony) also started trending on Twitter, though the uproar was apparently assisted by bots. In any case, before people continue to direct their internet anger at Sony, maybe they should consider who the bad guys really are.