Disney may have lost the ability to use Spider-Man in the MCU, but there’s still a lot of potential and even more to be excited about when it comes to Spider-Man and Sony.

As we reported earlier this week, Disney and Sony have parted ways when it comes to the web-slinger, and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man seems to be out of the MCU.

And like all public divorces and custody battles, this one has gotten particularly nasty and nearly everyone has chosen sides. Those wary of the Disney monopoly point to the studio’s greed as the source of the split, while Disney stans contend that Sony’s hubris got the best of them.

In fact, in the wake of the messy public divorce between Disney and Sony and the ensuing custody battle over Spider-Man, #SaveSpidey and #BoycottSony have been trending on Twitter, fans have called for Disney to increase its monopoly on cinema and buy up Sony, and someone even created a ‘Storm Sony to get Spidey back’ event on Facebook — with more than 5,300 people marking themselves as “going” and more than 4,100 as “interested.”

It remains to be seen whether any of this outcry has an impact on the decision-making of the executives at the top, but for right now, Spider-Man is out of the MCU and back in complete control of Sony.

So what’s next for everyone’s favorite web-slinger?

Well, to understand where he’s going — and what he might do once he gets there — let’s first crawl through his history and take a clear-eyed look at the reality of his present state.

The past and present reality of Spider-Man

Yes, it’s true that the most recent Spider-Man outing, the MCU/Sony collaboration Spider-Man: Far From Home, was the first billion-dollar grossing Spider-Man movie and Sony’s most successful movie to date.

And it’s true that the Kevin Feige run MCU has been nothing but a boon for the charismatic web-slinger.

But it’s also true that Kevin Feige and the MCU haven’t been responsible for every single successful Spider-Man film out there.

To date, no live-action Spider-Man film — of which there have now been seven — has ever grossed less than $700 million worldwide. Even the films that are considered failures by both fans and critics, like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3, managed to make back their budget and more.

In fact, speaking of Spider-Man 3: Despite the universal acceptance that it was a terrible outing for Tobey Maguire’s Spidey, that film still went on to gross a pretty hefty $890.9 million worldwide, making it more profitable than Spider-Man: Homecoming and second only in profits to Spider-Man: Far From Home.

But it’s not all about the money, right? There’s also quality to take into account, so let’s look at how the Spider-Man movies have fared amongst critics.

First off, no franchise bats a thousand. Even the MCU has had nadirs to counter its zeniths — or, rather, its Thor: The Dark World to its Black Panther.

And though Spider-Man: 3 (63%) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (52%) both ranked pretty low on Rotten Tomatoes, Sony’s Spider-Man 1 and 2 received a 90% and 93% respectively, comparable to the MCU/Sony collaboration films of Spider-Man: Homecoming (92%) and Spider-Man: Far From Home (90%).

Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has the highest percentage of any superhero movie ever, with a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. In fact, although Into the Spider-Verse is the lowest-grossing Spider-Man movie on the list by about $400 million (its total worldwide gross is $375.5 million), it’s also done what no other Spider-Man movie — or any MCU superhero movie at all, for that matter — has managed to do: It won an Oscar.

So despite the narrative that Sony can’t be trusted with Spider-Man, and so is therefore destined to screw up Spider-Man, the numbers point to the fact that Spider-Man doesn’t really need to be saved from Sony — Sony’s done just fine with the web-slinger on its own right.

The future of Spider-Man without the MCU

With Disney out of the picture, the Spider-Man films can’t reference Tony Stark, can’t name drop any of the Avengers, can’t talk about Happy Hogan or meeting Captain Marvel or being bossed around by Nick Fury.

So what’s left?

Oh, only about 900 other characters over which Sony has complete control, including Homecoming villain Vulture, Far From Home villain Mysterio, and everyone’s favorite Far From Home cameo, J. Jonah Jameson.

In fact, on pure narrative and logistics alone, the split between Disney and Sony regarding Spider-Man presents much more of a problem for the MCU than it does for Sony’s Spider-Man.

It’s feasible — and even makes narrative sense — for Spider-Man to deal with the fallout of Mysterio on his own, completely in his own universe. It makes much less narrative sense to completely omit mentioning the webslinger for whom Tony Stark — the face of the MCU — was essentially mentoring to take his place.

In fact, prior to the split, MCU head Kevin Feige even described the next Spider-Man movie as being “all Peter focused and Peter based” and stepping “out of the shadow of Tony, out of the shadow of the other Avengers, as his own man now, as his own hero.” Which means that Sony’s solo Spider-Man film could go ahead and do what the Disney/Sony film was going to do anyway (and should’ve been doing all along…but that’s another article altogether).

With Tom Holland contracted for at least one more solo Spider-Man outing and Spider-Man’s entire universe of characters at its disposal, Sony’s next Spider-Man movie has a multitude of directions it could go — including crossing over with Sony’s already established nascent Venom-verse.

The first film wasn’t legally allowed to mention Spider-Man, which was strange given Venom’s entire motivation as a character is generally pegged as a hatred for Peter Parker. Still, Tom Hardy’s first outing as the symbiote surprised fans and critics alike by grossing $856 million worldwide despite having a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. With Spider-Man back in the Sony’s hands, the two characters can now interact and cross over to Sony’s heart’s content.

Venom 2 is slated to be released in October 2020 with Andy Serkis at the helm, and with Disney officially out of the Spider-Man picture, there’s speculation that Venom could finally be a hard R movie like he always deserved.

Now, how that might play out with Tom Holland’s earnest boy scout of a Peter Parker, I don’t know, but I sure would love to see it!

The potential of Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters

Even before Sony got sole custody back of Peter Parker, they were already planning a pretty extensive universe of films without him. Here’s a list of live-action films that are either in production or been previously announced: Morbius the Living Vampire, Kraven the Hunter, Black Cat, Silver Sable, Silk, and Sinister Six.

Plenty of these movies are strong enough to stand on their own without the inclusion of Peter Parker and some — like Jared Leto’s Morbius the Living Vampire — have already gone ahead without him.

Sony’s Black Cat, Silver Sable and Silk are films which would all have female heroes/anti-heroes at their forefront: Black Cat, a thief who can manipulate probability; Silver Sable, the leader of a team of mercenaries; and Silk, a Korean-American web-slinger bitten by the same spider that got Peter Parker.

All three of these movies don’t need Peter Parker — in fact, they’d likely be better off without him in them. One of the things that keeps a superhero universe from feeling stale — and feeling like an actual, realistic place — is the idea that it doesn’t and cannot all revolve around one person. Having individuals outside of Peter Parker, with stories unconnected to him, is better for that character, the world he inhabits, and us as an audience.

However, having these characters exist in a world where Peter Parker exists (and can be mentioned) would add the fullness of that world, and there’s no reason why — after the first, origin story film concluded — they couldn’t or shouldn’t crossover with Peter in subsequent films.

Black Cat and Silver Sable have been both antagonist and ally to Peter at various points in the comics (with Black Cat having also been a love interest), a dynamic that could make for an interesting film (or two or three) with those characters.

However, there are some of these films — like Kraven and Sinister Six — where adding Peter Parker back the mix makes both his character and some of these films much more interesting.

Kraven the Hunter is part of Peter Parker’s rogues gallery, so writer Richard Wenk’s intention was always to include Spider-Man in the film — which, at the time he was writing, was near impossible.

Likewise, work on a film based on The Sinister Six — a team of supervillains whose entire goal is to stop Spider-Man — ground to a halt when the 2015 Sony/Disney deal came into place.

Then writer Drew Goddard described the film as being “very much a stand-alone Spider-Man story” which would’ve shown audiences “very much about why I love that character so much and what it means to be Spider-Man.”

Of course, the film couldn’t become a reality once Disney retained control of Spider-Man. But now that Sony has him back, it’s back on the table. It also means that Sony could do something completely different than the MCU and make its first team-up film be a villain team-up film.

The Sinister Six originally comprised of Kraven, which has been confirmed, Vulture and Mysterio, which Peter has already dealt with in his earlier films, along with Doctor Octopus, Electro and Sandman.

The next solo Spider-Man outing could introduce one or even all these last villains, then reunite them later down the line as they attempt to take down Spider-Man.

The Sinister Six could even be its own trilogy films, perhaps with a rotating cast of villains, and with Spider-Man calling on the aid of other heroes and allies he’s encountered — Morbius, Black Cat, Silver Sable and Silk.

The world of Spider-Man is so lush and full, filled with an endless (well, 900, for the purposes of film) list of fellow heroes, ambiguous anti-heroes, villains and allies that Sony can explore and delight audiences with.

Yes, fans have lost something in the fact that Peter will no longer pop up in the middle of a battle in the MCU or geek out with Bruce Banner or Shuri, but they’ve also gained the potential and ability to see Peter become his own character, with his own arcs, his own motivations and his own story separate from the shadow of Tony Stark and the thumb of Nick Fury.

And I for one can’t wait to see it.