Benedict Cumberbatch reveals how he helped Tom Holland in a crucial scene in Spider-Man No Way Home: ‘I came up with this idea…’

In a chat with Collider, Cumberbatch showered praise on the film and the script, calling it a “humdinger.” He added that he is astonished at the film’s success but understands the love of fans as it is “a brilliant Spider-Man film.”

In the Jon Watts directorial, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire reprised the role of Spidey apart from Tom Holland. This was possible because Spider-Man: No Way Home dealt with the multiverse, and fans got to see three different iterations of the web slinger. Supervillains from previous Spidey film franchises, like Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock and Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, also crossed over to the MCU to face the three Spider-Men.

No Way Home was a love letter to the cinematic journey of the wall-crawler and paid tribute to Garfield and Maguire. Strange was partly responsible for the rip in the multiverse that allowed beings from another universe to cross over. Peter had requested Strange for a spell that would allow everybody to forget he is Spidey, but added too many exceptions like Aunt May and MJ, and the spell went wrong.

Cumberbatch also recalled one of the final scenes of the movie in which Strange and Peter (Holland) are standing atop the Statue of Liberty and Holland was facing trouble with the script.

“And then, we did the reshoots and I came up with this idea of, to show that I love him, I didn’t want him to make the sacrifice of being forgotten. He was like, ‘That’s gonna be in the film.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, cool. That’s great’,” said Cumberbatch.

Cumberbatch has been nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog.