Tom Holland heroically resists being tricked into last-minute ‘No Way Home’ spoilers

Nobody in the sprawling MCU family of well-paid symmetrical faces is more infamous for dropping spoilers than Tom Holland. It’s become a game for talk show hosts (and castmates) to tease him about it — and hours before Holland’s third standalone Spider-Man film, No Way Home, premiered, Jimmy Kimmel was still trying to trick him into slipping up.

Kimmel listed off the confirmed multiversal villains, from Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock to Jamie Foxx’s Electro, before casually adding, “Who else?” He also tried a straightforward approach: “Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield: Go ahead.”

But Holland stood firm, without co-star and experienced anti-spoiler babysitter Benedict Cumberbatch needing to jump in from the chair behind him. He even got through a story about happening to run into Maguire and Garfield, just casually around town, without ever confirming that they do appear in the new film through the magic of the multiverse (and many intellectual property lawyers).

“With being in a superhero film comes great contractual liability,” deadpanned Cumberbatch.

In a later segment, adorable kids asked the cast adorable questions, from who would win in a fight between Spider-Man and Thor (“He would hammer me — both Hemsworth and Thor,” admitted Holland) to, well, how the movie ended. Jacob Batalon briefly faked out dropping the reveal, but Kimmel had to follow up: What would happen if they really did spoil the ending?

“I think they would literally kill us,” said Holland, looking to Batalon with the solemnity of someone who’s definitely been pulled into a stern meeting or three. “They put a chip in the back of our head on the first [movie] —”

“It’s like a remote control and they blow your head up,” said Batalon.

“Like the real-life Suicide Squad,” finished Holland, possibly violating some other less important clause in his contract about not plugging well-reviewed comic book movies from competing studios on this press tour.