Alfred Molina has confirmed that he is returning as Otto Octavius, Doctor Octopus, in the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home, which has raised the very important question - didn't he die at the end of Spider-Man 2?
However, in an interview with Variety, Molina teased what director Jon Watts told him when he raised that very question when Watts approached him about reprising his villain role with a brand-new Spider-Man 17 years later.
Molina revealed that he told Watts, "I died” and then Watts replied to him that “In this universe, no one really dies.” However, Watts then went further than that with his explanation.
Molina's Otto Octavius was a brilliant nuclear scientist who theorized that he could use a nuclear reactor to achieve fusion power but the reactor had a power spike and malfunctioned, killing Octavius' wife and leaving him bonded with the metal robotic arms that he used on the project. When he escaped, Octavius, now calling himself Doctor Octopus, began obsessed with completing the experiment, even though it was clearly too dangerous at this point. Octavius cut a deal with Harry Osborn to get the dangerous elements needed to power the reactor in exchange for Octavius capturing Spider-Man for Osborn (as Harry believed that Spidey killed his father, Norman Osborn, in the first Spider-Man movie).
At the end, when the reactor was set to destabilize again (and possibly destroy the entirety of New York City), Spider-Man convinced Doctor Octopus of the folly of his ways and so Octavius drowns himself and the reactor in the East River to save everyone.
Variety reveals that
In their early conversations, Molina said, Watts told him that the movie will pick up Doc Ock’s story from “that moment” in the river, which in a franchise that include multiverses, time-travel and diverging timelines seems…plausible enough.
Therefore, it appears that the use of the Multiverse in these upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe projects allows the creators to possibly save characters from these other movies from points right before they died in the other universes.
Directed by Jon Watts, Spider-Man: No Way Home stars Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Marisa Tomei, Tony Revolori, Jamie Foxx, Alfred Molina and Benedict Cumberbatch. The film arrives in theaters Dec. 17.
Source: Variety