Without a doubt, No Way Home is still the biggest movie of 2021. This threequel seemed to have it all, paying homage to three generations of web-slingers. From Tom Holland’s hero finally realizing his full potential to the inclusion of over a dozen historical figures, fans were blown away by everything NWH had to offer.

This movie was reported to be the most adventurous solo superhero movie in history when it premiered. Over a month later since its release, it lives up to the hype. It was no small feat for the production team to juggle five Multiversal villains and nearly as many A-list heroes. However, they succeeded in telling a coherent story with a tight narrative.

Even though NWH has already been in theaters for a few weeks, fans are curious to know which of the many difficult scenes were the most difficult to bring to life. The threequel’s writing team recently answered that question and revealed what was the most difficult for them to write.

Writing NWH’s Hardest Scene

The screenwriters for NWH, Erik Sommers, and Chris McKenna, discussed NWH’s hardest scene to write on an episode of The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith.

In particular, they talked about the scene in the Sanctum Sanctorum basement where all of the film’s villains are imprisoned. While working out Peter’s plan, they encountered some difficulties in working out how he would explain it to Doctor Strange:

Sommers: “I mean, some scenes just have a lot of heavy lifting, right? So any of the scenes where we had all the villains together, and then Peter’s gonna come in and he’s gonna learn some things, and then Doctor Strange is gonna show up and he’s gonna explain what he’s doing, and then Peter’s gonna say ‘No, don’t do that, because they’ll die!’ I think probably that scene right before Peter takes the box away from Doctor Strange.”

Sommers spent a long time working on the “Goblin speech in Happy’s condo”. McKenna also joked that he wanted to go back and fix it after the movie came out. McKenna described this moment as one in which the team had to “really move things along”. And did so by focusing on just a few characters at a time:

McKenna: “You’re still rewriting Goblin’s speech in Happy’s condo right now, aren’t you? Yeah, that was Erik’s cross. I remember you were like ‘I took another whack at it!’ I’m like ‘Erik, we shot it! Its done! The movie’s already out in theaters!’ Yeah, that one too. Goblin’s speech when he turns. But I would say, just technically, every movie has one of those scenes for us where it’s like ‘Boy, we have to get a lot of stuff out in this scene and a lot of stuff has to change and we gotta really move things along.”

Working On Multiple Characters Together

The biggest challenge in developing scenes with multiple characters is making sure no one is “sitting there on camera not saying anything”. Dr. Strange’s Undercroft is a place where many versions of the same scene are reworked to ensure that it never dries up and that the action never becomes tedious:

“Exposition and emotion, you know? Having a change of heart, making a big decision, there’s just a lot of stuff. We also talk about having mouths to feed in a scene, and that’s just a term I probably picked up in some writer’s room somewhere, but it’s just like ‘How many people are in this scene?’ Sometimes, you’re writing a scene, and there’s so many people in it and you don’t want anyone to just be sitting there on camera not saying anything, and so you need to have everyone weigh in and you want the scene to feel like there’s a reason that character is there.

When you have a scene like that and there’s a lot of exposition and there’s a big dramatic decision being made and an emotional shift, some of those scenes can be really hard to write and you write them over and over and over because you’re just trying to get there with the least amount of moves and not make it feel like it’s dragging on and keep it exciting.”

Getting All Characters Together Was Stressful

Evidently, there were a number of characters involved in NWH’s hardest scene. For this reason, it should come as no surprise that McKenna and Sommers focused on it. Many other heroes and villains were present when viewers saw the Green Goblin put Norman Osborn “on sabbatical”. It was the Goblin’s sudden transformation into his full villainous persona as he interacted with Peter, Doc Ock, Sandman, and Electro that tipped Aunt May’s expectations completely.

This was particularly difficult because Osborn showed just how terrifying he could truly be in a new universe. And this was shown by speaking exclusively through him and Peter. Doc Ock’s good turn with a new inhibitor chip didn’t alleviate the situation. The Goblin unleashed his full power and killed Aunt May as a result of the increase in tensions.

As Peter and Dr. Strange debated in the Sanctum Sanctorum about how to fix their Multiverse issues, those difficulties also surfaced. After Peter’s mistake with the spell, a new kind of tension built among the Avengers. Here, they argued over the best course of action. In a scene where only two people were in focus, there was a lot of commotion to deal with. This was due to the fact that five people were watching and participating.

Scenes involving more than a dozen characters from both sides of the conflict were inevitable in a film that featured so many characters in action. Those scenes ended up being the most stressful and tense in the story. Furthermore, they helped convey the tension that was permeating the plot at all times.