The theatrical Box Office this past weekend returned to pre-pandemic levels when Spider-Man: No Way Home, scored an amazing 250 million dollar opening weekend.

The third in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man franchise the film follows directly on the heels of the previous installment, Spider-Man: Far From Home, with Mysterio’s post-death revenge of revealing to the world at large that high-schooler Peter Parker is Spider-Man and framing him for the attacks, death, and destruction from that installment. Wisely the filmmakers do not spend a lot of time on the legal consequences of this aspect of the revenge. After all we are not there to see legal filing and debates, though what they do give the audience is satisfying for dedicated MCU fans.

What they do give us is Peter attempting to manage and fumbling the crisis of his revealed and, to many, reviled identity. The trailers reveal Peter’s partnership with Doctor Strange and the appearance of multi-verse villains providing fan services by tipping the MCU’s hat towards the previous incarnations of this beloved hero, but the real focus of the film is Peter, MJ, and Ned, their deep friendship, and their difficult transition from adolescents to adults as they leave high school and prepare for college while navigating their new and terrible celebrity.

The MCU has spent three films and a bit letting us see Peter Parker as a teenager, a high school student, as the original comic book did instead of quickly dispensing with that aspect of the character. Now that era has ended and this story does so respectfully giving that transition the gravitas it requires.

Spider-man: No Way Home, not only presents in the third film the MCU’s utterance of the famous ‘power and responsibility’ but also the thematic foundation that doing the right things nearly always comes with a cost and what separates good from great is the willingness to bear that cost personally.

There are cameos and nods opening up the MCU and the mid-credit and end credit buttons delineate the division between the MCU and the Sony-verse of Spider-man adjacent characters, but also set up the next MCU film Doctor Strange and The Multiverse of Madness directed by the man who kicked off our love of the cinematic Spider-man with the original film back in 2002.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently in theatrical release only.