Tom Holland Confirms It Was Andrew Garfield’s Idea to Recreate the Pointing ‘Spider-Man’ Meme

Sometimes it takes three times the Spidey sense to make a record-breaking blockbuster.

Tom Holland confirmed during a conversation Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield for Deadline that “Spider-Man: No Way Home” had a special, lightning-in-the-bottle magic from the start. “I always knew this film would be loved around the world,” Holland said, “but I didn’t think it would be quite as massive.”

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Holland called playing Spider-Man alongside fellow MCU alums Maguire and Garfield a “playful” process. “It was so collaborative,” Holland said, before adding, “From [Garfield] cracking Tobey’s back to [him] coming up with the idea of pointing at us, it was all stuff that we came up with on the day. It was just a lot of fun to be able to play with three guys in Spider-Man suits…Sharing it with these boys will be forever one of the most special experiences of my career.”

And seeing the pointing Spider-Man meme on the big screen was an immediate fan favorite, thanks to Garfield’s improvisation.

The “Tick Tick Boom” star previously talked about how the scene came to be with the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via Comic Book Resources).

“Oh, so we were trying to figure out the pointing thing, like how we were going to do the pointing meme in a way — it took us a while — it kind of happened naturally on that scaffolding scene with Peter 1, Peter 2, Peter 3, like all that,” Garfield said.

“I remember having a lightning bolt and running into set and telling [director] Jon [Watts], ‘I got it, I got it,'” he continued. “Cause there’s this moment where Jacob [Batalon] is like, ‘Hey Peter?’ and we all go, ‘Yeah?’ But in the script, it was like, that was that. We all go ‘Yeah?’ and in the script, my Peter says, ‘This isn’t going to get old at all,’ like something kind of sardonic — which felt kind of undercutting.”

Instead, the pointing sequence is “actually kind of cute,” Garfield said. “So then we were thinking I could say, ‘Aw, this is adorable. We’re so adorable. God, we’re cute.’ Something like that. But then I was like, no, this is the moment where we get to go, ‘Do you mean me?’ Jon was like, ‘That’s it. That’s it. Done.’ I was so happy that worked.”

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