Now is the time to discuss 'Spider-Man: No Way Home.'

The scene is vivid in your mind. If you missed it the first time around, you most likely saw it the second time around. The meme is undoubtedly familiar to you. Setting up the scene: Before perpetrating a theft, a wicked mastermind dressed up as Spider-Man to blame the superhero. The webslinger himself then appears. Two masked men exchange pointing gestures. They refer to each other as fakes. Everyone is perplexed: is it true that there are multiple of them? Who's the villain here? Please, stand up, Spider-Man!

The gag is from a 1967 animated film. It's a visual shorthand for anything from police failures to hip-hop beefs to Congressional gridlock, and it's mentioned as a post-credits punchline in Spider-Man: Into the Spider verse. And then it hit someone: What if we turned what was previously a deep-cut in-joke for Spider-fans into a full-fledged live-action film?

You've probably seen Spider-Man: No Way Home by now, and you're aware of the mysteries and surprises in store for viewers, which is why we're bringing up the now-iconic Pointing Spiders image. Don't read any further if you haven't seen the movie, are allergic to spoilers, or simply wish to remain in the dark (something Spider-Man has been known to do) about several major twists and turns. There will be spoilers ahead! Klaxon GIF! Sirens and the "wrong answer" noise from Family Feud! Instead, check out our Guillermo del Toro profile or our most current Adele cover story.

The key reveal, which has been denied by the majority of the cast for years while simultaneously being hinted by the appearances of recognizable adversaries, is that this isn't so much a Spider-Man narrative as a Spider-Men story. There isn't just one webslinger in this crowd. There aren't even two of them. For the first time in 20 years, the three actors who have appeared in Spider-Man films are reunited for the first time. The manner in which this occurs is one of the more absurd aspects of No Way Home, a plot twist that involves secret identities being revealed, a child borrowing a magical ring, and Peter Parker asking the Master of the Mystical Arts to completely alter the fabric of space and time because his friends are unable to gain admission to M.I.T. (Of course, multicorporate synergy is the real answer, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.)

The wonderful sight of Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire standing there, a brotherhood of commiserating and complementing cinematic webslingers, is the end result of all of this narrative back bending and plenty of blast-from-the-past bad guys. Why serve just one generation of fans when you can serve several at once, as we stated in our review?

None of this should have come as a surprise. When Tom Holland's Spider-Man appeared in Captain America: Civil War in 2016, the stage was set for a studio-to-studio collaboration: If we acquire a few crossovers for our in-house series, you can have Spider-Man in your movies, says Sony, who has controlled the rights to the character for decades. Perhaps Iron Man will appear in their flick. Perhaps Disney will be able to include what is undoubtedly Marvel's most popular superhero in their MCU. Perhaps the Mouse House simply made a mistake.

No Way Home genuinely morphs into something unexpected and a notch above your normal superhero film in the final third. We've been watching scenes that could have come from any other Holland-era film for an hour and a half, along with the obligatory MCU cameos and a reminder that, while it's great to see certain actors chew acres of scenery again, not all of those first- and second-edition supervillains were created equal. Even with Molina, Dafoe, and the rest of the cast mixing it up with Gen-Z Spider-Man, you get the impression you're in the middle of yet another MCU film, this time pitched somewhere between never-ending tale and soap opera.

But once these three get to interact and the film turns into one part Spider-group therapy session and one part buddy comedy, No Way Home levels up. There’s the odd, almost absurdist sense of fan fiction being writ large in witnessing this peck of Peters counseling each other over tragedies, joking with each other about web-shooter issues. Everyone has been singling out Garfield’s performance here, with folks saying that his aborted trilogy never really gave him the chance to carve out his take on the character. The emotional beats the movie gives him does feel like the franchise is paying penance; even if you have no dog in this fight, it’s hard not to see the look on the actor’s face when his Parker saves a falling MJ and feel as if he’s somehow dulled the pain of this for second.

It's Maguire's presence, however, that has us choked up. He did some good work after his Spider-Man run was over, but you got the impression he never quite found his stride after that, or that he was a little bitter about the fame that came with playing him — a stratosphere of fame based on who he'd played versus a dedicated career of digging into parts before putting on the mask versus a dedicated career of digging into parts before putting on the mask. In these scenes, you get the impression that Maguire is coming to terms with his job. He emits a palpable sense of compassion. To these other forms, he nearly comes across as a Spider-mentor.

Even as the meta-reverberations start to rock the rafters, that reel-to-real component resonates so beautifully in certain sequences. These three Parkers have each experienced their own hells, made their own choices, and endured their own losses. Nonetheless, they all know — and only they know — what the other has gone through. As much as the love story, the last-act sacrifice, or the heartbreaking ending, their connecting over their responsibilities gives the film heart. In a strange way, when you see those sequences in, The Beatles: Get Back comes to mind.

Only four guys had experienced what it was like to be a part of that group, and the video demonstrates how protective they are of one another when someone comes at them from the outside, as well as how much history they shared. Only three teens who were bitten by radioactive spiders have experienced the immense power and responsibility that comes with it. Only three actors have experience playing that character and understand what it involves. Before dispersing everyone back to their various realms and sending the rest into amnesia, the film returns to slam-bang-boom CGI. Even though you know this is only a nostalgia cash-in and that there is no turning back from all the past-present convergence frenzy now, you get the impression that you are witnessing something extraordinary for a little while. It's a reconnection that entangles you in an emotional web that you can't escape.