Those who never expected to see Jamie Foxx's Electro again are in for quite a shock.
Foxx is in talks to reprise his character of Electro from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in the upcoming third Tom Holland Spider-Man film, The Hollywood Reporter revealed on Thursday.
The news made Marvel fans everywhere do a double take for a number of reasons, the primary one being that Foxx's character existed in an entirely different Spider-Man universe than the current one built around Holland's Peter Parker. He debuted in 2014 as part of the series that starred Andrew Garfield.
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Another reason, of course, is that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the worst-reviewed of the main live-action Spider-Man films on Rotten Tomatoes, where it holds a score of 51 percent, and it's generally viewed as the franchise's least-liked entry alongside Spider-Man 3. The movie also was seen as a disappointment at the box office. As a result, its dangling plot threads were never continued, and Peter Parker headed to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a full reboot. But years later, Marvel is unexpectedly revisiting the derided entry.
This isn't the first time the Marvel Cinematic Universe has brought back an actor from a previous Spider-Man franchise, as 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home featured J.K. Simmons making a surprise return as J. Jonah Jameson, the character he played in the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man universe — though Simmons' Jameson was certainly much more of a fan favorite than Foxx's Electro. It isn't yet clear whether Electro would be crossing Spider-Man universes or whether this would be a new Electro that happens to be played by the same actor as the old one.
Whether any other characters from the older Spider-Man movies could potentially return is also an open question, though seeing as villains from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 are apparently on the table, Paul Giamatti may want to anticipate a call.
