Warning! SPOILERS for Spider-Man: No Way Home
Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man return is more likely than Tobey Maguire's after Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin and Alfred Molina's Doc Ock, but questions remained about whether or not Maguire and Garfield's Spider-Men would appear. Spider-Man: No Way Home brought them both back in a major way, but one of them seems to have a better possible future than the other.
Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man: No Way Home returns allowed them both another chance to play Peter Parker after underwhelming and unexpected final appearances. Maguire was meant to return for Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4 originally, and Garfield was supposed to star in The Amazing Spider-Man 3. However, neither of these films happened as Sony elected for reboots instead. It is quite clear that audiences loved seeing Maguire and Garfield's versions of Spider-Man back on the big screen in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and there is renewed audience interest in seeing more of them in the future.
Sony could elect to bring both of their previous Spider-Man franchise stars back, but Andrew Garfield's return is much more likely than Tobey Maguire's. Throughout his time playing Peter Parker and in the years since the Amazing Spider-Man franchise ended, Garfield has been quite vocal about how much being Spider-Man meant to him. He still had a lot of ideas for where the character could go next and was enthusiastic about the future. As excited as many were to see Maguire again in Spider-Man: No Way Home, it was Garfield who really stood out and proved he was a great Spider-Man. He's also still reasonably young and could be better suited to make multiple future appearances in some fashion.
Spider-Man: No Way Home teases just how much more there is to explore with Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man, but the same major future likely isn't possible for Tobey Maguire. He is possibly too old to keep playing Spider-Man for any significant length of time. That is why most theories about Maguire's possible Spider-Man future have pointed to him dying in some fashion, possibly as a way to bring Miles Morales to the big screen in live-action. As great as it would be to see more of Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man, bringing him back again just to kill him would be disappointing and unnecessary. His Peter Parker currently has a happy ending, and Sony can leave it at that while using Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield moving forward.
If Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man does return in future films, there are plenty of possibilities for how that could happen. Sony could revive plans for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and put Garfield back at the center of a major franchise. It would likely take place after Spider-Man: No Way Home and allow teases of his Spider-Man's darker history to be explored. If he doesn't want to take on such a massive burden again, Andrew Garfield could also be the Spider-Man in Sony's villain universe. This would allow him to possibly meet Tom Hardy's Venom or Jared Leto's Morbius and confirm that these characters exist in the Amazing Spider-Man universe. So even though Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield could both return after Spider-Man: No Way Home, audiences would likely benefit more from the latter - even if he doesn't return to the MCU stage.
