Spider-Man: No Way Home Star Didn’t Notice Kirsten Dunst MJ Easter Egg

Angourie Rice, who had a cameo appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home as returning character Betty Brant, reveals details about the MJ Easter egg in her scene. No Way Home is the third solo Spider-Man film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and follows Peter Parker (Tom Holland) as his attempt to get Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast a spell making people forget his secret identity goes horribly wrong and brings in villains from across the multiverse. This includes Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), Lizard (Rhys Ifans), and Electro (Jamie Foxx).

While No Way Home mostly follows the crossover characters from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy and Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man films, it does find time to catch up with the minor characters from the previous MCU Spider-Man films. One of these characters is Betty Brant, played by Angourie Rice, who first appeared in Homecoming as an amateur news anchor on the school announcements and had an expanded role in Far From Home when she and Peter’s best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) kindled an on-again-off-again romance while traveling Europe. She made a brief cameo in No Way Home as she reported live from Peter’s first day at school, ending her broadcast with the phrase “Go get ’em, tiger!”

“Go get ’em, tiger,” is a reference to longstanding Spider-Man lore. The line first surfaced in the original comics from the ’60s, but it was also the last thing that Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson said to Peter Parker at the end of 2004’s Spider-Man 2. While speaking with THR about her banner year, which also included a role on the hit HBO series Mare of Easttown, Rice spoke about the Easter egg, which she didn’t even realize was a reference when she was filming. She said she “didn’t pick up on it,” because there are “so many Easter eggs” that sometimes she doesn’t realize they’re there until she actually watches the movie. Read the full quote below:

I didn’t pick up on it, but I love that! There are always so many Easter eggs, and sometimes I miss them until I actually see the film in cinemas. And then I’m like, “Ohh! I see what they did there.”

Although Betty Brant didn’t have the opportunity to appear in the film for any longer than about ten seconds, she did play an instrumental role in the film’s social media promotional campaign. She was the lead reporter for the TikTok account created for the Daily Bugle, the in-universe publication run by J.K. Simmons’ J. Jonah Jameson. Betty apparently got an internship at the Bugle, which led her to post videos on the account in the lead-up to the film’s release.

It seems that perhaps the Spider-Man: No Way Home screenwriters included this reference to throw Angourie a bone for taking some reduced screen time. With so many characters to juggle, the film already had an extremely full two and a half hours to contend with. However, this MJ reference is an important moment that highlights the way that all the universes past and present have come together in the film’s epic crossover event.

Source: THR

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