One More Day / Brand New Day / The Way Home

In the comics, Civil War is a turning point for Peter. He starts on Tony's side, gets convinced to reveal his secret identity, switches to Steve's side, and eventually Aunt May dies because his identity is public.

Mephisto (Marvel's devil in red tights) shows up and offers to make everyone forget Peter is Spider-Man- but only if he can take something precious as payment. Peter and Mary Jane sacrifice their happy marriage (and all memory of each other), and the world forgets all about Peter being Spider-Man.

And they get Aunt May back.

Behind the scenes, there had been a desire to revert Spider-Man back to starting position. No wife, no babies, no real adult concerns- just light hearted adventures and a late rent check.

The infamous clone saga was a backfired attempt to do this- let Peter (the clone!) and Mary Jane retire to suburban bliss with their baby and Ben (the original!) retake the Spider-Man mantle, poor and single as he was. But the fans weren't happy, so the baby died (sometimes*), Ben (the clone!) died and Peter (the original!) took up the webs again.

By the way- most fans hated One More Day. This fan does. But the stories that came after (Brand New Day) were pretty good!

Obviously No Way Home's story borrows heavily from One More Day. Cleverly switching Mephisto out for Doctor Strange. At the end of the movie- Peter is not only secretly Spider-Man once again, but what's more he's detached from his friends and family, and even the rest of the Avengers.

Behind the scenes- MCU Peter is certainly not comic Peter. No Uncle Ben (as far as we know), instantly thrown in with Avengers as "the kid", given a hi tech costume and a loving mentor. Successful at friendship and dating. Fighting aliens in space on his third trip out.

But after No Way Home- has MCU Peter been sent back to comic Peter's starting position? He's anonymous, friendless, loveless, and struggling to make rent. He's made his own low tech costume- and he's swinging around Manhattan.

Was the No Way Home plan- in fact- The Way Home plan?

Spider-Man 4 need not feature any MCU characters- or even those Spider-Man characters introduced as part of the MCU.

Was this the plan all along?