Marvel and Sony have finally found the new Spider-Man for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in the “In the Heart of the Sea” actor, Tom Holland. With the MCU hoping to bring the wall-crawler into the fold for its third phase of connected movies, it’s time to figure out when we’ll finally see Holland’s Spidey in action.

Marvel previously announced that it had partnered with Sony to both bring Peter Parker into the same universe as Iron Man, Captain America and Thor, as well as launch a $4 billion standalone movie franchise starring the most iconic superhero in Marvel comics. In order to gloss over the very well-tread origin story, the studios will introduce the web-slinger in a yet-to-be announced Phase 3 movie coming before the first “Spider-Man” movie in 2017. That includes “Ant-Man,” “Captain America: Civil War,” “Doctor Strange” and “Guardians of the Galaxy 2”

The most obvious place to put him, as Marvel comic book readers will know, is smack dab at the center of “Captain America: Civil War.” After all, Spider-Man had a pretty major role in the comic book version of the storyline by unmasking himself at the urging of Tony Stark to help people get on board with the new Registration Act. Marvel and Sony made the announcement that they would partner to bring Spider-Man into the “Avengers” fold so close to the start of “Cap 3” production that many people accepted it as a foregone conclusion. However, Marvel has yet to announce which movie it will introduce Holland’s character in, and with “Captain America: Civil War” production well underway, it may be too late to introduce him in a significant way. Besides, that movie is already packed with more superheroes than an “Avengers” movie.

It’s worth considering that the concept of introducing Spider-Man in an upcoming MCU film is very vague. For all anyone outside Marvel Studios and Sony knows, a store clerk in “Doctor Strange” could sell someone a copy of The Daily Bugle with Spider-Man on the cover and we’ll have our promised introduction. It was previously reported by Latino Review that “Ant-Man,” which premieres in only a matter of weeks, conducted reshoots in order to loop in some offhanded mentions of Oscorp, the fictional company that bread the radioactive spider that gives Parker his powers. So, while fans are likely hoping to see Holland battle bad guys back-to-back with Captain America (Chris Evans) or Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) as early as 2016, they may have to wait until Spider-Man swings into a film all his own in 2017 to get any real action.

When that big day comes, it’s likely that this will neither be similar to the Tobey Maguire nor Andrew Garfield versions of Peter Parker that have showed up in previous movies. This is mainly because when you have the entire catalog of Marvel movie superheroes to choose from, you don’t strand Spider-Man on his own.

Previous rumors indicated that the standalone “Spider-Man” flick will be titled “The New Avenger” and feature Peter Parker being taken under Tony Stark’s leadership as the older superhero trains the high-school-aged newbie to become a full-fledged Avenger - much in the same way he does in the comic books. Unfortunately, the official announcement of Tom Holland’s casting didn’t come with the reveal of where we’ll finally see him as many hoped. This means that Marvel is probably keeping the big moment close to the vest in the hopes of surprising the audience in theaters. Savvy Marvel fans are no doubt smelling a really exciting post-credits scene on the horizon. Oh well, guess that means we’ll all have to be first in line for every Marvel flick that comes out between now and 2017… Say it ain’t so!

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