Sony's Spider-fortunes started to tank after 2004's Spider-Man 2 for a simple reason: for every good creative decision they made, the studio followed it up with two or three that were questionable. Spider-Man 3 suffered from villain bloat, emo Peter Parker, and a poor take on fan favorite villain Venom; the rebooted Amazing Spider-Man series, after getting off to a somewhat promising start, was bogged down with villains and plotting problems by its second entry. Sony quite obviously had no idea what to do with the character, and if the wildly complex MCU has demonstrated anything about Marvel Studios, it's that they have a sure creative hand.

For that reason, Sony agreed to give Marvel complete creative control over Spidey, even extending to the Sony-produced solo films. This relieves them of the burden of trying to figure out how to satisfy the fans, while reaping the benefits of the enormous goodwill generated by their willingness to cooperate with Marvel in the first place.

Sony also seemed to realize that the deal was also the only solution to their creative stagnation. Spider-Man has always been defined to a large extent by his interactions and contrasts with the other heroes in the Marvel Universe, an aspect of the character Sony never would've been able to explore on their own. Most fans were relieved when their plans for a "Spider-Verse" series of spinoffs were seemingly scrapped in the wake of the deal—and then profoundly confused when these plans were later given new life.