Phase Zero
Characters

Norman Osborn / Green Goblin

Green Goblin

Norman OsbornSpider-ManEarth-96283

An industrialist who tested an unfinished performance enhancer on himself to save his own company, and got a second person out of the deal.

Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin is the first great villain of the modern superhero film and, twenty years later, still the most frightening. The construction is simple: Norman Osborn takes his own unfinished serum because the board is about to remove him, and it gives him a second personality that is better at his job than he is.

No Way Home brings him back and does the one thing that could justify it. He is the only one of the returning villains who is not looking for a cure, and the film lets him take everything from a teenager who was trying to help him.

Played by
Willem Dafoe
Role
Founder of Oscorp
Affiliation
Oscorp
What they can do
Enhanced strength and reflexes from the serum, a glider, and a voice that is not entirely his.

The journey

What happens to this person, title by title.

  1. Spider-Man2002

    Loses the company, takes the serum, and starts hearing the other half of himself in a mirror.

  2. Spider-Man: No Way Home2021

    Pulled into another universe mid-transformation, and becomes the film villain the film did not think it needed.

Appears in

  1. Spider-Man2002
  2. Spider-Man: No Way Home2021

Sources

Facts last checked on Sep 8, 2026