With plenty of new superhero flicks on the 2026 movie schedule, Andrew Garfield has been reflecting on the one character he knows will follow him forever. I mean that pretty literally. The actor recently made a surprisingly morbid joke about how he'll be remembered after he dies, and while I laughed, I'm not convinced he's wrong. Once you've played Peter Parker, the internet apparently never lets you retire.Garfield appeared in a video from GQ's YouTube about Artificial, Luca Guadagnino's new film in which he plays OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Their conversation turned to actors being linked with famous people, including Jesse Eisenberg's longstanding association with Mark Zuckerberg after The Social Network. Garfield said he wasn't particularly bothered by that prospect. In fact, he already had his future obituary headline worked out:I know the beginning of my obituary will be 'Erstwhile Spider-Man.' You know what I mean?That's dark, Andrew. Also it's probably accurate. Garfield wore the red-and-blue suit in 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man and its 2014 sequel, and he returned alongside Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland for 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home. Even after delivering two Oscar-nominated performances, people keep asking whether he'll return for an upcoming Marvel movie.It's funny to compare the two kinds of roles. Playing Altman might inspire all sorts of questions about the real person behind a technology company. Spider-Man, on the other hand, belongs to generations of children who don't need a press tour to know who he is. With more Spider-Man movies and TV shows on the way, that connection isn't going anywhere. Garfield sounded keenly aware of that.When the discussion turned to just how broadly beloved Peter Parker is, Garfield described an almost universal instinct to want to be the wall-crawler, no matter how old you are:I don't know if there's a fictional character that's more popular universally, in modern times. It's instinctive, instinctive. It's like primal. Like, I want that. I want to be that. I AM that. I'm gonna do that.I can't really argue with him. There's something wonderfully simple about a kid putting on a red mask and immediately deciding they can climb walls. Garfield understands that feeling firsthand. Long before he was cast as Peter Parker, he dreamed of wearing the suit himself. He even told CinemaBlend back in 2010 that playing Spider-Man was "every skinny boy's dream."(Image credit: Sony)The irony is that Garfield has built a career full of performances that could have defined another actor. There's his heartbreaking turn in The Social Network, his Oscar-nominated work in Hacksaw Ridge and tick, tick... BOOM!, and his relationship drama We Live in Time. Yet when he announces another movie, someone inevitably asks about the web-slinging.Still, Garfield doesn't sound especially frustrated. He told the outlet that he's less interested these days in chasing outside validation and more focused on making work that genuinely matters to him. Playing a character he loved as a child was a massive achievement, and the attention that came with it taught him plenty about fame.I appreciate that attitude, especially after his version of Spider-Man got an unexpectedly emotional second act in No Way Home. After all, audiences cheered when he stepped through that portal. He still seems to understand what the character means to people.Hopefully, Garfield has decades of great performances ahead of him before anyone has to write that obituary. But if "erstwhile Spider-Man" really does appear in the first sentence, at least he won't be surprised.The Uprising star's Spidey films, along with all the Marvel movies, are available for streaming with your Disney+ Subscription.