A decade before playing Spider-Man, Tom Holland delivered a standout early performance in the BBC's 2015 miniseries Wolf Hall, portraying Gregory Cromwell, son of Henry VIII's chief adviser Thomas Cromwell. The piece argues that this understated role, in which Holland plays a young man perpetually out of his depth amid Tudor court intrigue, remains an underappreciated part of his filmography and offers early evidence of the dramatic range he has since shown in projects such as Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.

Wolf Hall, directed by Peter Kosminsky and adapted by Peter Straughan from Hilary Mantel's novels, starred Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's son who became Henry VIII's fixer. Holland's Gregory spends the six-episode series watching his father manipulate the court, and the performance still ranks highly on his Rotten Tomatoes profile, above several of his Spider-Man and Uncharted films, despite being frequently overlooked due to his later Marvel fame.