Spider-Man: Far From Home’s post credits scene introduced a game-changing problem for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man to overcome – but the movie also offers a simple solution to it mere minutes later. In the wake of the renewed deal between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios (thanks, in part, to Tom Holland himself) Spider-Man is now set to appear twice more in the MCU. Fans of the wall-crawling hero are relieved since the breakdown of negotiations had threatened the shocking cliffhanger Sider-Man: Far From Home had left for the upcoming sequel to complete.
In Far From Home’s mid-credits scene, Mysterio (Jake Gyllehaal) and his acolytes famously played a devastating trump card against Spider-Man. Beck’s criminal colleagues released doctored footage from his final confrontation with Spidey in London, which not only framed the web-head as his murderer – and the mastermind behind the fake Elemental plot – but also revealed his secret identity to the world. Though Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men had several close calls, they were never outed to such an extent, meaning that this end to Far From Home is an unprecedented and seemingly irreversible moment in Spidey’s cinematic history. And the move could have huge implications for Peter Parker's corner of the MCU.
Indeed, many fans have speculated that it will be a somewhat bleaker affair, with the teenage hero now likely to be a fugitive from the law due to his unsupervised vigilantism, the destructive (yet bogus) Elemental attacks and Beck's apparent death. However Spider-Man: Far From Home’s post-credit scene illuminated a very easy way for the series to return Spidey to his traditional status-quo. As fans of the film know, super spies Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) were the ones who recruited and managed Spidey in his campaign against Beck and the Elementals. Or it seemed as if they did, at least initially. Moreover, the film’s conclusive stinger revealed that these MCU mainstays had never been there at all – they were façades for Captain Marvel’s Skrull general Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and his wife Soren (Sharon Blynn) who were posing as the duo on the orders of the real Nick Fury.
The sequence lent the film another twist, along with teases for the unfolding story of Nick Fury and the Skrulls. Yet this shape shifting could also be a key part in Spider-Man’s immediate future. Certainly, due their unique abilities, Talos or Soren could very easily impersonate Peter in public – whilst the real Spider-Man makes a simultaneous appearance – to “prove” that they are not one and the same, and thus restore Spider-Man’s secret identity. A plot like this might seem a little contrived, but this kind of scenario has occurred before in Spider-Man’s extensive mythos. One famous comic book story-line saw a feverish Peter confess his double life to not just Harry Osborn and Mary Jane Watson, but Gwen and George Stacy too. In true Spidey fashion, Peter regretted his mistake soon afterward, so he engineered a situation where the group saw him being accosted by the real Spider-Man to fool them once more. The “Spider-Man” of this plot was Hobie Brown, aka the Prowler, to whom Peter had lent his costume.
But this was not a once and done deal either. Brown later reprised the role of Spidey for an extended period of time when Peter was head of Parker Industries, and the CEO wished to distance himself from his crime-fighting alter-ego, whom he publicly named as his bodyguard. Plus, Daredevil also recruited various heroes – including Patriot, Iron Fist and Nightcrawler – to imitate the web-head in court when Spidey faced a series of pressing legal issues. Given that many of these characters have yet to appear in the mainstream MCU, it’s unlikely that they will assist Peter in his current predicament, but the Skrulls could serve the same purpose. After all, it’s not hard to envision Talos and Soren helping Spidey out considering their interactions in the post-credit scene itself.
The Skrull general might have displayed his usual snark as he filed his report to the real Fury, but it was clear that Mysterio had embarrassed him tremendously. It wasn’t just that he hadn’t been able to detect Beck’s illusions; Talos had been unable to prevent damage to a series of historical cities and failed to provide adequate safeguards for the youthful Spider-Man. As such the Skrull leader could be easily guilted into helping Spider-Man regain his secret identity once more. Be that as it may, this is not to suggest that Spider-Man 3 should immediately roll back on Spider-Man: Far From Home’s cliff-hanger by using this story line. The duality of Peter Parker and Spider-Man is a key tenet of the character’s lore and rare, momentous changes like this one, have opened various narrative avenues for the sequel to explore. This story-telling potential should definitely be considered by Marvel and Sony, to ensure that Mysterio’s public unmasking of Spider-Man retains both its power and its promise for years to come.