Marvel has finally revealed why the real Nick Fury didn't drop by in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Both of the Marvel/Sony Spider-Man movies saw the wall-crawler team up with characters from the MCU; in the case of Spider-Man: Far From Home, Tom Holland's Peter Parker found himself crossing paths with Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury and Cobie Smulders' Maria Hill.

Or so it seemed. Spider-Man: Far From Home's post-credits scene revealed that Nick and Maria had actually been busy in space, with Skrull agents impersonating them on Earth. It was an amusing and somewhat unexpected twist, implying that Fury was setting up an organization called SWORD to protect Earth from extraterrestrial threats. Still, it raised an odd question; Mysterio was claiming that the entire world was at risk as part of his hoax. Why hadn't the real Nick Fury gotten involved with a situation on this kind of scale?

Related: Now Spider-Man Is Out Of The MCU, What Happens With Nick Fury & The Skrulls?

The Art of Spider-Man: Far From Home offers a fascinating explanation. It contains an interview with Smulders, in which she reflects that the whole film is basically a normal working day for Fury and Hill. She particularly enjoyed the opening scene, which she considered to be business as usual for the MCU's two most prominent super-spies. "In this movie, you get to see a little bit of what life is like for us on the road," she reflects, "which you don't really get to see in the other movies because it's not as exciting." Smulders is fascinated by the idea that Fury and Hill are usually in the field, and that they're quite used to a brief investigation escalating into a threat that risks the entire planet. "To them, it's just another day at work," she notes. This presumably explains why the real Nick Fury wasn't called in; this was nothing special.

Nick Fury and Maria Hill oversee S.H.I.E.L.D. In The Avengers

Smulders' comment has profound implications for Fury and Hill's background role in the MCU. It's important to remember that Talos, the Skrull who was impersonating Fury on his orders, believed Mysterio when he claimed to originate from another dimension. As far as Talos was concerned, Earth really was facing a Multiversal threat that could destroy the planet. And yet, for all that's the case, he considered this to be "just another day at work" for anyone trying to impersonate Nick Fury.

According to tie-in comics, after the fall of SHIELD in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Fury and Hill became freelance troubleshooters. They began to travel the globe, using SHIELD resources Fury had secreted away, and taking advantage of SHIELD loyalists who'd moved into positions of influence. Smulders' comment hints at the scale of the crises they've been dealing with; strange events that escalate into potential world-ending catastrophes at speed. They presumably feel somebody else needs to be filling this gap now that they've headed off into space to help establish SWORD - and that's the role Talos and his wife Soren were asked to play on Earth. Hopefully Marvel will choose to reveal some of their other adventures, perhaps in a Disney+ TV series.

More: The Big Nick Fury Question After Spider-Man: Far From Home

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