Spider-Man Far From Home: Five questions we want answered

Spider-Man: Far From Home gave us a taste of the post-Endgame MCU. It is going to be more low-key for a while and the stakes are not going to be high, but there is still a lot of fun and a few interesting ideas.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is the sequel to the 2017 film Spider-Man: Homecoming. It continues the story of awkward, earnest teenager Peter Parker who is wrestling with the idea of being a superhero and all the responsibilities that come with it.

He goes on a European vacation and discovers that it might not be that easy to escape the powers that were bestowed on him by that genetically engineered spider.

A lot of surprising things happened in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Here are five questions we have after watching the film.

1. Is there a multiverse?

So, Quentin Beck or Mysterio as he was christened was the real villain as many including this scribe thought. He was a tech wizard previously in the employ of Tony Stark and had a whole team of other tech wizards poached from Stark Industries. Feeling wronged by Tony, he and his associates constructed an elaborate plan, involving drone hologram projections, to build up Mysterio as a superhero who is saving the world from the Elementals. While the Elementals exist in Marvel Comics, in the movie they were just illusions.

But Mysterio did not come from another world. He did, rightly, call the world of the MCU Earth 616, which is the prime Marvel Universe continuity (also called canon), but he was a liar. As already said, he had worked under Tony.

So, is there a Multiverse in the MCU or not? We think there is. Marvel Studios will soon have to introduce X-Men (including Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool) and Fantastic Four and the only way to make these previously Fox-owned characters interact with the Avengers is to introduce them from other dimensions. Also, the mere mention of Earth 616 might signal that there was a nugget of truth in Mysterio’s lies.

2. Secret Invasion?

One of the most famous storylines in Marvel Comics is Secret Invasion which involves invasion by the Skrulls and it is revealed that many MCU heroes were actually Skrull impostors, who wanted to control the earth and its resources. While the Skrulls were introduced in Captain Marvel, there were much more benign and were actually oppressed by the Kree. The post-credit scene in Spider-Man: Far From Home revealed that “Nick Fury” and his second-in-command “Maria Hill” were actually Talos and his wife Soren. This explains the incompetence shown by Fury when he could not recognise Mysterio for the fraud he really was. This was only the second bombshell the film dropped after the main cut had ended. This does not confirm the Secret Invasion storyline. We did hear “Fury” discussing “Kree sleeper cells”, however, and there may be more malignant Skrulls around with darker purposes and the real Fury may have tasked Talos to guard the earth against others of his race. And Fury may have been on a mission in space, perhaps still fighting the Kree.

3. JK Simmons permanently back as J Jonah Jameson?

The mid-credit scene of the film contained a delightful surprise. JK Simmons appeared as J Jonah Jameson and (like always) went on to denounce Spider-Man. Instead of The Daily Bugle, he is the editor of DailyBugle.net, news website, to be with times of digital age. He also broadcast a clip of Mysterio revealing the superhero’s real identity (more on that in the 4th question). Simmons played the role of the crusty newspaper editor who hates the wall-crawler with a passion in Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man trilogy like he was born to play it. We hope this is not just a gag and a callback and Simmons is actually back in the role.

4. Spider-Man’s real identity is out. What now?

Spider-Man is Peter Parker, and the whole world knows it. The appeal of Spider-Man as a character is that nobody knows who is behind the mask. Peter Parker, by far the most popular character to take up the identity, values his secret superhero persona for obvious reasons. One is that when bad guys knows about it, his loved ones will be in danger. And this has happened in the comics too. For instance, in the Civil War story, Peter himself took off his mark theatrically on live TV and things became… bad for him. The people close to him, Ned, Aunt May, MJ, might die at the hands of bad guys.

5. Why did Vulture not figure in Far From Home?

Michael Keaton’s turn as Vulture is one of MCU’s villainous highlights. We were hoping he would be back. And he will be, just not in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Vulture was locked up at the end of Homecoming. There are rumours of Sinister Six’s appearance in the third film. Sinister Six is a group of six Spidey villains. The roster changes, but Vulture has been there more often than not. If we see Doctor Octopus, Sandman and so on in the third film, the bad guy squad may finally appear in one of the films.