Spider-Man: Multiverse igniter far from home: what happened?

Spider-Man: far from home had a lot on it. It's not just the first Marvel movie to be premiered after the end of the era Avengers: End of the game, but it is also officially the last film of the current phase of the Marvel Film Universe.

So after End of Game came out in April and put an end to most of the weaknesses of the MCU, Far from home seemed about to introduce new wrinkles that would push Marvel's films towards their next big screenplay.

This was particularly true after Marvel and Sony Pictures (who owns the Spider-Man film rights and co-produced both Far from home and his predecessor, Spider-Man: Homecoming) released a teaser for the hot film End of GameHeels, the one who came with a warning spoiler attached. Some of the spoilers it contained seemed obvious and direct to Marvel's casual fans or recent End of Game viewer. But for comic fans, the teaser was alluding to a possible development that could dramatically change the MCU in the future.

Now that Far from home is out, we can see this clue for what it really is. And what seems to be a big bag o 'nothing.

(Spoilers for both Spider-Man: far from home and Avengers: End of the game to follow.)

One of Far from homeTrailers sounded our first look at a multiverse

Let's go back to May 9, 2019. The sorrow of Avengers: End of the game was still fresh in the minds of Iron Man and Captain America fans. Curiosity about the future of the remaining Avengers had not yet been defined. But Marvel could not wait for the reactions of End of Game follow their course; there was another upcoming MCU movie.

Has come a long new trailer for Spider-Man: far from home, the first to recognize the events of End of Game – including his death of character. (Early Far from home trailers had danced around the specifics of both Avengers: war in the infinite and his sequel, while Marvel and Sony started promoting the new Spider-Man several months before EndgamHe debuted.) And he offered more than glimpses of the next step for the Avengers' youngest hero; he also seemed to throw an intriguing key into the mix with just a short line of a new character, played by Jake Gyllenhaal.

In the trailer, Gyllenhaal appears in the role of Quentin Beck, a mysterious, who seems to come out of nowhere to save Peter Parker and his classmates a supernatural disaster while they are at their high school Eurotrip. Mysterio is presented as a hero who seems to be even stronger than Spider-Man, and he says there is a simple reason why S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers had never met him before: he comes from a different version of the Earth. In fact, according to Mysterio, there is tons other lands.

"There are many realities, Peter," he tells Parker as the two gather in a secret cave somewhere. "This is Earth-616. I come from Earth-833. We share identical physical constants. "

The trailer then separates from this scene without too much detail, because it's a trailer, and that's the goal. But as Alex Abad-Santos explained for Vox when it was released, Mysterio's specific reference to a multiverse, as well as the different versions of the Earth he mentions collectively, were huge for comic readers.

"For Marvel fans, these numbers, especially" 616 ", are like sirens," he wrote. "These are direct references to the comics on which Marvel's films are based, which have their own history of parallel universes, modified chronologies and all sorts of manipulations of reality – the kind of things that could be clues allowing the MCU goes next. "

It's important to know that this is not the first time the multiverse was mentioned in the MCU. In End of Gamefor example, Ancient One of Tilda Swinton tells Bruce Banner, aka Hulk, that there are several timelines in the universe, which is why she fears that the Avengers are traveling back and forth in time and are searching with things in the hope of canceling the slam Thanos. . In addition, it had already referred to these deadlines in its Strange doctor beginnings – but she never provided details of other Potential Lands that may exist within them.

So, if the multiverse does exist in the MCU, the thought will go away, and that includes other specific versions of the Earth with different inhabitants and heroes, maybe the events of Avengers: End of the game not as convincing as they appeared at the beginning. Maybe Tony Stark and Steve Rogers are still alive (or in the case of Steve, young and sexy) somewhere! Or maybe Marvel was planning a way for other Spider-Men, like Ultimate Spider-Man and Spider-Man: in the Spider-Verse stars Miles Morales, to join the group of Avengers.

In an instant, Mysterio alone had given the MCU something totally new to work with – or at least, it seemed. And once Far from home Marvel fans might have some idea of ​​how this possible development of the plot would unfold.

Nevertheless, fans of Marvel Savvier were reluctant to adopt this theory. As Abad-Santos wrote, "Mysterio is a classic villain of Spider-Man who, in comics, is a master of illusion and deceit and really can not be trusted." Mysterio was supposed to be not only a villain, but also a trader. telling lies. When he drops a bomb, as if he comes from a completely different world, he will of course trigger detectors of lies.

So much for the multiverse – or is it?

In the end, it seems that skeptical viewers have made the right choice. Far from home Quentin "Mysterio" Beck is finally nothing more than an ex-employee dissatisfied with Stark Industries who has armed his rage against the mistreatment that Tony Stark has made of him and his scientific colleagues. All the act of superheroes is a trick; Beck is a fraudster who uses cutting edge technology to create realistic but illusory situations that make him look like a hero while putting Spidey in grave danger. Everything he said to Peter Parker at their first meeting, including his mentions of Earth-616 and Earth-833, was part of his lie.

And the scene in which Beck reveals this lie does everything possible to emphasize how easily anyone who subscribed to the idea of ​​the multiverse was played. Beck and Peter are absolutely right at the bar where they went to celebrate after teaming up to defeat one of the film's Big Bads. Their conversation ends when Peter naively declares that Mysterio is the true successor to Iron Man and hands over to Beck the AI ​​program that Tony Stark initially left to Peter, called E.D.I.T.H.

But as soon as Peter leaves, guess what? Beck begins to sneer maniacally and tells bartenders and his colleagues that they can break the character now – the trick worked! Mysterio was a hoax, made for the explicit purpose of fooling little Peter Parker. And frankly, says Beck, he is surprised that people as qualified as S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury and Maria Hill, police officers, thought Beck was absurd. history in the first place. (Although the second of two scenes in the film's credits gives a context as to why this could have been.)

From the moment we see Beck laughing with his group of vengeful scientists, who played the role of customers and employees in a lively bar, it is clear that Marvel has just launched the reference Earth-616 as a joke.

Therefore, Far from home will not have as large and significant impact on the MCU as on End of Game made. What appeared to be a promising twist – to offer the first concrete insight into the existence of parallel worlds within the MCU, which could be articulated around new superheroes that we have not yet encountered, or even different versions of those we already know and love – was nothing but an allusion to the obvious villain of the movie being, you know, the obvious villain.

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige tried to mitigate the setbacks in an interview with Fandango after Far from homeThe Liberation. "It just means that he was full of crap," he said to the question whether Quentin Beck's statement confirms that there are no others Lands in the MCU, and therefore no multiverse in its future. "I mean, in Strange doctorwe hear the old One speak of the multiverse, so we have already established it as something. "

So, according to Feige, the multiverse remains a "thing". But, although we can not be certain that Marvel has no other plans that would alter the status quo, we will be referring to something as specific and well known. to his most devoted fans feels unnecessarily hard.

Far from home is not a bad movie for that reason; it's always fun, and there are sequences of stellar actions. But it's unfortunate that the biggest lie of Mysterio – well, besides pretending to be a hero and offering a mentor to a mourning Peter who recently lost the thing closest to his father figure at the time of Tony Stark's death – was also empty.