If you’ve seen Spider-Man: Far From Home, you’ll know by now that one of the biggest twists in the movie has nothing to do with Spidey at all. In a post-credits scene, it’s revealed that the Nick Fury and Maria Hill we’ve been following in the film so far are actually Skrulls in disguise, a species of shape-changing aliens first introduced in Captain Marvel. This opens up the possibility of both explaining a previous Marvel plot hole and also shedding entirely new light on Fury’s role in the upcoming MCU movies.
In Captain Marvel, the titular hero encounters a young Nick Fury and suspects him of being a Skrull. To prove his identity, Fury mentions that if toast is cut diagonally, he can’t eat it. This helps establish that he is indeed the real Nick Fury.
A small, throwaway line, you might think. But then consider Avengers: Age of Ultron, the only film where we see Fury out of his famous superspy trench coat, doing something as mundane as smearing butter on bread and eating it – even though it’s cut diagonally.
As ScreenRant explains:
It happens after the heroes have fled to the home of the Barton family to lick their wounds, and Nick Fury arrives to have a secret meeting with Tony Stark. After joining the rest of the team in the farmhouse kitchen, Fury makes himself a sandwich. But since director Joss Whedon and Jackson were still years away from learning about Captain Marvel‘s insight, neither knew to take care with how Fury sliced his sandwich. Which also meant they didn’t notice as he enjoyed his late night snack… after slicing it diagonally.
The inconsistency was taken to be a coincidence at first, but a seriously unfortunate one for fans of cohesive, well-planned continuity. In the scene with Carol, Fury could have revealed absolutely anything, any quirk, any superstition, or any random detail about his life or past. Yet for some reason, the filmmakers decided to choose the one eccentricity openly contradicted elsewhere in the MCU. The chances of that happening seem so insignificant, it begs the question that perhaps it’s no mistake at all.
Coincidence? We think not. Since the scene with Fury eating the diagonally cut bread contradicts what we learn about him in Captain Marvel, what if the Fury we saw in Age of Ultron was, in fact, a Skrull as well, called in to impersonate Nick? This opens up a world of possibilities for Nick Fury, as it means he has the ability to be in multiple places at once, both on Earth and in the deepness of space, where we saw the real Fury chilling on a spaceship at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home.
Since Marvel is now famously opening up the MCU to the bigger universe by introducing more of the galactic side of the franchise in the next few films, will we get to see two Nick Furys? One guiding the Earthly team of Avengers, while the other assumes command of the more cosmic-based Avengers, and possibly the Guardians of the Galaxy as well. It’s certainly possible, and for now, you can color us intrigued.
