When word first got out that Captain Marvel was going to introduce Skrulls into the MCU, the internet saw a wave of paranoid theories accusing just about every one of the franchise’s biggest stars of being shape-shifting aliens. And while the speculation quickly died down after the release of Carol Danvers’ solo debut, a post-credits scene in the recent Spider-Man: Far From Home seems to have given the conversation a second wind.
As those who stuck around to the end of Peter Parker’s latest flick will know (and if not, then be warned that spoilers lie ahead), the movie’s second post-credits scene reveals that the two characters we thought were Nick Fury and Maria Hill had actually been Skrulls for the entirety of the film. What’s more, the real Fury is shown to be off in space somewhere, helping the Skrulls with a mysterious project.
These revelations have inspired ComicBook.com to come out with the theory that Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame may have also been a Skrull in disguise. Their reasoning stems in part from the EDITH system that Tony passed on to Peter. Though the wall-crawler’s new glasses were used to unearth detailed information on the people and activity around him, they evidently failed to detect that Fury and Hill weren’t actually Fury and Hill.
Perhaps this was just an oversight on the writers’ part, but ComicBook.com has offered two alternative suggestions: either Tony never learned about Skrulls, despite frequently working with Fury, or for whatever reason, he didn’t want his technology to detect the species.
In any case, it’s hard to imagine the new theory winning over many believers, if only because the revelation that Tony was actually a Skrull in Endgame would feel like a huge cop-out. After fans got all emotional over Iron Man’s heroic sacrifice, imagine the backlash if it turned out that viewers had actually been shedding tears over some anonymous alien.
Regardless, it’ll be interesting to see where Marvel is heading with Spider-Man: Far From Home’s post-credits twist. And seeing how the franchise is now finished with its 2019 slate, the fans have plenty more time to speculate on the possibilities.