Mysterio was one of the last major Spidey villains not to get the live action treatment, finally getting his day in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Most fans of the character seem to love the spin the film put on him, keeping the basics of his origin story (disgruntled special effects technician wants revenge) and updating it in a way that neatly slotted the character into existing MCU continuity.
His holographic illusions made for some of the best moments of the movie, too, with a highlight being the terrifying ‘mental maze’ within which he trapped Spidey. Throughout the sequel, he was continually pulling the wool over the other characters’ eyes, but now it appears that there was one last twist the writers discarded.
Collider recently interviewed Far From Home scribes Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers about the movie, where Sommers revealed that:
“There were some early, early versions of this movie where Mysterio was a Skrull… There were a lot of Skrull versions of the story early on. When you’re doing a con artist movie, what we finally landed on—we sat down and talked about how do we keep on fooling the audience, how do we keep on having a lot of fun reveals? How many distractions can we get away with before people want to murder us? [The Mysterio skrull reveal] was an early idea about why he was doing everything he was doing.”
I’m very glad they didn’t go with this. Honestly, I’m not even sure the last minute reveal that Nick Fury and Maria Hill were secretly Skrulls during the movie was a smart call. In retrospect, it kinda makes sense given Fury’s behaviour. But throwing the reveal that Mysterio had been a Skrull all along onto the pile? It’s a deviation too far from the character’s comic book version and would inevitably leave audiences second-guessing whether every other MCU character might secretly be one (if they’re not already).
Fortunately, it seems they discarded the concept at an early stage, as McKenna explains:
“I don’t think it ever made it to paper, necessarily, but we talked about it for a while. But we talked about a lot of stuff. We spent a lot of time in a windowless room with [director] Jon [Watts], and the folks from Marvel and Pascal Pictures, just talking it through. That’s what it is, in those early stages. It’s just a lot of talk. Going down different roads and just gradually refining things until you have a story.”
Well, good to know. What do you think, though? Would Spider-Man: Far From Home be better if Mysterio was a Skrull, or is that a twist too far? Let us know in the comments section below.
