For the most part, mid- and post-credits scenes being included in Marvel Studios’ movies are meant to tease what’s to come in future flicks, or to amuse the viewer. But when it came to Spider-Man: Far From Home, its own mid-credits scene was so important that I felt those events should’ve been shown before the credits even had a chance to roll.
If you’re up to speed, then you know of how Mysterio’s final vengeful act saw Spider-Man framed for the destruction in London – and his secret identity being outed to the world. Not only that, but J.K. Simmons returned as J. Jonah Jameson to add salt to the wound! With a percentage of moviegoers still oblivious to how they should stick around for the credits of Marvel films, it goes without saying that a fair amount of people missed out on the establishment of the new status quo.
Gripes aside, it’s worth noting that director Jon Watts wanted to mirror the first Iron Man movie released in 2008, which ended with Tony Stark willingly outing himself as a superhero:
“The other interesting parallel for the reveal is that it’s similar to the way the first Iron Man ends. The whole movie, we’re asking, ‘Is Peter going to be the next Iron Man? Who’s gonna step up?’ At the end of the first Iron Man, Tony chooses to reveal his identity to the world. And when you’re dealing with Peter Parker, he has the worst luck, so everything bad that could happen always seems to happen to Peter.”
Hey, if the filmmakers truly wanted to make Peter the new Tony, then throwing the whole secret identity thing out the window was one way to do it. Still, it was for the best to not execute the twist in the same way, as Watts continued:
“So we thought, why not take that choice away from him? If he was potentially thinking — after facing all these lies and all this deception —about maybe revealing his identity to the world, let’s take that choice away from him and suddenly thrust him into a world that we’ve never seen before on film.”
With six solo films headlined by Webhead preceding Spider-Man: Far From Home, it really is important to chart new territory, lest the franchise become stale. If anything, Watts’ words echo those of Kevin Feige’s, so it seems certain that the next entry into the saga will be something drastically different from what came before.
