In the grand scheme of things, Peter Parker’s parents Richard and Mary have never really been positioned as focal points of the character’s mythology. Everyone knows that the future Spider-Man is raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and the latter’s murder is what convinces the teenager that great power does indeed come with great responsibility.
For years, the Parkers didn’t even have a backstory or explanation as to why they had been killed, but lately, they’ve resurfaced in countless comic book arcs under various guises. The accepted story is that they were secret agents who died in a plane crash while on a mission, something that’s never really impacted any of the Spider-Man movies, although The Amazing Spider-Man 2 came pretty close to making some huge changes to canon.
After barely being mentioned at all in Sam Raimi’s trilogy, we got full-blown flashbacks in Marc Webb’s duology that tied the Parkers to the research being undertaken by Oscorp. Not only that, but there was a wisely deleted scene that would have revealed that Peter’s father had survived the plane crash and was alive all along.
Of course, Uncle Ben hasn’t factored into the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man franchise yet, never mind Peter’s parents, but we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones that told us Thor: Love and Thunder will be adapting Jane Foster’s cancer storyline well before it was confirmed by Natalie Portman, and that Taskmaster would be Black Widow‘s villain – that it will eventually be revealed in the MCU that Richard and Mary Parker were agents who worked for S.H.I.E.L.D.
In the comics, Nick Fury recruited Richard Parker into the CIA, and it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine Samuel L. Jackson’s cycloptic spy keeping something like that a secret from Tom Holland’s Peter. And if this is indeed the route that Marvel is heading down, then it gives Spider-Man another reason not to trust anyone and could also result in an interesting new spin on his backstory as well as an intriguing character arc.
