SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME’S SHOCK ENDING
Where does the webhead go from here?
Spider-Man’s secret identity has always been his greatest weakness – a fact exploited on the big screen by everyone from Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin to Michael Keaton’s Vulture. But the truth has always remained contained. Not so after Spider-Man: Far From Home, in which (spoiler alert!), for his last trick, Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) broadcasts Peter’s secret to the entire world, with the assistance of online shock jock J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons, huzzah!), framing him as a villain for good measure.
It’s a moment that plays like a cracked mirror reflection of Tony Stark’s triumphant unmasking at the climax of 2008’s Iron Man. But where Stark’s super-heroic secret identity only increased his celebrity, blowing Pete’s secret puts himself, his friends and Aunt May directly in the firing line. Public knowledge of Spidey’s identity must be the thrust of any Spidey threequel.
“Now people know Peter’s identity. People now think he’s a villain…
[so that] means everything’s different,” Kevin Feige told Fandango. “Where it goes, we’ll see. But it’s exciting that it once again sets us up for a Peter Parker story that has never been done before on film.”
Never on film, but Spider-Man’s secret identity has been revealed time and again in the comics. In the early days, Peter typically explained away his unmasking as a hoax. That could still work for Tom Holland’s wall-crawler. After all, in the era of ‘fake news’, you can’t believe everything you see on certain less-than-reputable news outlets
– a category Jameson’s Infowars-aping dailybugle.net certainly falls into.
Spidey’s most significant unmasking came in the MCU-inspiring Civil War arc. Peter eventually put the genie back in the bottle that time with the help of Doctor Strange, Tony Stark and Reed Richards, who concoct a magic-technovirus-thingy to erase everyone’s knowledge of Peter’s secret. Don’t expect the MCU to take a path anywhere this convoluted, but Doctor Strange neuralysing the planet isn’t outside the realm of possibility. Or perhaps Peter will fully commit to life without a secret identity, and embrace his destiny as the natural successor to Tony Stark. Only time (and a whole lot of turmoil) will tell.
‘It sets Us Up for a story that has never Been done on Film’