WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MAJOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME SPOILERS
Avengers: Endgame was all about endings. The end of the Avengers as we know them. The end of Thanos’ devastating new world. The end of Tony Stark, who heroically sacrificed himself to vanquish the Purple One (no, not Prince) once and for all. But its moments of closure also spark new questions about the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s future. Going forward, the series’ ‘present day’ is now 2023 – five years have passed since Thanos snapped his fingers in Wakanda in 2018, and the Snap victims have returned, untouched and un-aged, in a world that the grief-stricken survivors have langoured in for half a decade. It’s a bold new era for Marvel’s heroes to deal with – and thrillingly, we’ll start seeing how it all works out sooner than expected.
As the new Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer, above, confirms, Peter Parker’s next solo adventure takes place after the events of Endgame – debunking rumours that it would lead into Infinity War and end with Parker and classmates on the school bus. No, instead it’s onwards and upwards – delving head-first into the consequences of the cataclysmic disruption caused by all that super-powered finger-clicking. Here’s what we know so far about how the events of Avengers: Endgame are affecting the MCU as it moves towards Phase 4, as glimpsed in the Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer.
The Amazing Spider-Mourn
In Avengers: Endgame, Tony Stark made the ultimate sacrifice – the one person with something to lose gave it up in order for everyone else to keep what they lost. His death, and its bountiful legacy, is clearly felt in the Far From Home trailer – the world seems very much aware that Stark is to thank for Thanos' demise. Street murals pay tribute to Iron Man with flowers, candles and framed pictures, suggesting he's redeemed himself from the controversial status he held in the eyes of the public through Age Of Ultron and Civil War.
Peter Parker and Happy Hogan are mourning on a more personal level – the former having witnessed Stark’s death first hand in the battle at Avengers HQ, and the latter presumably still helping Pepper Potts take care of young Morgan. Emotional cheeseburgers all round, please. In the aftermath of Endgame, Peter is still donning the Iron Spider suit that Tony made for him – one of many Spidey suits expected to appear in the film – and it’s clearer than ever why Far From Home sees Parker desperate to take a break from his friendly neighborhood Spider-Man duties.
Rebuilding The World
Once all the heartfelt reunions are over with as the snap survivors and revived victims come back together, there’s some serious rebuilding to be done. As we saw in Endgame, the world never cleaned itself up in the five years since half the population disappeared – New York’s Citi Field stadium is derelict, Scott Lang’s street in San Francisco is piled up with abandoned vehicles and rubbish – and now that everyone’s back, it's going to be a big effort to get things back to some semblance of normality.
Going back to the first Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer with all this new context, it seems there’s more to Peter Parker’s charity work than first appeared. Now knowing what we know, it seems like the Homeless Support benefit that Spidey attends could very well be in aid of those brought back from the Snap and are in need of homes and resources.
Further clues that that’s the case? Happy is carrying a hefty $500,000 cheque signed by Pepper Potts, and funded by the Stark Relief Foundation – an organisation previously mentioned in Age Of Ultron, reported by Maria Hill to be “on the scene” in Johannesburg after the epic brawl between Hulkbuster Tony and a Scarlet Witch-addled Hulk. In short, the SRF pays to help out with the mess the Avengers leave behind – and that certainly fits the bill for the post-Endgame chaos sure to be unfolding.
AWOL Avengers
Avengers: Endgame wasn’t just a symbolic farewell for the classic Avengers. The group really has disbanded – Tony Stark and Black Widow are dead, Cap is an old man having lived a lovely alternative life with Peggy, Thor is “off world” (aka living it up with the Guardians in space), Hawkeye is enjoying his family time, and the Hulk isn’t so Hulky anymore. With Captain Marvel reportedly “unavailable” (note: Peter is the first person to actually refer to Carol Danvers as ‘Captain Marvel’) and Black Panther likely catching up on all things Wakandan, that leaves some serious superhero vacancies. No wonder Nick Fury comes a-knocking on Peter’s door when the Elementals show up –maybe we’ll find out further down the line why Doctor Strange wasn’t able to help.
Either way, the Earth is in a pretty vulnerable place with most of its established heroes scattered to the wind, and its remainders are picking up the slack. As Peter himself has it in this trailer: “The world needs the next Iron Man.” That’s why Fury recruits Jake Gyllenhaal’s Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio, when he shows up at a crucial time. On that note…
Into The Multi-Verse
If one word in the new Spider-Man trailer is sure to prick the ears of Marvel fans everywhere, it’s “multi-verse” – specifically in the context of Quentin Beck and Nick Fury revealing to Peter that this mysterious new hero comes from another Earth. The reason? “The Snap tore a hole in our dimension,” says Fury. Now that is an interesting wrinkle.
Of course, the multi-verse is somewhat introduced in the events of Avengers: Endgame – when the Avengers go back in time to nab the Infinity Stones, they create alternate timelines that need to be closed off by Captain America, who returns the stones at the precise moments they were taken. But that’s all wrapped up in time travel – and Fury is saying is that the use of the Infinity Stones themselves could have destabilised the boundaries between dimensions.
There are three ways that this supposed introduction of the multi-verse in the MCU could play out, partially depending on how Far From Home plays out Mysterio’s arc. (The character has always historically been a Spider-Man villain, though everything we’ve seen so far in Far From Home pits him as an ally of Peter Parker.) 1) Quentin Beck is telling the truth – he really does come from another Earth, and arrives in our reality as a result of all that snapping. 2) Quentin Beck is lying – he’s from our Earth, but he sees the confusion in the aftermath of the Snap as his opportunity to make a dramatic arrival and claim he’s from another reality. 3) It’s a bit of both – the multi-verse really does now exist, but Quentin Beck isn’t necessarily from there.
It’s a hugely tantalising question – not only could the multi-verse and alternate realities potentially be a major narrative drive in where the Marvel Cinematic Universe goes in Phase 4, but the brilliance of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse already showed how much potential there is when mixing up dimensions in comic book movies.
New Friendships
At the end of Avengers: Endgame, we see Peter and Ned reunite – both still the same age, meaning they were both snapped by Thanos and revived by Tony. With the pair joined by Zendaya’s MJ and Tony Revolori’s Flash Thompson on their school holiday, it seems like those two were snapped too – but if some of the other vaycay-ing classmates seem unfamiliar, they could be kids who weren’t snapped and are now five years older than they were during the events of Homecoming. As the world adjusts to this new age-shifted era, Peter’s school holiday increasingly looks like a bonding initiative to integrate classmates into their new year groups.
Bureaucratic Nightmares
Lovely as it is, bringing the Snap victims back to reality is sure to cause all kinds of logistical nightmares – one of which is hinted at in the previous Far From Home trailer. Peter’s European holiday finds him in need of a passport – and when he goes to pick his up, the post office has a lengthy queue. And sure, the post office is always busy, but after the un-Snap, people the world over will be faced with documents to collect, forms to fill out, and items to send. In short, it’s going to be a bureaucratic shitshow.
And then there’s Peter Parker’s new passport – which, in a shot from the first trailer, conspicuously omits mention of years. Now we know that it’s because the date of issue will read ’19 July 2023’. As for his birthday, that should still be ’10 August 2002’ (he was 15 in 2017’s Homecoming). Even though Peter’s missed five years of ageing, is he officially 21 now? Or is he still classified as being 16, despite having an additional five years on his passport since his date of birth? All of these curious points seem ripe to be addressed by Peter and pals. The Endgame is over – welcome to the next level.
Spider-Man: Far From Home arrives in UK cinemas on 2 July.