'Spider-Man: Far From Home' Almost Included Major Twist for Mysterio [SPOILERS]
By Ryan Carroll
This article contains spoilers for ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home.'
Spider-Man: Far From Home brought a number of twists and turns to its wall-crawling protagonist, from the emergence of a relationship between Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and MJ (Zendaya) to the truth behind Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal). This week, it emerged that an earlier version of the story contained a radically different twist for the character, with Mysterio originally being a Skrull.
Per Collider, the twist of Mysterio being a Skrull was included in an early version of the film to keep with the film’s theme of deception. “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,” co-writer Erik Sommers said. “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?”
“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,” co-writer Chris McKenna added. “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.”
Ultimately, Mysterio’s secret was shifted, with the character becoming a disgruntled Stark Industries employee. A Skrull-related revelation did linger in the film, however, with a post-credits scene revealing that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Colbie Smulders) were actually Skrulls in disguise.
As for us, we’re fascinated to see the process that went into crafting all the dramatic reveals in Spider-Man: Far From Home--and we can only hope that the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to surprise us.