Warning, there are big spoilers ahead.
So, yes, throughout Spider-Man: Far From Home, it just seemed like Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury was … off. Was this another one of Mysterio’s tricks or illusions, or was there something else going on? Well, as it turns out, as we learn in a post-credit scene: for the entire film that wasn’t Nick Fury (or Cobie Smulder’s Maria Hill) but, instead, it was Ben Mendelsohn’s shapeshifting Skrull, Talos – who is subbing in for Fury while Fury is off in outer space tending to other matters (like drinking tropical spirits).
Director Jon Watts says this twist was paramount to this story because, really, Mysterio could never trick the real Nick Fury.
“I mean, it was always this idea of how are you really going to trick Nick Fury because his superpower is suspicion. He’s suspicious of everyone,” says Watts. “And then once I saw Captain Marvel, it all just sort of clicked. But I didn’t want to make that a part of the main body of the story. So it always really made sense as a tag and you’re making a conman movie in a lot of ways. So why not have just that one last little reversal that makes you think about everything differently. If you go back and watch the movie again now knowing that, there are some funny little nods.”
And even star Tom Holland wasn’t aware of this twist while he was shooting Far From Home.
Holland tells us, “Most of the end credit sequences were actually shot in the last month. I was completely unaware of them, so I had no idea what was going on.” Holland continues, ”I actually think while we were shooting the film there was no end credit scene. So yeah, I was unaware of how the end credit scenes would pan out. Obviously, as a fan of the movies, and a fan of the MCU, I couldn’t be happier with them.”
But now Watts is taking it one step further, as he is known to do. “I love the crazy conspiracy theories. I feel like a real retcon king here,” says Watts, who also made headlines suggesting the kid in Iron Man 2 is young Peter Parker.
So here’s Watts explaining: “There was one crazy thing that was a fan theory, that I didn’t get to work into the movie. But it was really funny about Fury cutting his toast diagonally. Do you know that one? It’s the question that he’s asked in Captain Marvel, to prove that he is who he is and he says he doesn’t like his toast cut diagonally. But there’s a shot in Age of Ultron of him cutting a piece of bread diagonally. So it spawned all these crazy fan theories of is that not really Nick Fury in Age of Ultron? Is he a Skrull? So I read all that stuff.”
So, yes, maybe that was Talos the whole time in Age of Ultron, too?
You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.