The Marvel Cinematic Universe is continuously revealing connections and Easter eggs that have gone unnoticed by fans – sometimes for the span of many years. In fact, the Spider-Man: Homecoming franchise has revealed a couple of deep-cut connections to previous MCU films, and thanks to the press tour for the upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home we can confirm another one!
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During an interview with Jake Hamilton at the Spider-Man: Far From Home press junket, franchise star Tom Holland once again confirmed that his Peter Parker made his first MCU appearance way back in Iron Man 2!
As per Holland:
“Well Spider-Man is actually in a previous Marvel movie. My version of Spider-Man. Do you know where it is?… My Peter Parker is in ‘Iron Man 2’, but at the end when all the robots are attacking all the people, and the little kid’s wearing an Iron Man mask, and the bad robot recognizes the Iron Man mask as a threat, and the kid puts his hand up. Then Tony Stark lands next to him and blows him away and goes ‘Good job kid!’ and flies away. That’s the theory… No it was actually me, it was me. Kevin Feige confirmed it.”
Holland further deepened the sweetness of this particular piece of trivia, by reminding fans that the actual kid we see in the aforementioned scene is Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau’s son, Max.
You can catch the scene of Peter Parker’s unofficial MCU debut at the 1:40:00 mark of Iron Man 2 – though Holland is really to re-confirming something that we’ve known for years now. Holland first dropped the reveal during the press tour for Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2017, which was then confirmed by director Jon Watts:
“You make the joke about that, but basically when I rewatched all the Marvel movies, I was watching them like that,” Watts said. “I was watching all these other movies and being like, ‘What if that little kid at the Stark Expo was Peter Parker? In the Iron Man mask.’ Like, he’d be about the right age for that. And he loves Tony Stark… So it’s this thing where, because it’s not completely figured out, that you can just go back and basically write fan fiction for those movies, then the fan fiction becomes reality. A lot of the Easter eggs in this movie just started by rewatching the movies.”
Holland once again echoed that little retro-fit MCU Easter egg last year, after getting the biggest confirmation needed to make it official canon:
“I can confirm that as of today,” Holland said. “I literally had a conversation with Kevin Feige only 20 minutes ago. Maybe I’ve just done a big, old spoiler, but it’s out there now. It’s cool. I like the idea that Peter Parker has been in the universe since the beginning.”
In the end, it does make sense to establish this little MCU crossover, long after the fact. Iron Man 2‘s climatic battle took place at the Stark Expo in Queens, NY; Peter Parker lives in Queens, and has been a science geek/prodigy since he was a little kid. It would only make sense that Peter would want to attend the biggest science/tech convention in the world being held in his own back yard, and given that Mr. Parker has been the true mettle of a hero, and an affinity for Iron Man, it’s believable that he’d be the one to stand up to that Hammer Tech drone – standing in the same venue where Steve Rogers had bravely signed up for the military tour that would change him into Captain America, decades earlier.
If you like this connection between Spider-Man and Iron Man and Cap, you’ll be happy to hear that Peter Parker’s Academic Decathlon coach Mr. Harrington was also the same student who let Bruce Banner into Culver University’s computer lab, just before he ‘Hulked Out’ to fight General Ross in The Incredible Hulk!
Avengers: Endgame is in theaters; Captain Marvel is now available on home video. Spider-Man: Far From Home hits theaters on July 2nd. Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 is slated for release in 2021.
