Spider-Man: Far From Home Almost Made Mysterio a Spoiler

With a master illusionist such as Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) in the fray, it was expected Spider-Man: Far From Home would have its fair share of twists and turns. The twists lasted throughout the duration of the movie, even extending to the film’s post-credits scene. Spoilers up ahead for Spider-Man: Far From Home!

The team at Collider spoke with Far From Home writers and at one point, there was a version of the treatment in which Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio was actually a Skrull. Though Mysterio wasn’t a Skrull — at least what we saw of on-screen — the film did introduce two in the post-credits scene, doubling-down on the fact the shape-shifting aliens are alive and well in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“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? How many distractions can we get away with before people want to murder us? [The Mysterio Skrull reveal] was an early idea about why he was doing everything he was doing.”

Co-writer Chris McKenna was sure to point out that idea never made itself into the script, though it was heavily discussed in the film’s writer’s room.

“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,” he echoed. “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. 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.”

Though it was heavily implied Mysterio was killed in Far From Home, it’s certainly nothing something that’s for sure — especially when talking about someone with the villain’s skillset. After all, Skrulls change back to their native shape after being killed, something we saw happen more than once in Captain Marvel.

Where would you rank Mysterio on your list of MCU villains? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Spider-Man: Far From Home is now in theaters. Avengers: Endgame will be available digitally July 30th ahead of a home media release on August 13th.