Ben Mendelsohn for Spider-Man: HBO's Barry Has Marvel Fans Thinking About It

Potential spoilers for this week's episode of Barry. The latest episode of HBO's Barry featured some trademark dark humor and violence, but also a series of hilarious jokes about television press junkets, particularly how short they are and the insane questions that sometimes get asked. In the episode, Sarah Goldberg's Sally finds herself suddenly promoting her own TV show, a series that carries some heavy thematic topics. While engaging in a question from a reporter about a woman caught in an abusive relationship, she's caught off guard by the follow-up question: "Who do you think should be the next Spider-Man?" Sally replies, "....Ben Mendelsohn?"

The thought of Mendelsohn, best known to some fans for starring on Rogue One, Ready Player One, and Captain Marvel, has some Marvel fans pondering the idea. With an entire Spider-Verse of webslingers out there, there has to be a universe where Ben Mendelsohn is Peter Parker, right? Right?? The show's gags about superhero junket questions didn't stop there, with Sally asking Elsie Fisher's Katie if she got the Spider-Man question, replying "I think I said Harry Styles or something." Katie then asked, "Did they ask you about Cake Boss?" which prompted this reply from Sally: "Yeah, is he one of the new Avengers?"

To make the Spider-Man question even funnier, series co-creator Bill Hader tells TheWrap it was inspired by something that happened to him. "Yeah, a version of that happened to me when I was doing press for The Skeleton Twins. Someone asked me about suicide, and then when I was answering they cut me off and said, 'What do you think about Ben Affleck as Batman?'...I was like, 'Oh man...'" Well Hader has now incepted the idea in some Marvel fan's heads as you can see below.

Barry airs new episodes every Sunday at 10 PM on HBO.