Warning: Spoilers from "Spider-Man: Far From Home" to follow.
SALT LAKE CITY — “Spider-Man: Far From Home” director Jon Watts has weighed in on whether Jake Gyllenhaal will return as Mysterio, the film’s undercover villain.
In the movie, Quentin Beck (Gyllenhaal) dupes Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) into believing he’s a hero from an alternate reality. Instead, he’s an angry former Stark Industries employee with a penchant for special effects.
During a final battle in London, Parker dodges a collection of drones using his “Peter Tingle” (the film’s version of Spider-Sense) before blocking a bullet fired by Beck. The misfired weapon appears to kill the villain, and EDITH — an AI embedded into Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) glasses — confirms as much.
But is it possible Mysterio is hiding out somewhere? Watts said in an interview with SlashFilm that Beck’s survival is up to interpretation.
“It’s Mysterio, so who knows? He definitely seemed dead,” Watts said.
Watts also discussed changing Mysterio’s backstory to wrinkle Stark’s legacy — which already included mentoring Spider-Man and working to protect the world — by depicting Beck as someone cast aside by Iron Man.
“At the end of his life, (Tony) made this incredible sacrifice to save the world, but along the way, he definitely made a lot of mistakes and no doubt created some enemies,” Watts said. “To me, that’s really interesting to explore that and the complications of that.”
Comicbook.com also reports that producer Eric Carroll previously hinted that Mysterio’s character arc could resemble Baron Mordo’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor) in “Doctor Strange.” In that film, Mordo declares himself opposed to Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) after the latter uses magic to drastically reverse a disaster.
Similarly, Carroll said they wanted to establish a relationship between Spider-Man and Mysterio that would ultimately lead to betrayal.
“We wanted to give them time to have relationships so when and if we get to do something different with Mysterio, it really feels like a betrayal,” he said. “We’re hopefully setting the stage for something really spectacular and that feels really Spider-Man, which is, again, if we get to do something else with this character, then they’ve already got this really personal relationship.”
Considering Mysterio outed Parker’s secret identity at the end of “Far From Home,” there certainly would be a lot of ground to cover if Beck returned in a future film. CBR.com also notes that whether or not Mysterio is alive, his allies are still on the loose — meaning the villain’s legacy lives on.