What does Spider-Man: Far From Home’s ending mean for future movies?

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• When is Spider-Man: Far From Home released in cinemas? Who’s in the cast? And how does it connect to Avengers: Endgame?

Honestly, forbidden. Not allowed. And we’ll know if you cheat, so unwatchers look away now…

Still here? Well then, like us you’ll have seen the shocking conclusion to Spider-Man: Far From Home in the first post-credits scene, where it’s revealed that in his dying moments fake superhero Mysterio, aka Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal) set a plot in motion to frame Spider-Man for his death and the earlier drone attack on London.

As if Spider-Man’s life wasn’t hard enough already, now the whole world now believes he’s a cold-hearted villain – and Quentin Beck didn’t stop there. As part of his dying declaration, he also shouted out Peter Parker’s name (and included a photo) for the whole world to see, blowing Spidey’s identity and putting a target firmly on his back.

As Spider-Man himself cries out – “What the F***?”

Yes, Far From Home has now thoroughly exploded the Spider-Man franchise as we know it, with a key component of his superhero life – his dual identity – now gone, and his status as a hero called into question.

And once the shock had subsided, the cliffhanger had us wondering all sorts of things about Spidey’s future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and more specifically in his own future solo film.

While once Peter could have relied on his superhero pals to speak up for him, his mentor Tony Stark has died, Captain America has retired and the whereabouts of the other Avengers are a mystery, with Thor, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel and the entire team namechecked at different points as being absent.

Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) could have maybe helped, but as we discovered in the second post-credits scene the super-spy wasn’t actually helping Peter at all during the film, instead enlisting shapeshifting alien Skrull Talos (Ben Mendelsohn, returning from Captain Marvel) to fill in for him with mixed results. The real Fury, apparently in deep space, can’t help Peter. So what will happen to him?

Well, a lot of that depends on what Marvel and Disney announce over the coming months, with the future of the MCU still shrouded in mystery. While we do have some idea of the new superhero movies being worked on – Black Widow, Shang-Chi, The Eternals – there’s no current word of any team-up movies in the realm of the Avengers films or Captain America: Civil War, meaning we might have to wait until the already-mooted third Tom Holland Spidey movie to get a conclusion to this story.

If that is the case, it could be that the film picks up fairly close to the end of Far From Home, with Peter Parker on the run from the police as his name is dragged through the mud by J Jonah Jameson (assuming Simmons’ cameo is intended to continue beyond the 2019 movie).

Truly separated from his support network and forced to fend for himself for the first time, in some ways this would be a great opportunity to lean into Spider-Man’s lone wolf heroism and personal inventiveness (something Tom Holland’s portrayal has slightly left behind), while also offering a very different type of story than we’ve seen in Homecoming and Far From Home.

Alternatively, assuming Peter isn’t in too much trouble with the police and director Jon Watts want to continue with his high school story, we could be witnessing a story of Peter Parker as a celebrity, outed as a hero and forced to deal with his notoriety while still going to class, doing homework and having a personal life. If nothing else, who wouldn’t want to see the reaction of Flash (Tony Revolori) when he realises his super-idol is really his high-school nemesis?

And either of these approaches lend themselves well to whatever kind of villain Spider-Man would face in the hypothetical third film, possibly a bad guy looking to take out Peter to boost his reputation, or some sort of vigilante who believes Mysterio’s lies and thinks he’s taking down a dangerous criminal.

Either way, the most obvious candidate is clear – Kraven the Hunter, aka Sergei Kravinoff, a Russian-born master hunter who has frequently tried to hunt Spider-Man like big game in the comics.

Over the years and through three different Spider-Man franchises, so many of Peter Parker’s iconic foes – Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Electro, The Sandman, Venom, The Vulture, Mysterio – have already cropped up, and it’s rare that Sony’s adaptations have repeated villains (the main exception being two different Harry Osborn Goblins).

Instead, each new Spider-Man film has delved deeper and deeper into the back catalogue of Spidey’s Rogues’ Gallery, and after Homecoming and Far from Home did such a good job with two of the wallcrawler’s weirder and wackier enemies (who knew the Vulture could have such gravitas?) Kraven seems like he’d be another good fit. Plus, out of all the Spider-Man villains he’s more or less the only recurring foe to have been left out of the movies so far, so now seems like the perfect time for him to turn up.

Sure, he’s a slightly silly character who dresses up in animal furs and barely has superpowers, but Kraven also starred in one of the most critically-acclaimed Spider-Man comics of all time – Kraven’s Last Hunt – and the untitled Marvel/Sony Spider-Man sequel could do a lot worse than to tap into that.

Of course, trying to predict the story beats of a film that’s probably not even written yet is a bit of a mug’s game, and it could be that the next Spider-Man story takes things in a completely different direction. Peter Parker could even turn up in a Marvel movie before then for all we know, continuing on his new challenges so that his next movie doesn’t just have to pick up a storyline from years before and hope fans are up to date on it all.

Still, we can’t help but hope at least some of our predictions are right. If nothing else, we’d love to see Kraven’s dynamite leopard leggings in the flesh…

Spider-Man: Far From Home is in cinemas now