New Spider-Man: Far From Home clip further introduces the Marvel multiverse

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME!

Have you seen Avengers: Endgame yet? Based on the box office reports, I’m going to assume that only about seven of you answered “No” there. For the rest of you, I hope you’ve also checked out the latest trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home as it picks up where Endgame left off on one major story point. I’m specifically referring to how the Avengers seemingly broke the Marvel Cinematic Universe with their time-travelling antics… and it appears it was all intentional. By meddling in past events, the heroes created all kinds of alternate timelines, properly introducing the concept of the multiverse into the MCU.

The new Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer then took this angle and ran with it as Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury introduced Jake Gyllenhaal’s Quentin Beck aka Mysterio as being from another Earth in the multiverse. According to Fury, it was the “Snap” in Endgame that opened up rifts between our dimensions and made this multiversal adventure possible.

If this turn of events has left your fanboy senses tingling, well then a brand new clip for Far From Home is going to blow your geeky mind. The clip was actually released on Wednesday already but aired exclusively on The Ellen Show where Gyllenhaal appeared as a guest. A bootleg of the clip has now found its way online though, so we can check it out for ourselves. Well, for as long as the folks at Marvel don’t take it down.

Hoo boy! If you can’t watch the clip above, it’s an extended version of the scene seen in the trailer as Fury introduces Spider-Man to Mysterio. Here though Gyllenhaal goes further to explain that not only is he from another Earth, he’s specifically from Earth-833 and that Spider-Man’s world is Earth-616.

Both of those should be very familiar to longtime comic book readers, especially the latter. First originating in Alan Moore’s Captain Britain, Earth-616 was the designation given for the prime Marvel Comics universe. This has actually been referenced before in the movies as well, showing up on the whiteboard of Dr Erik Selvig as an Easter egg in Thor: The Dark World. Meanwhile, Earth-833 was revealed in the Dan Slott-written Spider-Verse crossover to be the home of Spider UK – a British version of Spider-Man who also served as his world’s Captain Britain.

Here’s where things get a little tricky though. In the comics, the Marvel Cinematic Universe exists already as Earth-199999. In fact, all the universes, even the animated shows, have been officially designated before (you can check the full list here), so referring to the MCU as Earth-616 kinda breaks this established lore. Not that anybody outside of die-hard fanboys like myself would ever even notice, but it’s still a slight niggle.

Here’s another interesting point though. In a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in Avengers: Endgame, when Steve Rogers travels back to the 1970s and accidentally runs into Peggy Carter’s office, you can hear her talking about a supernatural incident that’s “not lightning” and that an agent named “Braddock” hasn’t checked in. In the comics, Brian Braddock is actually Captain Britain, the lead of the comic where the Marvel multiverse was first birthed. The Spider UK of Earth-833 is also named William Braddock.

As for Earth-833, in the comics, it was one of the first universes that got destroyed by the “incursions” in Secret Wars. Y’know, that massive Jonathan Hickman-penned comic book story arc that I keep theorizing is what the MCU is quietly building up as their next big narrative.

How do those two things relate? I really can’t tell you right now, but I can tell you that it has me damn well excited!

Last Updated: May 10, 2019