Spider-Man: Far From Home: Mysterio Explained

With Spider-Man: Far From Home making its way around the world in more ways than one it’s time to breakdown one of the movie’s big talking points which comes in the form of Mysterio, the enigmatic hero that is lining up to replace Iron-Man as Earth’s Greatest Protector.

Throughout this article, I’ll be breaking down everything that you need to know about Mysterio as well as what could happen to the character in the future.

There will be heavy spoilers so if you haven’t seen Far From Home yet and don’t want to know anything about the character then I highly recommend that you turn off now.

With that out the way let’s get into my breakdown of Mysterio.

Mysterio Far From Home Biography

In Far From Home Mysterio aka Quentin Beck is apparently from Earth 833, a planet that was supposedly ravaged by the Elementals. Earth 833 in the comics doesn’t actually have a Spider-man as Peter Parker was never bitten by a radioactive spider and therefore the character never came to be.

Instead on this Earth it was, in fact, William Braddock who was bitten and he took on the pseudonym ‘Spider-UK.’ Spider UK is able to jump from dimension to dimension, however when he went to return to his earth he found it destroyed in a cosmic event known as the incursion.

In Far From Home, even though this backstory is pretty accurate to the comics, we actually discover that Mysterio is the personification of a group of people who all have serious vendettas against Tony Stark with Quentin Beck heading them up.

B.A.R.F.

Beck was the original creator of Barf which appeared in Captain America: Civil War and whilst the technology was revolutionary Stark only used it for a Therapeutic Experiment and then mothballed it much to Beck’s dismay.

In addition to this many of the people that now work with Beck have been scorned in the past by Stark’s achievements including a scientist from the original Iron-Man that was berated by Obadiah Stane for not being able to recreate the arc reactor.

Mysterio’s Motives

Since Tony Stark Sacrificed himself to save the universe, Beck has viewed his death as an opportunity to rise to the forefront and using his incredible holographic technology attached to Drones he is able to convince the world, J Jonah Jameson and Spider-man that he is the planet’s greatest hope.

This is all a set up to obtain Edith, the A.I. tool created by Tony Stark that has a fleet of drones which are capable of protecting the planet should another Thanos level threat arrive. Upon his death Stark entrusted this power to Peter, however, due to the doubt that Beck casts in the wallcrawlers head throughout the film, the character decides to pass over the ownership of it to Mysterio.

This enables Mysterio to launch a full-scale attack on London which will cement his spot as Earth’s mightiest protector but luckily Spider-man is here to put an end to that plan and after Mysterio recklessly uses his drones to fire at the webhead and is caught in the blast zone, he succumbs to his wounds.

Did Mysterio Die At The End Of Far From Home?

Now one of the big questions floating around the film is ‘Did Mysterio Die?’

Well, personally I don’t believe that he did. In that scene, he is able to use a duplicate to make it appear as if he is. Beck has more than enough technology to make it look like he is dying which he does several times throughout the film and he also had access to EDITH which is the only thing that verifies his death.

At no point did he really have the proper opportunity to film the segment that reveals that Peter Parker is Spider-man and after my second watch of the film today I’m convinced that he’s still out there somewhere.

It’s something I’ve kinda gone back and forth on and we won’t know for definite for a while but the entire plot of Far From Home is about deception which not only comes in the form of Mysterio but also in Nick Fury and Maria Hill.

Mysterio Comic Origin

Mysterio debuted in The Amazing Spider-Man #13 from 1964 and was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Though this is noted as his first appearance, he was later credited as being responsible for an alien invasion that turned out to be a hoax from issue two of the same run.

Mysterio has been a member of the sinister six at several points throughout his history and if he was to return I definitely think he would fit in well with Scorpion and The Vulture who was also scorned by stark.

Mysterio hasn’t just gone after Spider-man either, In the story Daredevil: Guardian Devil, Mysterio believed that he could find a more worthy arch-enemy in the hero and tormented him with visions of the Antichrist, which really hit home for the character due to his Catholicism. Though Mysterio committed suicide at the end of the run he was later brought back to life.

In Old Man Logan, Mysterio managed to trick Wolverine into murdering all of the X-men and this became a huge plot point of the story that pretty much drove the man formerly known as Weapon X to put away his claws for good.

It’s clear that whilst he may look pretty goofy he’s actually one of Spider-man’s greatest foes and I definitely think that this transfers to the screen amazingly in Gyllenhaal’s performance.

In the comics, Mysterio is a former special effects artist turned bad and the new film beautifully weaves this into the prior MCU films through the Civil War callback.

All in all, it makes for a great villain and he is definitely one of the stronger foes in the MCU at this point having beautifully brought down Spider-man by the film’s close.