Having trouble keeping track of Spider-Man's big-screen adventures?
With a cinematic legacy spanning nearly 20 years, multiple directors, and numerous actors,
we don't blame you.
So to help out, we'll break down all the events of Tom Holland's appearances as your Friendly
Neighborhood Spider-Man, step-by-step.
What the F-?
Surprisingly, Peter Parker's first appearance in the MCU doesn't come in Captain America:
Civil War.
Instead, that honor goes to Iron Man 2, where Tony Stark saves a little kid during the climax
of the film.
While Tony's flying in to stop Ivan Vanko from using weaponized Hammer drones to attack
the attendants at the Stark Expo, a young boy in an Iron Man mask raises his toy gauntlet
to stop one of the drones.
Iron Man swoops in, blasts the robot, and tells his pint-sized fan…
"Nice work, kid."
… before blasting off again.
Fans have long speculated that the masked child was actually a young Peter Parker, years
before Marvel got the go-ahead from Sony to officially add Spider-Man to the MCU.
After all, the Stark Expo takes place in Queens, and Peter is a long-time science geek who
wouldn't miss the opportunity to go to an event like that.
Tom Holland told The Huffington Post in 2017 that as far as he and MCU head honcho Kevin
Feige are concerned, that unnamed boy is definitely Peter Parker.
The actor even, quote, "triple-confirmed" it, so it's about as canonical as one can
possibly be.
By the time Spider-Man: Homecoming hit theaters, audiences had seen Peter's Uncle Ben die on
the big screen twice in two different franchises, so it's no wonder that the filmmakers of Spider-Man:
Homecoming chose to skip over that particular part of Spider-Man's origin story.
That said, there's been enough hints and references to make it clear that the MCU version of Peter
definitely had an Uncle Ben that he lost at some point.
In Spider-Man: Far From Home, Peter's luggage looks second-hand and bears the initials "BFP."
The luggage almost certainly belonged to one Benjamin Franklin Parker before Peter used
it.
According to Spider-Man: Homecoming writers Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley,
an earlier draft of the film would have seen Aunt May explicitly mention her dearly departed
husband.
With all that, we can peg Uncle Ben's death at around six months before the events of
Captain America: Civil War, since that film shows Peter telling Tony that he's had his
powers for "six months."
Peter even indirectly mentions that he blames himself for Uncle Ben's so-far mysterious
death by saying that,
"When you can do the things I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen, they
happen because of you."
In other words …
"With great power comes great responsibility."
Six months after Peter gets his powers, Tony drops by Aunt May's apartment to sample some
of her walnut date loaf and meet the mysterious, arachnid-themed superhero who's been showing
up on YouTube.
Peter explains what he's all about as a young superhero, and Iron Man adds him to his team
of Avenger-hunting Avengers, as part of his ongoing feud to take down Bucky.
So Peter heads to Berlin, does some sightseeing, and annoys Tony Stark's bodyguard and pal,
Happy Hogan.
"shush"
Then he gets a costume upgrade courtesy of Tony Stark, and fights against Captain America,
Winter Soldier, Falcon, Ant-Man, Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye.
Spider-Man acquits himself nicely in the fight until the whole melee ends with Tony's best
friend, Rhodey, wounded by friendly fire.
As for Peter, he suffers a pretty frightening fall, although he ultimately emerges unscathed
unlike Rhodey.
The whole experience seems to put Tony off of the idea of using literal teenagers to
help him catch a brainwashed former KGB assassin, which is probably for the best.
However, Peter seems to have had a good time, as he filmed pretty much the entire battle.
After the harrowing events of Captain America: Civil War, Peter heads back to Queens with
his new, more technologically advanced Spider-suit.
Tony tells Peter that the Avengers will "let him know" if there are any future missions,
and in the meantime, he should go to school and focus on being a local hero.
Two months later, while swinging around on his after-school crime-fighting rounds, he
interrupts an ATM heist organized by crooks who are using high-tech and extremely dangerous
weapons.
Peter eventually follows up on the weapons dealers and gets into a fight with their leader,
the Vulture.
Tony sends a drone to bail Peter out and give him yet another talking to about how Peter
should stop trying to fight supervillains.
"Can't you just be a…
Friendly…
Neighborhood Spider-Man?"
"But I'm ready for more than that now!"
"No, you're not!"
Peter half-listens mostly to the parts about how his suit has a ton of capabilities that
he didn't know about and gets his buddy Ned to hack the suit and give him full access.
Round two with the Vulture in Washington, D.C. ends with Peter trapped in a warehouse
for the night, and when he heads off for round three on a ferry ride in New York, it turns
out that Iron Man and the FBI had organized a sting operation that Peter inadvertently
interrupts.
Disappointed in his protégé, Tony takes back the suit, and Peter recommits to his
regular life and asks his crush, Liz, to prom.
Unfortunately, Liz's dad is the Vulture, forcing Peter to take him down in his original low-tech
suit before the winged villain can steal a ton of valuable Stark tech.
Spider-Man succeeds, Vulture goes to prison, Liz moves to Oregon with her mom, and Tony
offers Peter a place on the Avengers roster if he wants.
Instead, Peter turns him down, choosing to focus on being a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man
for a while.
"Last chance: Yes or no."
"No."
"OK.
That's kind of a Springsteen-y, working class hero vibe that I dig."
When Thanos and his Black Order invade Earth in search of the ultra-powerful Infinity Stones
in Avengers: Infinity War, Spider-Man hops right in to help Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Bruce
Banner, and Wong in defending Earth.
Dr. Strange is kidnapped by the Black Order's Ebony Maw, and Peter chases after him, hitching
a ride on Maw's spaceship before it flies away completely.
Tony quickly joins him, giving the younger hero the even more high-tech super suit last
seen at the end of Homecoming to help him battle Thanos' crew of aliens.
Spidey and Iron Man free Dr. Strange, blast Ebony Maw out into space, and land on Titan,
Thanos' home planet.
They're quickly joined by some of the Guardians of the Galaxy: Peter Quill, Drax, Mantis,
and Nebula.
“Woah woah woah woah!
Please don’t put your eggs in me!”
The heroes prep to fight Thanos, who soon arrives to take Dr. Strange's Time Stone to
add to his Infinity Gauntlet.
The heroes put up a valiant effort, but their plan goes south, and Thanos teleports to Earth
after nabbing the Time Stone.
Soon after, he gets the Mind Stone from Vision, puts it all together, and snaps his fingers,
causing half of all life in the universe to fade away.
Unfortunately, Peter's 50/50 probability comes out on the negative side, and he turns to
dust in Tony's arms on an alien planet.
"I'm sorry."
After Thanos kills off half of the universe, the remaining half is left to mourn their
fallen friends and family.
Unfortunately for Peter, it doesn't seem like there are many left to remember him.
Virtually all of his friends along with Aunt May are "blipped" by Thanos after the Mad
Titan snaps his big purple fingers.
For the five years between Thor killing Thanos in the beginning of Avengers: Endgame and
when Captain America gets the gang back together, it seems like the only one left to mourn Peter
is Tony Stark.
He even keeps a framed picture of his young protégé in the kitchen of his cabin home.
Luckily for Spider-Man, Tony eventually feels guilty enough to rejoin the Avengers.
Once he's back on the team, he develops a time travel machine, goes back in time to
steal the Infinity Stones before Thanos could destroy them in the present timeline, and
reconstructs another Infinity Gauntlet.
And with one snap of Hulk's mighty hand, the dusted half of the universe is restored exactly
how they were when they disappeared.
Thanos from a previous timeline heads to the present in order to re-snap everything into
oblivion, but every superhero or superhero-adjacent character stands in his way including Spider-Man.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh this is nice.”
Peter joins the fight, meets some of his new superhero peers, murders a bunch of aliens
with his suit's "Instant Kill Mode," and then watches as Tony Stark gives his life to dust
Thanos' crew with a snap of his own.
After all that space alien craziness, it's back to normality for everyone's favorite
wall-crawler in Spider-Man: Far From Home well, until he finds himself suddenly embroiled
in a fight against multiversal Elementals alongside a superhero from another universe:
Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio.
To make things worse, Peter's struggling to live up to Iron Man's legacy — and to control
a high-tech, sunglasses-based AI system called EDITH.
Plus, his feelings for MJ are coming to a head.
Puberty, man!
"You look… really pretty."
"And therefore I have value?"
"No — no, that's not what I meant at all.
I was just — "
"I'm messing with you."
Desperate for a mentor, Peter gives up the sunglasses to Beck, whose magic powers and
big brother attitude seem to make him a better successor to Tony than Peter could ever hope
to be.
Unfortunately, Beck's running a con on Peter, as he's amassed a villainous group of former
Stark Industries employees to help him trick the world into thinking he's the next Iron
Man.
Peter learns the truth and eventually defeats Mysterio, with the villain seemingly dying
in the final battle.
Spidey returns to New York having saved the day, and everything seems to be going well.
Until, that is, J. Jonah Jameson of TheDailyBugle.net leaks Mysterio's dying confession and reveals
to the entire world that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
So we’re all set up for a nice, neat follow-up to that cliffhanger, right?
Welp, after Sony and Disney failed to extend their Spider-man agreement in August 2019,
the entire Spidey future is up in the air.
Does Sony continue where Far From Home left off?
Do they cash in on the meme and go with a Spider-Man: Homeless theme?
The possibilites are endless, and also unpredictible - nobody’s spidey-sense is tingling just
yet.
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