We learned recently that Spider-Man: Far From Home writers weren’t given access to the Avengers: Endgame script and I explained how that ruins the entire movie. That’s because Far From Home is part of something much bigger. It’s not a standalone movie, it’s part of a franchise, and that’s why what I said before really matters. It’s part of the MCU’s bigger narrative, so Sony and Marvel have to do better when it comes to managing their shared Spider-Man property. In what follows, I’ll address the huge Spider-Man 2 plot hole that ruins the movie because of how it relates to Endgame, but I’ll also explain how this continuity issue can be fixed.
As I said before, Far From Home is a fantastic achievement and it’s fun to watch it in cinemas. But just because it’s getting impressive reviews and topping $1 billion at the box office doesn’t excuse the fact that Sony messed up.
As a side note, the first time when Sony made this mistake was back with Homecoming. The first Spider-Man movie was set in a far more distant future, eight years after the events in The Avengers. That detail would place the action after Infinity War in the MCU timeline, which isn’t possible. Marvel has addressed the matter a few times since then. “It was eight years, I believe,” Joe Russo said in an interview. “It was a very incorrect eight years.”
Getting back to Far From Home, the film features an even bigger issue: EDITH and the drones that Tony Stark made to defend the planet from whatever might threaten it.
Far From Home doesn’t explain when Stark created and deployed the drones and the EDITH artificial intelligence glasses, but it’s easy to assume it all happened in the five years between Infinity War and Endgame. Stark must have added Peter Parker as an admin user for the highly sophisticated defense system even before he knew that he would be able to resurrect the kid. That speaks volumes about Stark’s inner demons, but we’re not here to discuss his arc.
Now, let’s get back to that epic battle in Endgame. Where the hell was EDITH and the drones? Far From Home implies the system is orbiting Earth and ready to be deployed at any time. And since Friday can detect Captain Marvel entering Earth’s atmosphere, it’s safe to say that whatever space stations Stark Industries may have deployed are still functional after 2014 Thanos drops in. So Stark could trigger them to help with the fight, yet he doesn’t. They might not do much against Thanos’s forces, but that was obviously an “all hands on deck” situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH7rBSMfOZM
A simple explanation might be that the system wasn’t ready when Thanos appeared. But if that’s the case, who finished it and who deployed it? Stark dies in that battle, of course. Once he’s gone, others could have continued his work and turned EDITH into what it was. But would Tony trust anyone else? Would whoever finished it still give Peter Parker control over the drones? He is just a kid, after all.
Then there’s the whole name to consider. Even Dead I’m The Hero (EDITH) is the kind of AI name Stark would think of, especially before the time heist. The implication here is that the whole defense system was created before the Avengers went back in time. And it was supposed to function regardless of whether the world would have access to Iron Man or Spider-Man. It doesn’t seem likely Stark would have left those EDITH glasses to Peter if the drones weren’t battle-ready.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkTcgYw8n-A
Not to mention that the writers needed EDITH to be a personal yet powerful final gift from Tony to Peter for added emotional impact. The glasses aren’t from Tony-and-friends-who-helped. When Tony entrusted them to a Peter who wasn’t even alive at the time, he must have had a functional product.
Another argument in support of the idea that Tony completed the project before the final Endgame battle is that Quentin Beck and all those disgruntled employees are aware of its existence. What’s puzzling is that they know Peter is one of the few people with access to EDITH, and the most likely to give up that access without realizing what’s happening. We’ll ignore the fact that Beck knows all of this in spite of not having worked for Tony for a while now.
Again, all those details matter a lot because this is a colossal MCU story where everything counts. And in this case, I’m not even nitpicking. The drones play a massive role in the Far From Home story. Without them, you have no reason for Beck to go after the EDITH eyewear, and no climactic battle in the third act. That’s why EDITH ruins the continuity between this movie and Endgame for the time being.
Marvel, of course, has all the time in the world to fill in the gaps and come up with an explanation that would make sense for both Endgame and Far From Home. Something as simple as having the space shuttle that launched the drones into orbit scheduled to fly a few days after Thanos’s attack. After all, Tony had other projects in development, and nobody expected to fight a Thanos from a different timeline when they embarked on the time heist. The EDITH launch could have proceeded according to plan in spite of the bittersweet tragedy that hit Earth. A massive extraterrestrial force was defeated just as life was restored in the universe, and some of Earth’s mightiest heroes died in the process. All the more reason to go ahead with the drone space program.
Hopefully, Spider-Man 3 won’t give us any headaches when it comes to the bigger MCU picture, although we’ll have a long while to wait before the third installment in the new Spider-Man trilogy hits theaters.
