Due to Sony’s control of the character’s movie rights, Marvel probably never expected that it would be allowed to bring Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now that he’s been seen slinging webs in Captain America: Civil War, though, people have begun to wonder what Peter Parker was up to while the other Avengers movies were happening. As it turns, Spider-Man: Homecoming star Tom Holland has also been wondering about that, and he just confirmed a fun fan theory about his character’s place in the MCU that involves a small retcon to 2010’s Iron Man 2.
Let’s back up: A lot of the plot in Iron Man 2 revolves around Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark becoming a big celebrity after the events of the first movie, prompting him to set up a Stark Expo where villain Justin Hammer inadvertently releases an army of evil Iron Man ripoffs. The Expo is being held in Queens, which Civil War establishes as the home of Peter Parker, and there’s a brief gag where a young boy in a toy Iron Man mask pretends to fight off some of the bad robots. The real Iron Man drops in, saves the kid, and flies off, while the kid looks on in awe—or at least as much awe as one can express while wearing a plastic Iron Man mask. As the fan theory goes, that kid is actually a young Peter Parker.
Speaking with The Huffington Post, Holland says he recently asked Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige about that scene, and Feige reportedly confirmed that the kid is, in fact, Peter Parker. “Maybe I’ve just done a big, old spoiler,” Holland added, “but it’s out there now.” He also noted that it’s “cool” to think that Peter Parker has been hanging around in the MCU since the beginning.