The first trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming mostly focused on Peter Parker’s struggles to go back to normal high school life after fighting with (and against) the Avengers in Civil War. The recently released second trailer, meanwhile, was more about his relationship with Tony Stark. Still, the spot did show off a little more of Peter’s civilian life, and one shot included a very clever, very subtle Easter egg.
One scene in the trailer shows Peter and his classmates in a gym while watching a video for “Captain America’s Fitness Challenge,” presumably the MCU equivalent of the Presidential Fitness Test. Cap himself hosts the video, but he’s wearing his Avengers-era costume, so it’s presumably old. Makes sense, since, in current Marvel continuity, Cap’s a fugitive. This means he’s either still beloved enough to be a patriotic fitness icon, or that Peter’s school is too cheap to buy a new tape now that he’s turned traitor. Anyway, we digress.
Listen to a man who used a secret serum to instantly get strong tell you how to get in shape, kids.
The Easter egg is the book that Zendaya’s character is reading while sitting on the gym’s bleachers. We don’t know much about her character (she’s named “Michelle,” according to early reports), but she’s reading a book called Of Human Bondage. The novel, which was written by W. Somerset Maugham and released in 1915, isn’t about S&M, but it does have a clever little connection to Spider-Man. The book opens when the main character, Philip Carey, is orphaned. He’s sent to live with, you guessed it, his aunt and uncle.
Sounds kinda like a certain friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and his Uncle Ben and Aunt May …
Of course, the Easter egg works on a less literary level too, since Spidey ties bad guys up.
Spider-Man: Homecoming hits theaters July 7, 2017.
