Turns out that Tony Stark’s visit to Peter Parker’s Queens apartment in Captain America: Civil War wasn’t the first time that Iron Man and the future Spider-Man met. Homecoming star Tom Holland revealed on Monday that a popular fan theory positing that an unnamed kid in Iron Man 2 was actually a young version of the would-be web-slinger. Now, Homecoming’s director Jon Watts explained how the theory became canon.
Basically, he watched the old Marvel movies and used his power as a director to make his fan fiction canon.
“I was watching all these other movies and being like, ‘What if that little kid at the Stark Expo was Peter Parker? In the Iron Man mask.’ Like, he’d be about the right age for that. And he loves Tony Stark,” Watts told Uproxx.
“It’s this thing where, because it’s not completely figured out, that you can just go back and basically write fan fiction for those movies, then the fan fiction becomes reality,” he continued. “A lot of the Easter eggs in this movie just started by rewatching the movies.”
There isn’t a moment in Homecoming where Peter and Tony mention that time they crossed paths at the Stark Expo 10 years ago, so there’s no explicit confirmation within the actual MCU that establishes the canon-status of Peter’s cameo. But, that could change, as Watts said Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige was open to making the retcon legit in a later movie.
“I mean, I remember watching that with Kevin Feige and everyone and being like, ‘Does the math work on that?’ He was like, ‘It might, maybe.’”
Watts added that young Peter Parker was actually played by Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau’s son, Max Favreau. So, Holland is actually the second actor to play Peter Parker in the MCU.
Spider-Man: Homecoming hits theaters on July 7.
