Days after news broke that Sony and Marvel had ended their unprecedented co-production deal for Spider-Man films, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said the arrangement "was never meant to last forever. We knew there was a finite amount of time that we’d be able to do this, and we told the story we wanted to tell, and I’ll always be thankful for that."

That statement will naturally come off as odd to anyone who was excited by the cliffhanger of Spider-Man: Far From Home's mid-credits scene, in which J. Jonah Jameson publicizes to the world a video in which Mysterio reveals Spider-Man's secret identity. What having his cover blown would mean for Peter Parker seemed like a tantalizing set-up for a sequel... a sequel which just a couple months ago, Feige was promoting to Fandango as "a Peter Parker story that has never been done before on film."

So was Far From Home's ending written as a tease for an immediate sequel or was it meant as an ending to Peter's MCU saga? Perhaps the answer really is both.

Remember, the planning for the MCU is less a process of exact outlining and more a figure-it-out-as-we-go one, accounting for various potentialities. Spider-Man's introduction in Captain America: Civil War was itself not part of some master plan but rather a product of fortuitous circumstances favoring one option over another: It could have just as easily been Ant-Man in his place if Sony didn't want to play ball.

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The Far From Home mid-credits scene leading into a sequel is the option everyone wanted. Looking at it with some remove, however, it's a twist that's disconnected enough from the preceding narrative that you could still argue Peter had a full character arc over his five movies.

Furthermore, one of the most logical responses to being suddenly targeted by the whole world would be for Peter to go into hiding, which is the perfect in-universe excuse answer to the "why don't we see Spider-Man around anymore?" question.

So there you have it: Far From Home is a perfectly reasonable ending (if perhaps underwhelming) send-off to Spider-Man in the MCU. For now.

Look, does anyone have any confidence in Sony making more live-action Peter Parker movies without Marvel Studios' assistance? Tom Holland seems certain that he's going to keep playing the part for Sony's future movies, but is the studio going to have to reboot the series using the same actor or will it keep making sequels to Homecoming and Far From Home that are somehow not in the same universe as the first two installments?

Spider-Man Homecoming in Pipe

Either of those options sounds confusing. Furthermore, Sony's need to keep making these movies on a quick schedule in order to retain the rights could result in the same rushed productions that killed the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire Spider-Man 4 and resulted in the failure of the Amazing Spider-Man reboot "universe."

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Given the predictability of Sony bungling things (as history suggests), the odds seem good that we will get an eventual third MCU Spider-Man film, if not now then in the next decade or so.

If the MCU is going to still be going strong so far into the future (which, to be fair, is an open question), by that point it will have evolved into a nostalgia property for Gen Z. What could be a bigger guaranteed nostalgia hit than "Tom Holland's Spider-Man returns?"

Considering how much Millennials' excitement peaked over the mere rumor of Spider-Man 4 being finished in comic form over a decade after the last Tobey Maguire movie, imagine the guaranteed money Disney would have a decade from now if Sony agrees to make a third Tom Holland MCU film.

There might be less hype for such an event if there Tom Holland Spider-Man films outside the MCU exist, especially if those films are (through some confusing continuity logic) direct sequels to the MCU ones.

However, even if those films do come to exist, a possible MCU nostalgia-grab depends upon those other films failing at a certain point, so even if audiences get sick of Sony's Spider-Man films, Marvel could still sell this as a return done right if it has the right timing. Sequels ignoring previous sequels, such as last year's Halloween and this year's Terminator: Dark Fate are enough of an accepted thing that Marvel might be able to pull off that trick if need be.

Of course, it's entirely possible that all of this corporate fighting will get resolved and we'll be back on track for more MCU Spider-Man as originally expected. If not, however, we can say goodbye to the series for now, safe in the knowledge that it likely won't be gone forever.

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