WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Far From Home, in theaters now.
After failing to stop Thanos from destroying the Infinity Stones in Avengers: Endgame, the Marvel Cinematic Universe suddenly experienced a time jump five years into the future that explored the fallout of the heroes' defeat at the hands of the Mad Titan. At the conclusion of the film, half of all life in the universe was restored, including Peter Parker and his friend Ned Leeds, both visibly un-aged since their disintegration by Thanos at the end of Avengers: Infinity War.
With such a significant time jump since Peter Parker was last on Earth, half of the teenage superhero's class is likely to have graduated and be well into college by the time they were rejoined by those that had been disintegrated by Thanos' use of the Infinity Gauntlet. With Spider-Man: Far From Home picking up soon after the events of Endgame as Peter returns to high school and life in Queens, New York, it's the first MCU film to showcase the disintegrated acclimating to a world that moved on without them and the impact the time jump had on the average person.
Far From Home reveals that virtually every single one of Peter's closest friends, including Ned, MJ, Flash Thompson and Betty Brant, were all disintegrated by Thanos and similarly un-aged by the subsequent five-year time jump. The law of averages appears to be askew in that Peter's recurring peers were all disintegrated, not unlike every single member of Clint Barton's family at the start of Endgame, keeping the fan-favorite core cast together.
The snap and the subsequent mass resurrection of its victims impacted Peter's school enough for the institution to implement a policy that had every returning student repeat the previous school year all over again, to the visible frustration of several of Peter's classmates. Peter's long-suffering teacher and academic decathlon coach Mr. Harrington saw his wife use the resulting chaos from the snap to leave him by faking her death, although the clueless Harrington had held a funeral service for her before eventually discovering the truth.
The ever-scheming Flash attempts to use his birth date as a means to purchase alcohol, only to be stopped by a new policy that has alcohol sales limited to those with the physical age of 21 and older, not those who had been unaffected by the passage of time since the snap after he's called out publicly by MJ.
The character in Far From Home most visibly affected by the five-year time jump is Nick Fury. The master spy and longtime director of S.H.I.E.L.D. prided himself in staying appraised of all the world's secrets and clandestine activities for decades. With both he and his trusted right-hand woman, Maria Hill, among those disintegrated by Thanos, the two espionage operatives find themselves resurrected to a considerably different world than the one they prematurely left five years earlier.
With most of the heroes he had first recruited into the Avengers either dead, retired and having traveled to parts unknown, Fury and Hill are largely playing catch up by themselves, getting filled in on what they missed while they were both dead as new, fantastical threats to Earth arise.
Years of knowing and manipulating the world's secrets left Fury largely in control, but the sudden time jump forces him completely out of his element, putting him at extreme unease. Spider-Man and his amazing friends have acclimated to the new normal provided by the time jump, but Nick Fury and Maria Hill are still trying to get their bearings.
Spider-Man: Far From Home provides a wider perspective on the changes made to the MCU, both in epic, world-shaking ways and in how it affects the average person on the street.
With half of the planet's population suddenly returning to find the world has jumped five years into the relative future, Peter Parker and his friends transition into this brave, new world while Nick Fury and Maria Hill struggle to catch up and understand it. Spider-Man has just returned to a much different version of the world since Avengers: Endgame, but he seems more than ready to handle it.
Opening July 2, director Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: Far From Home stars Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson, Zendaya, Cobie Smulders, Jon Favreau, JB Smoove, Jacob Batalon and Martin Starr, with Marisa Tomei and Jake Gyllenhaal.