By now, you have probably already watched Spider-Man: Far From Home. In fact, some of us have already seen it more than once. However, if that’s not the case, proceed with caution as this article is about to drop some major spoilers for the film, especially for one of its post-credits scenes.
The second Spidey installment ends with Nick Fury, played by none other than Samuel L. Jackson, seemingly going back to his affairs and making sure Peter is but one phone call away. The credits come up, there’s quite a mindblowing scene after that, then some more credits roll. Eventually, we’re taken back to Nick Fury, and just like in the post-credits scene of Avengers: Infinity War, he’s driving a car with Maria Hill by his side.
Except he isn’t. The next thing we see is both Fury and Hill transforming into Skrulls, specifically into Captain Marvel MVP Talos and his wife Soren. When this happened, quite a lot of us thought “Of course! We should’ve seen this coming! That’s why Fury seems kind of off during the whole film!” before we asked the main question: Where the heck is the real Fury, then? As you know, the next thing we see is the answer to that question, as Nick Fury is in space, and has seemingly been working there for a while.
The MCU has its fair share of mindblowing and intriguing post-credits scenes, but none has raised as many questions like this one. First of all, how long has Talos been impersonating the man behind the eyepatch? In Captain Marvel, the character says that no one calls him anything but Fury. Just Fury. Not Nick, not Nicholas, nothing. Fury and that’s it. Early on Far From Home, Maria Hill calls him Nick. It now looks like an obvious indication that they were Skrulls, but it doesn’t sound odd to see her call him that. And that is, most likely, because we also see Hill calling him by his nickname during the post-credits scene of Infinity War.
It could be a continuity error, of course, but the MCU is not known for committing such major slips. It’s hardly a coincidence that the two scenes are so similar, that Hill calls him Nick in both and that one of the films in between these post-credits scenes is precisely the one where we see Fury establishing what he prefers to be called. This would have considerable implications, but we’ll get to them in a sec.
The other major question the sequence raises is why in the heavens is the real Nick Fury in space? What is he doing? Now, if you’re familiarized with the comics, you might have already figured out that we are most likely witnessing the formation or early days of the MCU’s very own version of S.W.O.R.D., which is something like S.H.I.E.L.D.’s cosmic counterpart.
Created by Joss Whedon (yes, the director of the first two Avengers films), S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient World Observation and Response Department) is an organization that deals with extraterrestrial threats to Earth, and its headquarters are in a space station called The Peak that orbits the planet. The idea is that S.H.I.E.L.D. deals with stuff that’s already here on Earth, while S.W.O.R.D., up in space, tries to stop trouble from ever reaching the surface.
We know S.H.I.E.L.D. has not been the same it was on the first Avengers, with the movies merely hinting at its survival after the incident at the Triskellion during Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Of course, there’s a whole (and pretty good) show about the organization and its current state, but Nick Fury has been away from it for a while. After seeing all he has seen in the last couple of decades, it would make sense for him to decide it was time to take a step forward with the protection of Earth.
This could be the case. Maybe Marvel Studios will mix up the idea of S.W.O.R.D. with its spiritual successor in the comics, Alpha Flight, an organization deeply tied to Carol Danvers. That could mean we will see Fury again in the sequel of Captain Marvel. Who knows? What’s interesting is that this might be the first Fox property we see integrated to the MCU. Back in 2011, we almost got a S.W.O.R.D. namedrop in Thor, but the scene was cut due to legal concerns that the organization first appeared in an X-Men issue, so it would technically make it a Fox property. As of March 2019 and Disney’s acquisition of Fox, these concerns are no more.
Tying the potential of an orbital institution led by Nick Fury with the reveal that Talos has been impersonating him down on Earth, we return to the matter of Fury’s name preferences. If Talos and Soren were the ones in the Infinity War post-credits scene, that would mean they were the ones dusted, and not the actual Nick Fury and Maria Hill. Of course, they could have been dusted too, but what if, while everyone thought he was dead, Fury used the last five years to secretly found an organization to protect the planet and maybe avoid another tragedy like what had happened with Thanos?
Dusted or not, Nick Fury, a man obsessed with having his planet protected, the man who brought the Avengers together to fill the gap left by Captain Marvel’s absence, the one who fought the most powerful leaders of the world so that his team could do what he thought was the best to defend Earth, would certainly feel the weight of The Snap on his shoulders. S.W.O.R.D. or whatever that space station is is definitely a consequence of how Fury dealt with the universe-changing events of the last couple of Avengers films.
All of the horror brought to Earth by a purple alien is sure to take its toll on a man that always tried to protect it. Fury has known for decades now that the biggest threats to mankind come from space, and Thanos’ victory might have been the push he needed to take his efforts to a whole new level.
There are many questions, but the answers will take years to come. The one thing the second Spider-Man: Far From Home’s post-credits scene tells us for sure is that the MCU’ future looks pretty cosmic, and Nick Fury knows that.
