Spider-Man: Far From Home – Could [SPOILER] be a Skrull?

Did Spider-Man: Far From Home hide a Skrull in plain sight? Some spoilers follow.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is the best Spider-Man movie yet, which is saying a lot. It’s probably the second-best solo movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Captain Marvel.

In Captain Marvel, viewers were introduced to a shapeshifting race of green-skinned wrinkly aliens called Skrulls, who have a long history of bad blood with the Kree, whom viewers were already familiar with thanks to Agents of SHIELD.

During her time on Earth in 1995, the adopted Kree warrior Vers/Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) comes to realize that she was human, and that her mentor, Dr. Wendy Lawson/Mar-Vell (Annette Bening), was hoping to end the Kree-Skrull War before her death in a plane crash, which ultimately led to Carol getting her powers.

Carol then helps a group of Skrull refugees find a new planet to settle on as the credits roll. From that point on, their activities and whereabouts are unknown for the next two decades.

[Last chance to avoid spoilers if you have’t seen the newest MCU movie yet.]

In the second tag scene of Spider-Man: Far From Home, the one following the final credits, Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smoulders) are driving along in a car when it’s revealed that they are really the Skrull leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and his wife Soren (Sharon Blynn).

The real Nick Fury is somewhere in space aboard a vessel that looks like the headquarters of a new organization (SWORD? Alpha Flight?), most of whose workers seem to be Skrulls.

But on second viewing, another candidate for a secret Skrull appeared on the radar, due to more careful observation of their behavior.

That would be Michelle “MJ” Jones, played by Zendaya (Shake It Up, KC Undercover, The Greatest Showman). 

In Spider-Man: Homecoming, MJ seemed to be an outsider by choice, and maybe her lack of socialability was due more to intense introversion and a carelessness for what others thought of her. But that might a facade.

Skrulls are able to transform into anyone they come across with a touch, down to the DNA, as we saw several times during the train chase sequence in Captain Marvel. But their acting skills aren’t completely foolproof.

They don’t react very well to sudden surprises and are slow to catch shifts in human emotional reactions. (See Coulson’s reaction on meeting Carol and Maria Rambeau’s neighbor who comes visiting.) Their tendency in such situations is to immediately freeze for a moment to analyze the new information.

This would mean a Skrull would be right at home on a tightly pre-planned production like I Love Lucy, but he or she would be a disaster at hosting Saturday Night Live. 

In Far From Home, MJ is still incredibly awkward around Peter and his friends, which would be normal for a teenager with a crush, sure. But she’s also far too direct, which can be seen in the scene where Peter reveals his identity, for example. (This is also a trait of Skrulldom, as shown with Captain Marvel’s Keller in the archives with Fury.)

While the gender of the new identity probably doesn’t matter when assuming a human form (n Captain Marvel we see male Skrulls adopt female disguises in the surfer chick and the old lady), it likely would be easier for a female to impersonate another.

Talos and Soren have a daughter, whose name we still don’t know (check IMDb). Assuming she’s around seven years old in 1995, that would make her roughly in her early-to-mid thirties by summer 2024, when Far From Home takes place.

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Theoretically, their daughter could play a human high schooler fairly well, and it makes sense that her parents would want someone to keep a close eye on Peter, either for their own reasons or by edict from Fury.

Also, MJ doesn’t have any family or connections other than her classmates, which seems suspicious. How did she enroll at Midtown High? Likely one of her parents was with her, which would be easy to fake as shapeshifters and none would be the wiser, particularly Midtown’s spacey principal.

MJ’s obsession with something like the Black Dahlia murder would fit the Skrulls’ single-minded devotion to knowledge (remember how focused Talos was in recovering Carol’s memories?), and constantly observing others’ behavior so closely would give her clues about what a “normal” response would likely look like.

Her hesitation and sudden impulsive lunge toward Peter in London when they kiss could be due to his emotions rapidly shifting as he tried to process everything that had just happened during the battle, thus there wouldn’t be a mirror available to read to determine the exact appropriate behavior.

Skrulls also get slightly hysterical when frightened, as Talos showed repeatedly in the past with his fear of Flerken. MJ’s reaction to being Spider-Man’s passenger would certainly fall into that category, and her pausing in mid-frown when digesting the bombshell the news report drops.

What do you think? Is MJ a Skrull, or is she just a super awkward girl with a crush on Peter Parker? Or is she something else entirely?