So Mysterio is one of my favorite Spider-Man villains from the movies (I'm a nerd about vfx and filmmaking so his villain origin is kind of right up my alley) but I'm wondering if anyone else is thinking about his ending in No Way Home in the big 2026.
I don't know if they'll get Jake Gyllenhaal back, not that that's exactly important for a character who's known for his illusions, but I really don't think Quentin Beck is dead in the MCU. Here's why:
any people have pointed this out, but in the ending setpiece the Beck we see get shot by the drones was an illusion, who fell to the side and pulled out the fake EDITH glasses.
We see the real Beck try to come up behind Peter, holding a pistol and wearing the glasses instead, and he then doubles over and seems to die after he collapses (dilated pupils, death rattles, the works)
But what sticks out to me is the language around the final scene. The execution line was one of the big ones that was written in to give Beck something to frame Peter for, but look a little closer at how Peter tries to figure out whether Beck's dead or not - he never actually asks EDITH if Beck is dead, only if his body is real.
Throughout the movie, EDITH is shown to take language inputs that aren't exactly intuitive to Peter (likely more closely tuned to how Tony would talk/ask for things) so the protocol might not have known if Peter specifically wanted to know what Beck's vitals were
and *here's the clincher for me,* Beck already had tech that was enough to initially fool Skrull(?)Shield, and Skrull(?)Shield initially didn't seem to suspect Beck, and he was walking around their secret base pretty freely. I don't think it'd be too far-fetched that he nabbed some of those fake death pills Fury used from Winter Soldier in case he needed to get someone off of his trail.
Plus, we see the Mysterio crew having put together the entire found footage video of Mysterio's death + Spider-Man giving the kill order, and while a world where Beck legitimately died probably saw them reconstruct Beck with CG, I don't think it'd be that far of a stretch to say he probably came to a while after Peter left, got some footage, and then he and his team posted the video and slipped away into the night to fight another day.
TLDR I think Mysterio/Quentin Beck is alive, FFH was pretty good at leaving whether he died ambiguous, and I'd really love for him to make a comeback at some point, maybe as a lower tier villain or someone who the public sees as a hero who has beef with Spider-Man.
