The Marvel Cinematic Universe is secretive, to say the least. It has to be, considering the sheer number of moving parts it has to deal with. No other live-action franchise has to deal with such an absurd number of interconnecting films, TV shows, plot lines — and of course, actors who keep turning up in multiple projects.
You can probably see which one of these is the biggest problem when it comes to keeping secrets. Even the worst-informed major Marvel actors tend to have more intel about the specific projects they’re involved with than anyone outside the MCU sphere. As the faces of the franchise, the stars are constantly in the spotlight and journalists drill them non-stop during press tours. As a result, some may end up accidentally spilling juicy details about upcoming films and shows.
Out of all MCU actors, the most notorious blabbermouth is Tom Holland, who portrays the equally motor-mouthed Spider-Man. Over the years, he’s become pretty well-known for his hilarious tendency to drop spoilers and realize his error immediately afterward. In fact, his fame as a walking spoiler is such that it was actually newsworthy when he somehow managed to keep Marvel’s big secret about Robert Downey Jr. rejoining the MCU as supervillain Doctor Doom. Let’s take a look at the greatest hits of Tom Holland accidentally leaking MCU secrets.
Holland voluntarily discussed Spider-Man’s different webbings
Before the release of his first solo MCU movie, “Spider-Man: Homecoming” (2017), Tom Holland was busy promoting the film, and promptly gave Marvel Studios higher-ups a hint that they might not have cast the world’s greatest keeper of secrets. During an interview with Entertainment Tonight at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con, Holland was discussing the MCU Spider-Man’s web-shooters, only to immediately backtrack when he realized what he had just blurted out:
“We’re working on different ways of doing it. For different types of webs, you see. There’s not just … Oh, I might have given something away there.”
The fact that he discussed web shooters is not in itself a spoiler — after all, Spider-Man is already using mechanical ones in “Captain America: Civil War,” which came out a few months before the interview. However, the fact that the MCU Spidey would be able to shoot various different types of webbing was definitely news at the time. To his credit, Holland did catch himself nearly on time … but only nearly.
Holland spoiled a scene in Spider-Man: Homecoming
In December 2016, Tom Holland was promoting the first trailer for “Spider-Man: Homecoming” on a platform that fans and Marvel now know is extremely unsuitable for him: A comparatively free-wheeling Q&A session on Facebook Live. There, he discussed the need for stuntmen during the filming process and ended up spoiling the ending of an intense chase sequence when he called it one of the film’s most demanding stunts.
“There was a few things that I couldn’t do. There was some time where they dangled, my poor stunt double under a helicopter and dunked him in a lake. Damn it. This is live, isn’t it? Damn. So at one point Spider-Man ends up in a lake. I’m going to get in so much trouble now. Oh, no. Yeah. I was like, ‘Let me to it. Let me do it.” When I saw him do it and get dunked in the lake, I’m so happy I let him do that one because that was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. Can you imagine? Flying under a helicopter and being dunked in a lake. I don’t get paid enough for that s****. Sorry! Again. Again. I can’t help it. I’m sorry.”
The admittedly terrifying-looking fall happens during a sequence where Spider-Man chases Jackson Brice (Logan Marshall-Green) and Herman Schultz’s (Bokeem Woodbine) van through suburbia, only for Adrian “Vulture” Toomes (Michael Keaton) to pick him up, fly to a great height, and casually drop him. As such, Holland fortunately didn’t leak the entire scene, but the fact that he revealed anything at all — paired with his subsequent freak-out with a bit of swearing thrown in — makes this one of the finest moments in Holland’s side gig as a walking spoiler.
He revealed a planned Spider-Man trilogy ahead of time
The “Spider-Man: Homecoming” promo tour cast Tom Holland’s spoiler-happy reputation in iron, and perhaps the biggest revelation he gave media was the casual mention of how many MCU “Spider-Man” films they could expect. From a studio’s point of view, the correct answer to such questions would be somewhere along the lines of, “No Comment,” “We’ll see,” or “Whoops, our time is up.” Instead, Holland did not follow the proverbial (and possibly literal) script. In a June 2017 interview with the French trade AlloCiné, he analyzed his character’s arc in “Homecoming,” and also let slip that he would appear on two more “Spider-Man” solo movies:
“There is still a lot of room for Peter Parker, and Spider-Man especially, to grow in the next two movies. He’s definitely not the finished article by the end of ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming,’ and I really look forward to exploring the different ways he can grow up and go through puberty, I guess. It’s going to be an exciting couple of movies.
The two future movies Holland was discussing in the interview would, of course, eventually turn out to be “Spider-Man: Far from Home” (2019) and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021). The problem was that Marvel Studios hadn’t announced even one sequel at this point, let alone two … a fact that the interviewer kindly went on to relay to the actor.
Incidentally, because of this and similar incidents, Marvel has learned to muddy the waters around Holland’s reputation as a scoop dispenser. While there are a fair few undeniable slip-ups in his history, you’ll also spot cute little marketing stunts like the 2018 ACE Comic Con Instagram video where he “accidentally” revealed the title and logo of “Far from Home” on his iPad.
Holland let slip that Spider-Man was space-bound in Avengers: Infinity War
“Avengers: Infinity War” (2018) is a big movie with massive plot twists, and during an April 2018 appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Tom Holland gave away one of them. Magnificently, this happened during a conversation where he and fellow cast members Paul Bettany, Pom Klementieff, Zoe Saldana, and Robert Downey Jr. were discussing Marvel Studios’ tendency to give them fake scripts in order to keep secrets, and everyone immediately named Holland as the least trustworthy secret-keeper. In his very next comment, Holland went on to prove them correct.
I’d heard the rumor about the fake scripts, though. And I was reading what I thought was a fake script because it’s like, ‘Spider-Man’s in space!’ So I didn’t finish it, but I found out it was real.
Suffice it to say, the rest of the interview involved a fair amount of nervous laughter and uncomfortable body language. “Infinity War” indeed sees Iron Man (Downey) and Spider-Man chase Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) telekinetic top lieutenant Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) all the way to his spaceship, where they manage to defeat him and rescue Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). Spider-Man is also part of the group that fights Thanos on Titan. This is a cool surprise in the film’s context … provided that the viewer hasn’t been paying attention to any Tom Holland interviews, that is.
Holland accidentally spoiled Avengers: Infinity War for a theater full of people
It’s one thing for an MCU star to blurt out a spoiler in an interview or perhaps a social media post. It’s completely another when the actor turns up to personally spoil “Avengers: Infinity War” to a theater full of eager viewers mere moments before the film begins.
On the April 2018 weekend when “Avengers: Infinity War” premiered, Holland did precisely this. He was introduced to the audience at the packed ArcLight Hollywood theater before the movie and proudly announced: “I’m alive!” This, of course, was a gigantic spoiler since Spider-Man is one of the people Thanos snaps away at the end of the movie, and his death is arguably the movie’s most heartbreaking moment.
In this particular case, however, the spoiler wasn’t Holland’s own fault. As “Infinity War” co-writer Stephen McFeely told Yahoo! Entertainment, he had mistakenly informed the young MCU star that the appearance would be in front of an audience that had already seen the movie.
“I had gotten the impression that we weren’t always going to introduce the movie, sometimes we would come in after the movie and say ‘Hi.’ And so I was under the impression that that’s what we were doing. And I had told Tom that.”
He revealed that the Quantum Realm plays a role in Avengers: Endgame
In April 2018 Tom Holland was accompanied by Doctor Strange actor Benedict Cumberbatch in an “Avengers: Infinity War” interview with Access Hollywood. Cumberbatch, to his credit, dodged potentially spoiler-y questions like a champion and happily acted as a self-admitted chaperone to Holland. The two even spent some time joking about the younger star’s propensity for talking out of turn. Despite all this, Holland eventually slipped, providing the interview with one of his patented little spoilers when he suddenly alleged that Cumberbatch would have lines concerning the Quantum Realm from the “Ant-Man” movies.
“He has the most difficult lines, though. He has to talk so much about Quantum Realm stuff.”
In this particular case, Holland was spoiling 2021’s “Avengers: Endgame” — but only in a sense. Doctor Strange is largely absent from the movie except for its finale, but the Quantum Realm is nevertheless an important factor for the events of the movie since its time-bending properties enable the Avengers to hatch a complex time travel plot in an attempt to fix the destruction of “Infinity War.” As such, it’s possible that Holland was alluding to one of the “Endgame” actors who do have plenty of Quantum Realm lines, such as Paul Rudd or Mark Ruffalo.
He may have spoiled Doctor Strange’s appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home
Amazingly, Tom Holland delivered yet another accidental “Spider-Man: No Way Home” spoiler in 2019 when he hit the interviewer with a revelation that he wanted Doctor Strange to join forces with Spider-Man. While discussing “Spider-Man: Far from Home” with Cinema Blend, he had this to say:
“I just really like the idea of a science guy being teamed up with a guy who does magic, because it totally contradicts what he knows. And I like the idea that there is real science that Peter Parker talks about, and then there’s Doctor Strange gibberish, where he’s like, ‘The time rift, and the thing and the thing.’ So, it’s kind of fun.”
Of course, it’s up to anyone’s guess whether Holland actually had any information about the events of “No Way Home” at this time or if he was just bouncing ideas based on personal narrative preferences and wanting to work with Benedict Cumberbatch — or if he was even deliberately trolling interviewer Sean O’Connell, as O’Connell later suspected. The interview happened on the turbulent year when Holland helped keep Spider-Man in the MCU during a film rights scuffle between Sony and Disney, and Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers didn’t even start working on the “No Way Home” script until December 2019. As such, it’s up to debate whether Holland could have been aware that Strange was set to appear in “No Way Home.”
Regardless of the truth, it’s clearly always worth perking up your ears when you hear Holland drop random information about the MCU’s potential future. Fast forward a year or two, and who knows? His words just might become reality.
