The Marvel Cinematic Universe has released just over twenty films to date. It launched into its fourth phase with the Disney Plus show WandaVision. The MCU has given fans a wide range of film genres, from spy thriller to heist, introduced the audience to new unbelievable, but awesome, characters like Rocket Racoon, took the audience to exciting locations like Asgard and brought the danger right back home, like Ant-Man’s daughter’s bedroom. For all its emotional zeniths and nadirs, there is only one movie that features a truly terrifying moment: 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Phase three of the MCU began with the crisis of Captain America: Civil War. It divided the heroes into two factions over the complicated issue of accountability. By the end, the heroes were brought back together to face a supposed greater threat. Captain America and Iron Man, though, would not reconcile until the cataclysmic events of Avengers: Infinity War. During the Civil War, the MCU included the new kid on the block, Spider-Man. Spider-Man: Homecoming took place directly after Civil War. It followed the exploits of high schooler Peter Parker as he navigated teenage life and his efforts to maintain his status as a neighborhood crime-fighter, hoping to join the Avengers proper. During his adventures in New York City, he came into conflict with a salvager named Adrian Toomes, better known as the Vulture. The Vulture converts Chitauri debris from the Battle of New York (the first Avengers) into weapons for sale to the underworld.
Near the end of Homecoming, after Spider-Man tried to capture the Vulture on a ferry, Peter Parker asks Liz, his high school crush, to the school homecoming dance. Peter visits her home and discovers that her father is the Vulture. Toomes drives the children to the dance with Peter in a contained panic. Along the way, Toomes figures out that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Liz exits the car first leaving Peter alone with her father in his Jaguar. Toomes gives Peter the dad talk to end all dad talks.
Toomes pulls out a handgun. He turns to face Peter and lays out the most menacing stretch of tension ever. Peter is a fifteen-year-old kid. Toomes is a ruthless alien arms dealer. Despite Peter’s participation with Iron Man against Captain America’s team, up to this point he has only ever dealt with petty local criminals. Toomes says he will spare Peter’s life this one time because Spider-Man saved his daughter in Washington. As if to say, had that event not happened, he would have shot him in the face right there. Further, Toomes warns that if Peter ever interferes with his business again, he will kill him and everyone he loves. This is as vicious an ultimatum as it gets.
Layer one of this terrifying showdown is the fact that Peter has a crush on Toomes’ daughter. What are the odds that the girl he pined for in high school was the child of such a heinous villain? A night that was supposed to be fun and memorable for young Peter has just been turned into every young boy’s nightmare. Layer two is that this is the first time Peter is face to face with a real foe, not a masked bank robber or a bike thief. Worse, it is not Spider-Man’s face, it is Peter’s, which means Aunt May and Ned are in danger too. Peter is totally exposed. This is one of Spider-Man’s greatest fears.
This scene, of all in the MCU, is the most terrifying. It grounds the stakes of the movie in an unsettling way. Peter is practically still a child, and here is this man with a handgun threatening to kill him and everyone he loves to his face. Even if Peter has the heroic powers of Spider-Man, there is nothing that can ease the cold fear of a death threat.
It can be argued that The Snap is the most terrifying moment of the MCU, where, in Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet to erase half of all life. Witnessing several beloved heroes, including Spider-Man, disintegrate before the audience’s eyes was not an easy scene to behold. The only drawback to this horror was the fact that Infinity War was to be followed up by Endgame a year later. None of the cataclysmic death could count as permanent. The end of Infinity War was only the end of a chapter, not the entire Universe. Moviegoers knew, in the back of their minds at least, that the great dusting would have to be reversed somehow. How that was going to happen was the real mystery as they left theatres.
The as-yet-untitled Spider-Man 3 is scheduled to release later this year on December 21st. There are theories that state it will split the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a Multiverse, a Marvel Cinematic Multiverse that is.