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Following the epic Avengers: Endgame and closing out Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a threat big enough for audiences but manageable by a lone Spider-Man (Tom Holland) was no small feat for Far From Home director Jon Watts.

“I cheated a little bit by having a bunch of fake villains for the first half of the movie to have him take on and ‘defeat,’ only to be brought back to earth by Mysterio,” Watts told Polygon of the film’s deceitful villain (Jake Gyllenhaal), who created his own “Avengers-level” threats in the form of elemental-powered monsters from another dimension.

“I think the thing that is scary about Mysterio is his ability to shape reality and to control the truth and to make it so people don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. That’s a terrifying idea.”

Despite acting as part epilogue to Endgame, which pit Earth’s mightiest heroes against the assembled forces of Thanos (Josh Brolin) in a fight for the fate of the entire universe, Far From Home zeroed in on a relatively small scale-level threat worthy of a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man — even if it meant having the webhead step up to thwart what he believed to be a save-the-world situation.

“I’m always trying to use Spider-Man to explore the ground level of this crazy universe,” Watts said.

“If Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) was the guy literally on the ground cleaning up the aftermath of these crazy Avengers-level events, you know, Quentin Beck is the middle-management guy. He’s the guy behind the scenes making sure all the tech works. People only notice the people on the forefront and people on the magazine covers and on TV. But the reality is that there’s so many people working behind the scenes all the time to make our world go around. They can get forgotten in the mix. I thought that it made sense for Beck to be one of those guys.”

Spider-Man: Far From Home is now in theaters. Avengers: Endgame releases on Digital HD July 30 and 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray August 13.