Peter Parker Was In Iron Man 2
Spider-Man’s introduction to the MCU back in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War opened up so many possibilities for crossovers. A curious one that fans latched on to quickly though was the idea that Peter Parker had already appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Back in Iron Man 2, a young boy wearing an Iron Man mask is rescued by Tony Stark at the Stark Expo. Seeing as Peter’s known to be a science nerd and a big fan of Stark, it made sense that this could’ve been him.
It was such a good theory, in fact, that star Tom Holland confirmed that Marvel president Kevin Feige believes it’s canon. Spider-Man: Homecoming director Jon Watts has also said much the same, indicating that he and Feige discussed if the “math” of the character being that age at that time worked out. It’s cool that they thought so much about making this connection canon, but it may have had a knock-on effect on the franchise in the process.
It’s possible that the controversial “eight years later” caption in Homecoming was done to make sense of Spidey’s supposed Iron Man 2 cameo by jiggling the MCU timeline around. However, it just doesn’t make sense in the context of the rest of the movies and has since been deemed “incorrect” by Joe Russo. Still, we’re assuming that that little kid really is Peter and no one can tell us otherwise.