SPOILERS ahead for Spider-Man: No Way Home!
While Spider-Man: No Way Home has appropriately grabbed a lot of attention for its inclusion of characters from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy and Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man duology, the most recent of the Marvel movies also featured a different kind of important appearance. Having previously starred Netflix’s Daredevil series and The Defenders miniseries, Charlie Cox cameoed as Matt Murdock in No Way Home, sharing a little screen time with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan was also present in this scene, and this was the catalyst for an Easter egg referencing the Daredevil movie.
For those unaware, before he helped launch the MCU with Iron Man in 2008, Jon Favreau starred in 2003’s Daredevil as the Foggy Nelson to Ben Affleck’s Matt Murdock. So when the time came for Favreau, Charlie Cox, Tom Holland, Marisa Tomei and Zendaya to shoot the Spider-Man: No Way Home scene where Cox’s version of Matt Murdock provided legal counsel, Cox revealed to THR that they included a small nod to Favreau’s earlier Marvel role:
I don’t think they used it, but we added a little Easter egg where he goes, ‘Yeah, I’m a little foggy on how that happened’ or something. That was a cool moment for me to meet him and chat about all that stuff.
Maybe Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts felt that line was a little too on the nose to be included in the final cut, but it’s the thought that counts. Daredevil was actually Jon Favreau’s second comic book movie, having briefly appeared as an assistant at Wayne Enterprises in Batman Forever. While Daredevil (which also starred Jennifer Garner, Colin Farrell and Michael Clarke Duncan) was arguably Favreau’s biggest acting gig in 2003, that was also the same year that Elf, the second movie he ever directed, came out. The Will Ferrell-starring Christmas comedy was a critical and commercial success and helped pave the way for him to eventually be hired for Iron Man.
Because the Daredevil movie was met with mixed critical reception and failed to make much of a splash at the box office, plans for a sequel were eventually cancelled, although Jennifer Garner’s Elektra went on to lead her own spinoff movie that’s worth checking out. By 2015, Netflix released the Daredevil TV series, which featured The Mighty Ducks’ Elden Henson as its Foggy Nelson. Daredevil was cancelled after its third season, and while it and the other concluded Marvel Netflix shows have still been easily accessible to watch in the years since, they’ll be set up at a new streaming home in the near future.
In addition to Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock popping up in Spider-Man: No Way Home (something that was a “nightmare” for him to keep secret), Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin, is another element of Netflix’s Daredevil that’s been thrown into the MCU proper thanks to his appearance in the Hawkeye finale. While it hasn’t been officially announced yet if we’ll see more of Cox or D’Onofrio in this franchise, the former actor says he knows “a little bit” about what’s being discussed on his end. Between that and Kingpin’s ties to Alaqua Cox’s Maya Lopez, who’s getting her own spinoff series, it stands to reason we haven’t seen the last of them.
As for Jon Favreau, he’s primarily busy nowadays working on Star Wars TV shows, and given how Spider-Man: No Way Home ended, it’s hard to say if we’ll see him in the fourth MCU-set Spider-Man movie that’s being actively developed. That said, with the Iron Man-adjacent Disney+ shows Armor Wars and Ironheart on the way, there are other ways for Happy Hogan to return.
