Quentin Beck (Earth-199999)

Mysterio
Name	Unrevealed
Current Alias	Mysterio
Aliases	Impersonations: Nick Fury Other Aliases: Quentin Beck
Affiliation and Relationships
Affiliation	Formerly Stark Industries
Physical Characteristics
Gender	Male
Eyes	Irises: Blue
Hair	Brown
Origin and Living Status
Origin	Human
Living Status	Deceased
Reality	Earth-199999
Place of Death	Tower Bridge, London, England, United Kingdom
Personal Information
Identity	Secret
Citizenship	American
Occupation	Engineer, terrorist
Base of Operations	Formerly London, England; Prague, Czech Republic; Venice, Italy; Ixtenco, Mexico; Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States of America
Creators and Appearances
Creators	Jon Watts, Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers
First	Spider-Man: Far From Home (June 26, 2019)
First	Spider-Man: Far From Home (June 26, 2019)
Death	Spider-Man: Far From Home (June 26, 2019)
Death	Spider-Man: Far From Home (June 26, 2019)

 You'll see, Peter. People... need to believe. And nowadays, they'll believe anything. 

—Quentin Beck

History

The Birth of Mysterio

The man that became known as Quentin Beck was a former engineer and specialist in the holographic illusions division of Stark Industries' R&D department, but he was fired due to his mental instability, which presented a danger to everyone he worked with. Following Tony Stark's death in his efforts to defeat Thanos, the man convened with many other disgruntled former Stark employees, such as William Ginter Riva and Gutes Guterman, and began plotting to fill the vacuum of the world's most renowned super hero, and become "the next Iron Man."

He acquired technology from various Stark Industries divisions, including the holographic illusions he had previously been a part of and Ginter Riva's weaponized drones. Using these inventions and their own skills, they fabricated the existence of nature-based creatures called the Elementals which hailed from an alternate reality. The man adopted the alias of "Quentin Beck," a reality-displaced armored soldier and the sole survivor of this parallel Earth, locked in conflict with the monstrous Elementals. Whenever an Elemental surfaced, Quentin Beck would track it down and heroically defeat it. In his super hero persona, Beck's holographic illusions were used to make it seem like he could fly in clouds of green smoke and fire mystical lasers from his hands, while the disguised weaponized drones were used to cause real damage.

Arriving at Ixtenco

Beck and his team first put their plan in motion in Ixtenco, Mexico, where they orchestrated an illusion of an Earth Elemental composed of sand and rock. Staging an electromagnetic pulse to be picked up by Nick Fury's satellites, they lured his and Maria Hill's secret Skrull stand-ins, Talos and Soren to the scene. Beck appeared and carried out his staged fight with the Earth Elemental. Earning Talos' trust, Beck convinced him of the pretense that more Elementals were going to continue showing up around the world until they destroyed it, so Talos recruited him to help them stop the new threat. Some time later, Beck and his team staged another fight against an Air Elemental in Morocco.

Entangling Spider-Man

At some point in time, Beck and his crew discovered that Stark's super-powered protégé Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, was going to be bequeathed access to the Stark Industries network in the form of a pair of sunglasses equipped with the A.I. E.D.I.T.H. They set their sights on E.D.I.T.H. to bolster their resources, so they continued fabricating fights against Elementals around Parker's school trip in Europe. When Parker's class was in Venice, Italy, Beck and his crew staged a confrontation against a Water Elemental. Peter made several attempts to stop the creature from causing any damage, but was overpowered until Beck showed up and, once again, neutralized the staged threat.

Seeing an opportunity in Parker's presence in Europe as a super hero and newly-minted Avenger, Talos attempted to recruit him to the cause and, in the process, handed him over the E.D.I.T.H. glasses on Fury's behalf. Taking Peter to his temporary headquarters, Talos formally introduced him to Beck. Parker identified him as "Mysterio," the moniker his classmates had given this new hero, and Quentin embraced it. Beck expounded his backstory to Peter, but Parker turned down Talos' appeals for assistance, choosing to return to his vacation. However, Talos pulled strings to redirect the itinerary of Peter's class to Prague, where Beck had already staged EMPs to herald the next Elemental fight. Talos once again appealed to Parker for help, this time giving him a stealth suit to avoid detection as Spider-Man. Following a rendezvous at Talos' base in Prague, where he berated Peter, Beck shared a moment of bonding with the young boy on its rooftop.

Explaining the Elementals

After Mysterio was assisted by Spider-Man in his mock fight against a Fire Elemental, Talos and Soren invited Beck and Parker to a base in Berlin to discuss the formation of a new super hero team not unlike the Avengers. Parker rejected this idea, however, and Talos scolded him for not living up to what Tony Stark saw in him as a hero and protégé. Beck took Peter to decompress in an abandoned pub nearby, which he secretly spruced up with his holographic technology, and where the rest of his crew were surrounding him. Beck's false comfort further consolidated him as a respectable figure in Peter's eyes. Viewing Beck as more worthy than he in shouldering the burden of the mantle of Stark's successor, Parker bequeathed him with the E.D.I.T.H. glasses and returned to his vacation, unwittingly playing into Becks' hands. Before resuming their work, Beck and his crew briefly celebrated the milestone in their plan.

The Final Elemental

Beck and his crew retreated to their base to rehearse Mysterio's next fight in London, and they connected E.D.I.T.H. to their network to hijack its swarm of drones and increase the scope of his illusions. Quentin also demanded his crew doubled the planned damage the drones would cause, brushing off any potential casualties as more fuel for the mediatization of the battle. Noticing a missing holographic projector, which had been left behind in Prague, Beck became paranoid that his farce would be exposed, and even aimed his armed drones at his crew. Beck tracked down the projector to Peter's classmate MJ, who had since then shared her discovery of it to Peter, and they had deduced that the Elementals were a charade.

Anticipating Peter's intent to reveal this information to Talos, Beck employed illusions to impersonate Fury and meet up with Parker in Berlin. Parker confessed the discovery of the projector and who else had this information, namely MJ and their other friend, Ned Leeds. Beck then dispelled the illusion of Fury and attacked Parker, engulfing him in illusions and wearing him down until he was hit by a bullet train. Leaving Peter for dead, Beck and his crew rerouted Peter's classmates to London, so that Beck could kill them and cover up their deaths as a casualty of the upcoming Elemental fight. Having used EMPs to herald the emergence of a giant-sized composite Elemental, Mysterio briefly met up with Talos-as-Fury before beginning his grand performance at the Tower Bridge, from within where he controlled the drones and the holographic fight.

Peter arrived at the scene as Spider-Man soon afterward, having received assistance from Stark's confidant Happy Hogan, who also alerted Talos of Mysterio's deceit. During the chaos, Beck had one of the drones target Hogan and Peter's classmates, cornering them inside the Tower of London. Spider-Man made his way through the drones, partially disabling them and exposing the composite Elemental as an illusion. Despite being ultimately overpowered by the machines, Parker managed to make his way inside the Tower Bridge. Beck reprised his maneuver to engulf Spider-Man in illusions, but Peter used his spider-sense to ignore the holograms and fight the drones with his eyes closed. Overriding E.D.I.T.H.'s warning that he was in the drones' strike zone since Spider-Man was closing in on him, Beck kept ordering the drones to engage. This resulted in Beck being fatally injured from a stray bullet of a drone that Peter sent spiraling. In one final attempt to kill Spider-Man, Beck cloaked himself while casting an illusion of his dying body handling back the glasses to him. Peter saw through the illusion, and grasped Beck's arm before he decloaked. After Peter took the glasses from him to order all the drones to disengage, Beck collapsed in the ground and died.

Legacy

Beck would leave a legacy, however, having sent doctored footage of the London battle to the New York City media outlet the Daily Bugle in which he framed Spider-Man as the true criminal behind the Elementals and as his murderer, before revealing his true identity as Peter Parker to the world. The revelation of Spider-Man's identity and his supposed murder at his hands caused most people to see Spider-Man as a murderer and he was arrested. Matt Murdock acquitted Parker of those charges but this did not change the public's opinion. Later, Parker, MJ and Ned's applications to MIT were rejected because of this case, leading Peter to visit Doctor Strange to ask him to erase people's memories of his secret identity. But Parker repeatedly asks him to alter the spell so that his loved ones can know about it, which causes the spell to go out of control, breaking the multiverse and bringing in several people from other universes who know Spider-Man's identity.

One of those visitors, the Green Goblin, killed Aunt May after Peter tried to cure most of the villains. Peter was brought out of his depression by his two counterparts from the realities of the villains. The Spider-Men managed to cure the villains, but Green Goblin unleashed the spell. As a last-ditch effort, the Spider-Man of Earth-199999 convinced Doctor Strange to send the cured villains and the other Spider-Men back to their realities, at the cost of everyone forgetting about Peter, but not Spider-Man.

Personality

Beck was mentally unstable and seemingly somewhat psychotic. He came across as charismatic and likable, though he was also capable of being highly deceptive, tricking just about everybody into believing that he was a hero worthy of being Iron Man's successor by creating and "defeating" his own illusory monsters. He showed little or no compunction about killing when he saw it fit, as he would have willingly killed both Peter Parker and Michelle Jones, along with anyone either of them had shared his secret with. He was also a pathological liar and lied to anyone he needed to in order to attain his goals. He grew much more desperate and bloodthirsty in his second confrontation with Spider-Man, unleashing all of his destructiveness to ensure his plan's success; but his lack of emotional stability brought him down, as he turned against E.D.I.T.H.'s advice, only to be riddled with his own drones' gunfire. In spite of this, Beck was partially successful in his goals, as he balanced his still-heroic image to expose Spider-Man's true identity and frame him for the destruction he never caused, even though he may not have lived to see it.

Attributes

Abilities

• Engineer: Beck was formerly an engineering specialist in the R&D department of Stark Industries' holographic-illusions division before being fired for mental instability.
• Deception: Beck managed to deceive everyone, including Spider-Man, into thinking that he was fighting for the common good when in actuality he was fighting his own illusions in order to appear as a hero.

Weaknesses

• Psychologically Unstable: Beck was deranged and unstable, both reasons why he was fired from Tony Stark's holographic technology R&D department. As such, he was under the impression that if he could prove himself to be a "hero" by destroying foes of his creation, then he would be publicly viewed as a worthy successor to Iron Man.

Paraphernalia

Equipment

• Mysterio Suit: Beck utilizes a suit made from various components of Stark tech in order to levitate, fly, and shoot blasts of energy from his hands. The suit appears to employ some nanotechnology in the helmet, which can retract into the rest of the suit.
• Illusion Projectors: Beck commanded thousands of Stark tech holographic projectors which allowed him to create various illusions, such as the Elementals, which could, in turn, cause terror and chaos for him to "thwart."
• Mechanical Props: In addition to the projectors, Beck and his allies used several mechanical props to make the Elementals' attacks seem more lifelike, since the Elementals, being holograms, could not necessarily damage any physical objects themselves.

Transportation

• Mysterio Suit
• Quentin Beck's Mocap Suit

Notes

• Jake Gyllenhaal portrayed Mysterio in the film Spider-Man: Far From Home.
• Beck mentions during his speech at the Praguian bar that it was of Guterman invention the story of "a soldier from another Earth named Quentin," implying that Quentin Beck isn't Mysterio's actual real name.
• The alias Mysterio is derived from the Italian L'uomo di mistero, meaning "Mystery Man," as misheard by Peter Parker's classmates.
• In one of the discarded concept art from Spider-Man: No Way Home, Mysterio fights Doctor Strange in battle on Liberty Island.

Trivia

• In very preliminary versions of the story of Spider-Man: Far From Home, Mysterio was going to be a Skrull.
• According to Spider-Man: Far From Home producer Amy Pascal, whether Mysterio died or not at the end of the film is unknown.
• Jake Gyllenhaal argued for Quentin Beck to sport a beard since he was supposed to be a soldier from another world, who wouldn't have time to be clean-shaven.
• Before Jake Gyllenhaal ended up portraying Mysterio, he was at one point considered to replace Tobey Maguire for the role of Spider-Man in the film Spider-Man 2.

See Also

• 2 appearance(s) of Quentin Beck (Earth-199999)
• 3 minor appearance(s) of Quentin Beck (Earth-199999)
• 2 mention(s) of Quentin Beck (Earth-199999)
• 16 image(s) of Quentin Beck (Earth-199999)
• 2 quotation(s) by or about Quentin Beck (Earth-199999)
• 3 item(s) used/owned by Quentin Beck (Earth-199999)