According to Kevin Smith, the Marvel Studios secret police are a real thing, and their job extends to deliberately leaving false information lying around to see if it ends up leaking online, instantly identifying the culprit.
As the constant storm of speculation swirling around Spider-Man: No Way Home attests, sometimes fans want the studio to come right out and give the game away, in this instance the appearances of Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire, but both Kevin Feige and Sony continue to operate with tightly sealed lips.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu blamed Tom Holland and Mark Ruffalo for the surreptitious nature of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with the duo famously having spoiled a number of major reveals in the past.
“Look, I feel like there may have been a day and age where they brought the actors in and they were like, ‘Hey buddy, here’s everything that’s gonna happen,’ but I just feel like there were certain things that happened that ruined it for all of us. I don’t want to single anybody out, but shout out to Holland, shout out to Ruffalo. Really just mucked it up for the rest of us. So no, we have no idea.”
Of course, Liu is only joking, but longtime MCU supporters can confirm that it’s always been this way. Nobody had any idea going into Iron Man that Samuel L. Jackson was going to show up as Nick Fury in a post-credits scene, and that’s the way the franchise has run ever since. The actors are typically the last to find anything out, because everyone knows that loose lips sink ships.