Spider-Man: Far from Home came at an interesting point in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) timeline, with the events of Avengers: Endgame immediately preceding the movie. While the movie puts a lot of focus on the loss of Tony Stark, and how Peter Parker is personally affected, there is a much larger phenomenon that was kind of glossed over.

Spider-Man: Far From Home sees Peter and his friends Michelle Jones and Ned Leeds return after the snap. This event, which was caused by Thanos wielding the Infinity Gauntlet, resulted in half of all life in the entire universe disappearing.

And while the movie acknowledges that Parker and his friends are now forced to adjust as kids who were younger than them previously have now grown past them, and graduated, the movie almost put the effects of the snap even more into focus. Of course, Parker had his own story to explore, and these ideas were discarded, but they’re worth addressing.

One Of Spider-Man: Far From Home’s Writers Made A Really Good Point About The Impact Of Thanos’ Snap

The Snap Was Felt Across The Universe & Every Lifeform

The reality of the snap is so much greater than Marvel has actually shown. As mentioned above, it’s not just half of all the humans that disappeared, but literally half of all life in the universe. Thanos did this in hopes of bringing balance to the universe, with more resources available to share among fewer people. However, his logic is deeply flawed.

For one, by snapping away half of all life, that also gets rid of half the food, since a lot of species appear to enjoy eating meat of various other animals. In addition, plant life is also technically living, with a life cycle, and complex needs to ensure it survives. But even laying these issues to the side, there are more pressing concerns that result from the snap.

This was highlighted by Chris McKenna, one of the writers who worked on Far From Home. In an interview with Variety, McKenna and co-writer Erik Sommers spoke about the complex process of writing the movie following the mᴀssive fallout of Endgame which effectively imploded the MCU, and McKenna mentions how they almost included major references to some nitty-gritty aspects of the snap.

When asked is even animals disappeared in the blip, McKenna responded with the following:

“All life forms. Even down to the bacteria in your digestive system. We were wondering if we could make a whole plot point about people’s digestive systems that were really screwed up.”

Now, this could have made for an incredible insight into the horrors of the blip, but it would not have made much sense in Spider-Man: Far From Home, five years after the initial snap, when all the disappeared suddenly reappeared.

Halving The World’s Bacteria Would Seemingly Create Some Colossal Problems For The MCU’s Earth

Bacteria Is Integral To Life Across The Universe

As much as half of the animal and plant life disappearing would have caused havoc and ultimately made Thanos’ efforts to balance the universe futile, the disappearance of half of all bacteria is even more problematic. Bacteria have a symbiotic relationship with all living things, and ultimately account for a large part of how a healthy human functions.

A report by the BBC published back in 2018 explained how more than half of your body isn’t even human. The fact is that just 43% of the human body is made up of human cells, and the rest is largely made up of bacteria that is living on and inside of you. And while some bacteria are harmful, the vast majority help to keep bodies running as they should be.

So, losing half of the 30 to 38 trillion bacteria that make up the remaining whole of an adult human would be catastrophic (via National Library of Medicine). But Thanos’ snap was random. While all six of the original Avengers survived, Clint Barton lost his entire family to the snap. While Peter and his closest friends disappeared, many of their classmates lived on through the five-year blip.

Ultimately, this creates mᴀssive complications for the MCU, and all those inhabiting the reality where Thanos snapped half of all life away. For instance, if we conclude that all plant life survived the snap, the disappearance of half of all bacteria would prove catastrophic for the growth and sustainability of any crops.

The MCU’s Bacteria Problem Actually Looks Like It Might Be Even More Complicated Than That

The MCU Could Have Dedicated A Whole Series To The Fallout Of The Snap

And taking that idea forward to its inevitable conclusion, with a mᴀss failing of crops around the globe, it’s likely that some species of plant would go extinct. On the other hand, the sheer drop in the number of thriving plants would lead to more nitrogen and less oxygen, as there are fewer plants to filter these chemicals from the atmosphere.

This would in turn damage the atmosphere, reduce the quality of air, and cause more people to develop diseases and illnesses, and that’s without fully diving into the nitty-gritty of them losing significant chunks of their own bacteria. Evidently, human life, animal life, and everything on Earth would be in big trouble.

Now, the MCU did draw attention to a group called the Flag Smashers who felt the world was better after the snap. But the reality of a snap which eradicates half of all life at random would have been catastrophic, and likely would have resulted in life on Earth becoming extinct. All except for the lucky half of bacteria who manage to outlive the more complex and needy lifeforms.

However, it seems likely that the MCU may have diluted this idea down, and suggested that the half of all the bacteria that disappeared was the half that faded away with the other disappeared beings. Ultimately, a deep dive of the snap would have been fascinating, but absolutely not the right story for Spider-Man: Far From Home, as it would have hijacked the narrative.