Your One-Stop Spider-Man: Far From Home Explainer For The Big Blip

For the past year, Marvel fans have been referring to Thanos’ snap as simply “the snap,” aka the thing that wiped away half of humanity in Avengers: Infinity War with a simple, well, snap. But now that everyone is back, thanks for the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) snapping again in Avengers: Endgame, there’s now a word for what happened to all those people who simply reappeared: They blipped.

Spider-Man: Far From Home introduced “The Blip” and how it worked (sort of). Blip is, um, kind of weird choice for a worldwide phenomenon and if you're confused about how all this blipping back and forth worked, you're in good company (everyone who blipped is still pretty confused, too). Luckily, Fandango got Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige to explain all this blip and snap madness, too:

"We always referred to it as the Blip, and then the public started referring to it as the Snap. We think it’s funny when high school kids just call this horrific, universe-changing event the Blip. We’ve narrowed it down to, the Snap is when everybody disappeared at the end of Infinity War. The Blip is when everybody returned at the end of Endgame… and that is how we have narrowed in on the definitions."

Far From Home attempted to explain The Blip to us via a very amusing special report from the Midtown School of Science and Technology. The long and the short of it — as they tell us, but if you’ve seen Avengers: Endgame, you already know — is that a bunch of people disappeared and then reappeared. While they were gone the world continued to spin on, and then five years later they all reappeared (in the Marvel Cinematic Universe it’s now the year 2023). Now, there are people who blipped and people who didn’t blip living together in a post-Thanos world, but there were some complications of all this back and forth:

As we saw in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame (through tear-stained eyes), those who blipped in the snap were turned to dust. Yes, that sentence kinda reads like a weird mad libs, but keep up! There’s no really long explanation needed here, as all you need to know — and all everyone who blipped knows — is that they disappeared. Then five years later, they came back.

In a very morbid way, they were legitimately dead. It’s not like they went to some fancy alternate universe and have memories from the last five years. One second they were all here, and the next they were nothing. Now they're them again! That's really it.

Here’s where it actually gets confusing, so sorry in advance. As we see in Far From Home, when everyone came back after the second snap they appeared exactly where they had initially disappeared (the scenario we see in the movie is half the marching band disappears in the school’s gym, and when they reappear there’s a basketball game in progress, and chaos ensues!). Aunt May later explains that when she blipped back, she appeared in her apartment which had been rented out to new tenants and that the couple who had moved in were royally confused.

However, there’s already some debate about this. After Endgame a huge issue was raised, like what happens if you blipped while on an airplane and came back mid-air, without an airplane? According to Marvel President Kevin Feige, in a Reddit post, he clarified that Professor Hulk snapped everyone back into a “safe” location. Don’t know how in the middle of the court during a basketball game is a “safe” place, but sure. How everyone blipped back — and where — is going to continue to be a hotly debated discussion in the MCU as everyone’s still got thousands of questions about it.

Also, not everyone we know and love came back after the blip. Those who didn’t disappear as a result of Thanos' snap, but died from consequences of people disappearing (like anyone who died in a crash from a suddenly driver-less vehicle) remains dead after the blip.

Everyone who blipped did not age. Everyone who did not blip did. This is best seen exemplified by Peter’s classmate, Brad Davis (Remy Hii). As the movie explains to us, Brad used to be a little scrawny kid, but over the last five years turned into a big jock (and also a big jerk). The movie tells us that the blip happened mid-school year, so everyone was forced to repeat the grade.

Yep, because if she didn't she would be five years old than Spider-Man/Peter and because she's still in school, she'd have to be an ultra super-senior. So yeah, she blipped.

If you didn’t blip, you’re now five years older. If you did blip, you’re the same age you were five years ago, just five years in the future (Flash tries to pass as someone who didn’t blip, which would make him 21, but he’s called out on it). Peter and just about all his classmates blipped so they’re all still the same age we last saw them in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Probably? But we haven’t seen those yet. Far From Home deals with multiverse consequences, not psychological or physical consequences of the blip. Maybe those post-blip ramifications will be a thing come Spider-Man 3.

Now enjoy the rest of your day, and the fact that after reading the word approximately 100 times in this article, the word "blip" has officially lost all meaning.