Donald Glover was initially set to return to the Spider-Man universe in Far from Home, until his cameo was cut during an early script edit.
Glover portrayed petty thief Aaron Davis in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, who appears in the comics as the uncle of Miles Morales, the main hero of 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
According to screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, they were initially hoping to bring Glover back for Far from Home until they realised that the Europe-set sequel needed to get away from New York as quickly as possible.
“Other considerations come in,” McKenna confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter. “We went down that road a little bit, then the movie really spent such little time in Queens and gets to Europe pretty quickly. Some ideas you just have to give up.”
He added: “That’s really what it came down to. We loved that character and we wanted to do it, but we just wanted to get out of New York and get on the trip as soon as possible. There were several things we would have loved to do in New York before he left, but we just didn’t have time.”
Far From Home was released earlier this month and broke records by grossing $27m (£21.6m) in North America, the highest midweek takings of any Marvel Cinematic Universe movie to date.
In other Spider-Man news, a crossover with Venom is “likely” to happen in the future, according to the head of Marvel Studios.