Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
In Spider-Man: Homecoming,
The Vulture (Adrian Toomes)
discovers the true identity of Spider-Man. (Psst.. it's
Peter Parker)
After things do not go well for him and he gets arrested because of Spider-Man, he doesn't reveal the true identity of Spider-Man to the authorities or anyone from the criminal world. If he had, he could easily take revenge.
Why does he stay silent about his enemy's true identity?
It was out of gratitude for Peter saving his life
“That’s what is cool — he gets a moment of redemption and he gets to protect Peter, even though Peter would never know. It’s his way of saying thank you.
It was a really interesting thing in the development of the story. You couldn’t just rely on the tropes of the villain being a murderer and killing a bunch of people. He had to be redeemable in some capacity in the end and that he believes everything he said, especially about his family. So it was a really fine walk to create a villain that still has that moment of redemption in the end.”
SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING Director Jon Watts On That Surprising Mid-Credits Scene
Note that Toomes, for all of his flaws and bluster isn't actually motivated by evil.
Feige: “I think it is different from the other credits sequences. I think people are conditioned to look for a forward facing tease about what’s to come. But that’s not always, maybe not even half the time, what our gags are about. Certainly, the one at the very end of the movie is clearly not that. But this was basically just meant to show that Toomes was not a horrible guy, had found himself in this position, and realized this kid saved his daughter, this kid saved his own life. He wouldn’t even be alive if it wasn’t for this kid. And in that moment where he had the opportunity to rat him out and have a guy go after him, he decides to keep the secret, because he appreciated ultimately what Peter did for him. He is one of the few villains to survive a movie, and I think you appreciate it.”
