Sure!

Okay, so there’s a history of Mark Ruffalo and Tom Holland accidentally spoiling Marvel things. They’re just big overenthusiastic puppies who don’t seem to grasp Marvel’s stringent spoiler policy. Tom Holland spoiled that Spider-man’s going to be a trilogy; Ruffalo livestreamed from secret photoshoots and the premiere of Thor3. In short, fans who follow Marvel hard have been conditioned to pay attention to Ruffalo and Holland’s social media and interviews, because they’re awful at keeping secrets secret.

So Tom Holland did an Instagram Live “unboxing” of a package supposedly sent to him by Mark Ruffalo, containing the Avengers 3 poster. After he held up the poster for the viewers, he read the enclosed letter, which is basically labeled MARVEL and CONFIDENTIAL and DO NOT SHARE, and then he cursed and the stream ended.

At first fans thought this was an actual leak and LOST THEIR SHIT, because how cool! It’s the new poster! And we got it ahead of time! And shortly after that happened, Marvel posted the high-quality image, like Tom Holland had forced their hand.

But it quickly became obvious that it wasn’t ENTIRELY a mistake. The package doesn’t have an address on it (it’s literally labeled “From: Mark Ruffalo, To Tom Holland, c/o Marvel Studios”), and the text on either side of the letter is visible through the paper but he didn’t acknowledge it. Tom Holland’s Instagram Lives apparently aren’t normally saved, but this one was. And then, of course, Marvel’s official accounts posted the video.

It’s a marketing ploy, but it’s a brilliant one, that plays up the things that fans know about the actors and their mistakes in a fun way. It’s a great way to utilize fans’ parasocial connections with these celebrities to their promotional advantage, and I’m super impressed with how they managed it.