Spoiler Alert: Stop reading right now if you haven’t yet seen Venom: Let There Be Carnage
A week later, it’s still almost hard to believe that the mid-credits scene in Venom: Let There Be Carnage actually happened. The fact that we even have a deal between Sony and Disney that allows Spider-Man to exist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was blockbuster enough, but now we have another major Spider-Verse character, Venom, who has arrived in the MCU.
And so the fact that we’re here now leads to the obvious question: what’s next? What exactly do Sony and Marvel have planned? When will we see Venom next? What does this mean for the future of Spider-Man, Venom and the entire MCU? There are endless possibilities for how Venom’s presence could change the entire universe, but here are a few exciting ones.
Venom In Spider-Man: No Way Home
The most obvious place where Venom could make his presence felt is in December’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Venom and Spider-Man are classic adversaries, and the scene at the end of Venom: Let There Be Carnage certainly implies that Venom is interested in the Wall-Crawler for some reason. Considering we do know that several other Spidey villains from other universes are set to appear in the threequel, Venom certainly could as well.
Of course, what’s unclear right now is whether we should consider Venom a Spider-Man villain or not. From where Let There Be Carnage left off, Venom looks set to be a hero, or at the very least a vigilante. So perhaps what we’re gearing up for is not a Spider-Man and Venom battle, but rather a Spider-Man and Venom team-up.
There’s also a more mundane reason to expect this will happen. Another of Sony’s Spider-Verse movies, Morbius, had its release delayed into 2022, while Venom 2 did not. The reason for that could simply be that Let There Be Carnage needed to come out prior to Spider-Man: No Way Home in December, and thus it had to keep its release date.
Intergalactic Venom
It’s possible that this entire set-up exists just to get Spider-Man and Venom together, but it’s also possible, even likely, that the plans for Venom in the MCU go much further. Remember, the Venom symbiote is an alien from another world, so with Venom now in a new universe, he might very well want to go check to see if his race exists in this universe.
In Marvel Comics, Venom has even been a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, and while it seems unlikely that we’ll see Venom in the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, I mean, it might happen. The point here is that Venom could very easily, and justifiably, cross paths, and change the direction of, several MCU characters from all over the galaxy.
Venom Goes Home, But The Symbiote Stays In The MCU
Whatever Venom actually does while he’s in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I think there’s a pretty good chance that once Marvel is done playing with separate universes, Venom and Eddie Brock will probably go back to their own universe to continue making Venom movies for Sony. But that doesn’t mean that the symbiote story will be over, because it’s always possible Venom could leave a piece of himself behind.
As we saw in Venom: Let There Be Carnage, it only takes the tiniest piece of the symbiote for a new creature to be born. So while Venom may go home, if a piece is left in the MCU, then the symbiote race could continue to flourish, wreaking havoc for MCU heroes long after Venom is history.
Secret Wars
It’s impossible to talk about how Venom could play into the Marvel Cinematic Universe without mentioning the Marvel Comics story that was essentially his birth. Secret Wars was the story that gave Spider-Man the famed black suit, which he kept for sometime before realizing that the suit was actually an alien presence.
It’s been rumored long before now that Secret Wars might be part of the MCU’s long-term plan, and it’s highly unlikely that Marvel Studios hasn’t, at the very least, considered it for adaptation. Certainly, as with the Infinity Saga, the MCU version of Secrets Wars would likely go through a lot of changes, but it wouldn’t be Secrets Wars if Spidey didn’t end up in black. So with Venom here, that becomes a possibility.
Combining The Universes
Right now, Venom exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but as far as we can tell, he’s the only one to make the leap. This will likely all be part of Marvel’s current larger storyline which has the concept of the multiverse at its heart. But the question is, where will it end?
We’re not quite sure what caused Venom to make the universe jump, so it’s possible that whatever happened could be easily undone to send Venom home, but without more details, it’s equally possible that Venom won’t go home until the storyline is over. When that happens, will there be one universe, or will there be several? When comic books have previously tried to clean up continuity, different pieces of different universes often get thrown together, and that could certainly happen here. Perhaps Venom 3 will actually take place in the MCU.
Whether the plans for Venom in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are short term or long term, it would be an absolute waste of the crossover to have Venom make an appearance and then simply disappear. There is almost certainly some point/goal in having Venom make the jump to the MCU. We likely won’t know for sure what that will be until it happens, but until then, there are plenty of possibilities to consider.
We could actually see several of these ideas come together to define Venom’s MCU impact; these ideas aren’t mutually exclusive. And there are countless other ways that Venom could make his presence felt in his new universe. But it does seem clear that something big is on the horizon, and whatever it is, it’s sure to be exciting.
