SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home. If you have not yet seen the film, read on at your own risk!
We knew going in that Spider-Man: No Way Home was going to be a big deal, both for its titular hero and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, and the movie certainly does not disappoint in that regard. It is an absolutely huge movie that has changed things for Peter Parker in a big way – but even after everything that happened in the movie itself, we got a pair of end credits scenes that promise future big changes for Spider-Man and something even bigger in store for the MCU as a whole.
Spider-Man: No Way Home features a pair of scenes after the credits started to roll. One of them is essentially a sequel to a post-credits scene in another movie earlier this year, while the other focuses on how Doctor Strange will be fairing following the events of this new movie. Let's break it down.
Venom Arrives In The MCU... And Then Leaves
It was only a couple of months ago when Venom: Let There Be Carnage blew the minds of comic book movie fans by having Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock, along with his symbiotic buddy Venom, make the jump from his universe into the MCU. Brock and Venom were hiding out in a seedy hotel in Mexico when, the next thing they knew, and for reasons they didn't understand, they were transported into a resort hotel room, and looking at Tom Holland’s Spider-Man on television.
In the Spider-Man: No Way Home mid-credits scene, we see Eddie Brock sitting at a bar trying to understand just where in the world he is. The bartender has apparently given him a basic understanding of the Avengers and a rundown on the Snap and the Blip. Eddie doesn’t really understand how he got to where he is, but he makes the decision to head to New York to try to find Spider-Man, as it just feels like that’s his next step.
However, almost as soon as he makes that decision, he feels something start to happen to him, and he disappears in a flash of light – the same kind that we saw envelop the rest of the multiverse interlopers when they went back to their home universes. However, Eddie Brock has left something behind, as a final shot reveals that a drop of the Venom symbiote is sitting on the bar, and it is showing signs of life.
What This Means For The Future Of Spider-Man
I for one certainly thought that when Venom was brought into the MCU, he would hang around for at least a little while. But apparently not. He was seemingly brought over by the same Doctor Strange spell going awry that brought over Green Goblin, Doc Ock, and the rest, but nobody ever knew he was there, and when the spell was fixed he was sent back like the rest.
Ignoring that the entire understanding for how the spell works doesn't fit this incarnation of the character (he didn’t know Peter Parker was Spider-Man in any universe), Venom is now gone... but also, Venom is still here. It seems the entire point of the post-credits scenes in the two movies was to bring the Venom symbiote into the MCU, and since Venom was very interested in Spider-Man, it seems likely that this drop of goo, once it grabs hold of somebody, will likely want to do the same.
While we have no idea what the future holds for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, we’re being led to believe there will certainly be more movies, and so with that comes the likelihood that at some point Spider-Man and the symbiote will cross paths.
There have been rumors that we might be getting an MCU version of the classic Secret Wars comic book storyline, and it was during that major crossover event that Spider-Man first received the black suit that eventually turns out to be an alien – so maybe this is the first step toward that happening. Or maybe this symbiote will find itself the MCU’s Eddie Brock and they will go find Spider-Man.
Whatever the future holds for Peter Parker, the final post-credits scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home, wasn’t technically a post-credits scene, but it gave us a real look at where the MCU is going next.
First Look At Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness
Not since Captain America: The First Avenger have we had a post-credits scene that was actually a trailer for another of the upcoming Marvel movies, but that’s exactly what we got here. The next MCU movie we’ll see is next May’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and we saw a lot from that movie in Spider-Man: No Way Home's post-credits.
After Doctor Strange finishes the spell that wipes Peter Parker from the collective world memory, we don’t see him again in the proper film. What we see in the trailer is that Doctor Strange may have... broken the universe a tiny bit. We see Doctor Strange walking through what looks like the mirror dimension, but might just be his new reality. We hear voice over from Wong admonishing Strange for what he has done, and Strange arguing there was no other way.
We see Wanda Maximoff back on the big screen doing a bit of gardening. A reference is made to the events of WandaVision, but Strange is apparently enlisting her help to deal with whatever this multiverse fallout is. We also see the return of Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mordo. At the end of Doctor Strange it was clear the one time ally was now an enemy, and we see how some of that is going to play out.
Mordo says that Doctor Strange himself is a threat to the universe, and we see that in at least one way he might be right. The mystical hero confronts what looks to be a dark version of himself – one from another reality we can assume. This might actually be meant to connect Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness directly to the events of What If…?, the Disney+ animated series, that also saw a version of Doctor Strange that went bad. That being said, though, we also saw that version redeem himself, so perhaps not.
The trailer certainly has me excited for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. As far as what’s next for Spider-Man? Who knows, but if it’s anything like what we’ve seen so far, when we get there it will be amazing.
If you need to catch up on the Marvel Cinematic Universe before the multiverse really starts to change things, consider watching the Marvel movies in order for a potentially fresh experience in the MCU.
