This story is going to expose the massive mid-credits scene attached to Venom: Let There Be Carnage. It’s a HUGE spoiler, so stop reading now if you do not want to know what it is.
By the end of Andy Serkis’ Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Venom have accepted their role as a Lethal Protector, and are off being fugitives in some dingy motel room. They start to have a discussion about keeping secrets from one another, and Venom agrees to show Eddie a sliver of the power the symbiotes possess. Before Venom can show off, however, something ELSE happens to the room that Eddie and Venom are in, and by the end of the sequence, Venom is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I know, it’s crazy. I talk about it at length here, and break down what I think it means for both Venom and Spider-Man (Tom Holland) moving forward. What’s even wilder about the scene in question, though, is how last-minute it came together. When we screened the movie as part of the junket process, this mid-credits scene wasn’t included. Then, when it screened for press the week before opening, the scene was there. Andy Serkis sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to talk about developing that scene, and he talks about how Spidey almost was part of the main movie’s story! Serkis said:
[The mid-credits scene was] 100 percent in flux, yeah. It couldn’t have been more in flux-y if you tried,. Yeah, of course, it was something that they talked about from before I even came on to the movie. There were moments where he [Spider-Man] was going to be in the story, potentially, and then he wasn’t. But no, we decided that we wanted to really examine the Venom-verse first. So as we were going through principal photography, the inevitable discussions had to be had, but it wasn’t until very, very late on that we reached the precise notion of the teaser that we wanted to lay in there.
From the moment that Sony launched a successful Venom movie, fans have been speculating on when and how Spider-Man would be brought over into the universe. In the Marvel Comics, Venom’s origin is tied tightly to Spider-Man, so creating him in a Sony universe that didn’t have access to Spidey seemed odd. When Andy Serkis says that there was consideration to use Spider-Man in the story for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, I’m immediately intrigued by some of the potentials Tom Hardy and screenwriter Kelly Marcel might have cooked up. But Serkis is correct in determining that there’s more to explore in the VenomVerse, as he calls it which is why Venom 2 explores important characters like Carnage (Woody Harrelson), Shriek (Naomie Harris) and Detective Mulligan (Stephen Graham).
Given the box office success of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony even tried to sneak in a Venom 3 before they finally crossed Eddie’s path with Peter Parker (Tom Holland). Though, the path forward likely will be more clear once we get an eye on Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is expected to open up the concept of the multiverse when it drops in theaters in December. Stay tuned, true believers.
