The following contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
When the first Venom movie came out, it was a massive hit and the sequel was given the go-ahead almost instantly. Granted, the global pandemic delayed the actual release of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, but it was still made incredibly quickly. While the still on-going pandemic will probably prevent the sequel's box office from being quite as strong as the first film, with the fan response and the way the new movie ends, there's a good chance Venom 3 will probably happen, but it could also be a while before we actually see it.
The mid-credits scene of Venom: Let There Be Carnage at least hints that we won’t have to wait too long before we see Venom and Eddie Brock again on the big screen, but that might mean that they won’t be back in their own movie for a while, because it may take a long time for them to return to their own universe.
Venom Is In The MCU Now
Venom: Let There Be Carnage's mid-credits scene sees something, (it’s not entirely clear what) happen to Eddie and Venom that has transported them from their universe directly into what certainly appears to be the main timeline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
What this means exactly, we certainly don’t know yet. Whether Venom will actually appear in Spider-Man: No Way Home has not been confirmed, though the odds of such a thing certainly went up in a big way just now. But based on what the MCU has been doing, it seems likely that Venom could stay in this universe for some time.
Remember that the Marvel multiverse isn’t kicking off with Spider-Man: No Way Home. It started earlier this year with Loki, and what we got there was clearly being set up as a long term storyline in the MCU. The next Spider-Man film is only the next chapter of that story.
We know that the multiverse is going to be an ongoing plot thread for some time, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will pick up where Spider-Man: No Way Home left off. We know that Jonathan Majors, who appeared in Loki as He Who Remains, is set to appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, indicating that will be part of the larger story too.
That takes the multiverse into the middle of 2023 at least, and it's unlikely it will end there. There’s also no reason to expect that whatever it was that brought Venom here will be able to be easily undone at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, so he could be hanging around in the MCU for a few years.
There Are Clearly Plans For Venom 3
This would be fine if the plan was simply to make Venom part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward, but that doesn’t really seem to be the case. As far as we can tell, only Venom made the shift, so everybody else that Venom and Eddie know are back in their own universe.
With the way that Venom: Let There Be Carnage ended the movie proper before the mid-credits scene, it’s clear there is more story planned. Venom and Eddie are on the run. However Venom is ready to become a full-fledged superhero as a Lethal Protector.
Beyond that, something clearly happened to Detective Mulligan following his altercation with Carnage and Shriek. He now knows that the “monsters” exist, and having come in contact with them, it’s possible he’s already been infected and may become Toxin in the future.
Whatever is going there, it’s clear that something is going on. However, since Detective Mulligan isn’t in the MCU right now, unless something really wild just happened, all that will have to wait until the multiverse problem is resolved and Venom returns to his universe, or everything gets combined into one universe... or whatever is going to happen to fix all this.
Venom 3 Will Probably Take Longer Than Venom 2
If Venom: Let There Be Carnage had been released as originally planned, it would have been only about two years between the release of the first movie and the sequel. But it simply doesn’t look like Marvel’s larger multiverse storyline is going to be over two years from now, which means Venom 3 may need to wait.
However this storyline is brought to an end, whether Venom returns “home” or we get a “new” MCU that includes Venom and all his friends, it certainly feels like Venom 3 is going to be somewhat dependent on what happens in the MCU first.
Maybe all this is just part of building up Spider-Man: No Way Home and Venom will show up there and do whatever it is he’s supposed to do, and then Doctor Strange will fix everything and Venom will go home and make Venom 3. But that's an awful lot of work for a gloried cameo.
I’ve argued previously that while I tend to take Andrew Garfield at his word that he will not appear in Spider-Man: No Way Home, that doesn’t mean he won’t be appearing in the MCU at some point during this massive multiverse story. The fact that Venom just made the jump only increases those odds, but if Garfield and/or Tobey Maguire are going to be part of the MCU’s bigger future, it only makes sense Venom will as well.
In the world of comic books, and comic book movies, certainly anything is possible. So come October of 2023, maybe we will all go see Venom 3 in our local theaters. But Venom is in the MCU now, and in that franchise, there’s an order to things. There’s a story to be told and there’s a place for every character. Venom is now part of a much larger machine.
As long as fans of Venom get to see Venom somewhere, I’m not sure how many people will be desperate to see Venom 3, but there seems to be a plan for more of that story. There just may be a lot more story to tell before we get there.
