Summary
“With great power comes great responsibility.” While the saying may be well-known—and has been twisted in recent years, as with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker’s Aunt May reiterating the line in his last entry—it’s also emblematic ofSpider-Manas an IP and franchise. Over the years and tossed through many different hands, Spider-Man has sometimes been the face of quality comic craft and filmmaking and, at other times, has been the face of… Sony’s screw-ups, to say the least.
Spider-Man 4, the fourthMarvel Cinematic Universe-based Tom Holland-led entry in theMarvel Studios-SonySpider-Manseries, goes into production this summer. This is an exciting prospect for those hopeful for more Spidey, Tom Holland’s iteration of the webslinger, and good MCU storytelling. Four years afterSpider-Man: No Way Home, the climactic final entry in the original Jon Watts-directedSpider-Man: Homecomingtrilogy featuring Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire’s Spidey iterations alongside Holland, fans have gotten mere tidbits about what the next film could be about. Issues over the film being multiversally focused or a street-level narrative, how old characters like Peter’s friend Ned and his girlfriend MJ will fit into the new movie given they cannot remember him, and even new cast mate speculations have run awry, but very little has been revealed beyond rumor and some casting confirmations.
Spider-Man 4Needs A Big Surprise To Resonate With Fans
Perhaps A Symbiote Surprise?
With production coming rapidly and a release date presumably within 2026, one character could (and should) return to the MCU now that his trilogy has ended: Venom/Eddie Brock, played in brilliantly arrogant fashion by Tom Hardy. With Hardy’s Venom story ending inVenom: The Last Dance, his previous brief crossover inNo Way Homeand his universe—Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU)—getting shelved after Kraven the Hunter bombed criticallyand commercially, now is the time for the MCU’sSpider-Manfilms to fully integrate him into the Sacred Timeline—whether he is a variant or the same guy in Venom’s SSU trilogy. Such a surprise return would keepSpider-Man 4fans on their toes like with the previous entries and finally give Venom room to grow with the rest of Marvel’s roster.
But What Has Venom Been Up To In His Solo Films?
Tom Hardy Certainly Went For It
Sony jumpstarted the SSU in 2018 with Hardy’s first alien outing inVenom. The Life Foundation (LF), a bioengineering firm, searches space for signs of life, finding an asteroid covered in goo-like organisms called symbiotes. While the four acquired samples crash on their way back to Earth, the LF recovers three—the Venom-biote among them.Hardy’s Eddie Brock, an investigative journalistknown for breaking the rules and quipping his way to top stories, discovers that the Life Foundation is using human test subjects to determine what these symbiotes do and need to survive.
While initial confrontations falter to the point of his girlfriend Anne Weying losing her job and ending their relationship, Eddie eventually breaks into one of LF’s labs, where Venom latches onto him. After the merge, Eddie hears voices in his head and learns of Venom’s presence as a separate entity that needs Eddie’s host body to survive Earth’s oxygen levels. Without spoiling much else, the pair learn to trust each other and see their common goals, leaving the rest ofVenomand its two sequels to be a buddy-cop-like series of adventures as Eddie and Venom explore their merged anti-hero identity.Venom: The Last Danceends with Venom sacrificing himself, saving Eddie and humanity.
The Venom Trilogy Was Financially Successful, But Still Failed
Money Isn’t Everything, You Guys
While Venom is commercially the only successful character Sony has made multiple movies with—Morbius,Madame Web, andKraven the Hunterhave pretty much nothing to offer anyway—it remained as critically flat as its box-office failing counterparts.Venomhas a 30% Rotten Tomatoes score;Venom: Let There Be Carnageholds the series' highest at 58%;The Last Dancelands smack in the middle, at 40%.
Shoddy CGI around the gooey titular character, bumbling writing, simplistic and thin plotting, a lack of Spider-Man connections, and half-baked villains weighed every movie down.Giving him more characters, storylines, and settingswithin the MCU would further develop Venom and Eddie Brock in more appealing ways, especially if Hardy remains at the helm.
VenomHas Two Ways to Enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe
There are physically innumerable ways in which Venom could be (re)introduced into the MCU. However, the most satisfying way Sony and Marvel Studios could reintroduce Venom is by keeping Hardy because fans love him, which narrows their possibilities to two general directions.
Path One: The No Way Home Cameo Continuation
The first way forward to bringing Venom into the MCU would be the most straightforward: using the trilogy of movies and theNo Way Homecameo to continue Eddie Brock and Venom’s intertwined stories. Venom and Brock have already briefly crossed over, so seeing their return after such a teaser inNo Way Homewould be a logical continuation. With Venom sacrificing himself inThe Last Dance, Eddie could somehow be re-transported back to the MCU, where he is “reintroduced” to Venom viathe glop of goo he left behindat the bar inNo Way Home. This way, the character could expand without sacrificing the (very few) enjoyable tidbits and important story beats of theVenomtrilogy and allow this iteration of Eddie Brock to be course-corrected to a more comic-accurate and organic MCU future. If an eventual Spider-Man-Venom showdown ensues, it would be much more satisfactory to root for a character audiences have already come to know instead of the “same face, different guy” approach Marvel has used inDoctor Strange and the Multiverse of MadnessandDeadpool & Wolverine—but that’s not to say there is no other way forward.
Path Two: A Variant Played By The Same Actor
The alternative method has again been used by the MCU quite a few times before. Just look at past MCU X-Men cameos like Professor X and Beast, played by their respective 2000X-Menactors but not the same iterations. Venom could be reintroduced in much the same way. Considering that the multiverse could be a huge part ofSpider-Man 4and definitely will be forAvengers: DoomsdayandSecretWars, throwing a variant Venom-Brock could prove successful, so long as Marvel-Sony execute it correctly. For example,Spider-Man 4’s filmmakers could make Eddie Brock an integral player in Spidey’s next multiverse adventure, forcing Tom Holland’s Peter to search for a Brock variant that later turns into Venom. They could even introduce an MCU version of Eddie Brock, who stumbles upon the goo his SSU predecessor left behind, transforming him into the powerful symbiote mass. While fans think they have found many ways Sony connectedVenom: The Last DancetoSpider-Man 4, no official word about their connections has been revealed, leaving room for plenty of possibilities.
Tom Hardy is Open To Returning & A Crossover
While Hardy has expressed thatVenom: The Last Danceishis final major role as the titular anti-hero, he has also expressed interest multiple times in engaging with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and returning beyond his leading trilogy. As reported viaThe Direct, Hardy’s most recent hints towards such crossover rumors came at a fan event in Mexico, where he maintained a very vague, almost uneducated answer to such a question as coming back and crossing over with the famous web-slinger:
“Will we ever meet Spider-Man? … You know… See, there are always possibilities. But I cannot possibly say anything, because this is the last movie. And yeah, I would love that.”
Hardy’s answer that he “cannot possibly say anything, because this is the last movie” may seem like an initial deterrent;The Last Dancewas, and probably will be for a while, the last Venom-centric movie with or without Hardy. But it means nothing about his future supporting roles, cameos, or future with the character in general: “… there are always possibilities.“The Last Danceis just, indeed,Venom’s last major tango. Thus, while there is still a lot of time between now andSpider-Man4’s release, it is a safe assumption that Tom Hardy’s Venom is at least in consideration for future MCU projects, even if he never appears again. Too many doors have been left open to say definitively thatSpider-Man 4will not at least continue this vague, is-Venom-in-or-out trajectory.
