Venom’s appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home came as a surprise for many given that they aren’t part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but in a new interview during The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith podcast, No Way Home writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers joked about the possibility of Venom being the final member of Marvel’s Sinister Six.
The Sinister Six is a group of villains in the Spider-Man comics who frequently teamed up like anti-Avengers or an actually good Suicide Squad to battle Spider-Man. With five different Spider-Man villains such as Electro, Dock-Ock and Green Goblin appearing in No Way Home, it was speculated that the MCU was building their own Sinister Six — and McKenna and Sommers joked that Venon may well be the missing link.
During the interview, they said, “Yeah, there was definitely talk, like, ‘Who is the Sinister Six here?’ If you want six, you can always say Venom was the sixth [member] if you want. He’s in the tag, he made it [into the MCU], but he never made it out of Mexico.”
In that same interview, the writers of the action movie also revealed that Far From Home’s Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s Rhino (Paul Giamatti) were in the running to round off ensemble of Spider-Man villains who appeared in the Phase 4 flick.
“There was always that talk of, ‘Should we be doing officially the Six?” McKenna and Sommers added.
In a December 2021 interview with Variety, the writers also revealed that the villainous symbiote was, at one point, meant to be part of No Way Home’s final battle.
However, with Venom and Eddie Brock (both Tom Hardy) taking centre stage in one of the film’s post-credit scenes, which saw a trace of troublesome symbiote slime left behind, it looks like the menacing alien may well make his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut some day in the future.
Spider-Man: No Way Home currently available to watch in cinemas in the UK.