Tom Hardy‘s Venom made a brief appearance during the Spider-Man: No Way Home post-credits scene. Unfortunately, it was but a fleeting goodbye to the MCU, as he vanished back to his own timeline thanks to Doctor Strange’s spell. But he left behind a slither of symbiote, and the writers say that could make all the difference.
“It leaves the door open for possibilities, as opposed to just seeing him go back and not seeing any symbiote,” Erik Sommers, one half of No Way Home’s co-writers, said during IGN Fan Fest. “So it just allows for some exciting possibilities in the future.” Chris McKenna, the other co-writer, added that though the idea is there, they know nothing beyond what happens in the latest Spider-Man flick.
“That is above our pay grade. We are part of a bigger, larger universe that we are not the gods of, we’re just mortals in,” McKenna states. “I think it was a fun idea that the sixth [member of] the Sinister Six gets stuck in a bar and doesn’t get out of there, but maybe he leaves a little something behind. Again, we’re not masters of that course of that next adventure.”
Hardy’s brief tenure in the MCU stems from the Venom: Let There Be Carnage post-credits scene, where he suddenly found himself in an alternate timeline. Obviously, it would be great to see Venom and Spider-Man encounter each other, but inter-studio politics around Sony and Disney make anything beyond one-off scenes unlikely at present.
Perhaps that’ll change soon – Sony has emphatically denied that the upcoming Morbius is in the MCU, even though the trailer has Michael Keaton’s Vulture. Whatever the case, it’s very much explicit that a little piece of Venom still exists in our universe, and given that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is continuing a descent into timeline-criss-crossing, we might just see more symbiotes sooner rather than later in Phase 4.
Morbius comes to theatres April 1, and Doctor Strange 2 arrives May 6, 2022.