Did the ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ Trailer Just Kill All Hope of a Spider-Man Crossover?

Venom, the Tom Hardy-led Sony antihero franchise, is without doubt one of the few vibrant spots within the studio’s prolonged Spider-Man universe—totally on the energy of Hardy simply going Sicko Mode and swinging for the fences together with his efficiency. Whether or not he’s committing to absurd bodily comedy or delivering not one however two wacky voices, nobody can accuse Hardy of mailing it in as Eddie Brock, the mild-mannered journalist who finds himself sharing a physique with the wacky, man-eating alien symbiote often known as Venom. Audiences have responded in sort, turning this siloed franchise right into a billion-dollar asset for Sony. All that was left was to lastly get Hardy’s Eddie Brock in the identical room with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, which the final movie appeared to lastly gesture at in its post-credits scene. However the trailer for Venom: The Final Dance, the third and alleged final Venom movie due out this fall, seems to be strolling that again. Let’s break it down.

There’s a second within the trailer between the movie’s antagonist, a dogged army soldier performed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and a bartender performed by Ted Lasso’s Cristo Fernández, whereby a bit of a Venom-esque symbiote will get snatched up by the military. This has a deeper which means in the event you’ve been following all of those Venom post-credits sequences. On the finish of the second movie, Let There Be Carnage, Eddie Brock and Venom are seemingly transported into the MCU, with the creature taking a look at an image of Peter Parker on a TV display after which licking it. Then, on the finish of Spider-Man: No Approach Dwelling, simply as all the multiversal shenanigans are getting reset, Eddie is kicking it alongside Fernández’s unnamed bartender, studying all in regards to the MCU — he particularly mentions Thanos, Hulk, and Iron Man — earlier than expressing a want to go to New York to talk with Spider-Man. Simply as he stands up, Eddie is teleported away, seemingly again to his personal universe, abandoning a bit of the symbiote within the MCU consequently.

These post-credit sequences seemed to be teeing up a chance for the symbiote arc to lastly go down within the Holland Spider-Man collection. On condition that No Approach Dwelling ended with Peter completely alone, his existence completely erased from the reminiscences of everybody he is aware of and loves, leaning right into a darker storyline makes quite a lot of sense on paper. Remoted and unhappy, Peter may very well be extra prone to the symbiote’s corruption, thus kicking off the black-suited Spidey storyline everyone knows and love.

Nonetheless, this new Venom trailer reveals Ejiofor amassing that errant symbiote pattern in the identical actual bar, with Fernández carrying the very same clothes. Do bear in mind, Ejiofor already performs a reasonably pivotal character within the MCU—Mordo, a sorcerer within the first Physician Unusual movie who, within the comics, goes on to develop into one among his largest antagonists. So if Ejiofor is interacting with the bartender, is that this a multiversal variant scenario or is the MCU-Sony plot continuity liason asleep on the wheel?

The most important implication right here is that Sony has determined to again out on their plans to play ball with the MCU. Keep in mind, Sony’s bizarre method to their set of Spider-Man properties places them ready the place they’re higher off servicing characters who aren’t the pleasant neighborhood wall-crawler.

All instructed, this one shot poses quite a lot of questions on the way forward for Holland’s Spider-Man. Primarily, that this concept of the upcoming fourth movie lastly incorporating one among Spidey’s largest arcs—and most notorious villains—will show to be one massive pump-fake. Or possibly Kevin Feige and co. simply need to deal with Venom themselves and can confine Hardy’s misadventures to its personal universe? We could have to attend till Venom: The Final Dance’s October 25 launch to seek out out.

The excellent news is that no matter any cross-franchise connections, this new movie seems like an appropriately wild time. The trailer ends with Venom taking on a horse (!) which then takes off like a Ferrari (!!) and jumps off a cliff with Eddie clinging on for pricey life. Venom, weird and superior to the very finish.