How Venom 2 Sets Up A Sequel

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

While Venom 2 neatly closes the loop on a brief version of Carnage’s origin story, Venom: Let There Be Carnage also sets up several tantalizing sequel options for the franchise. Venom 2 has been a box-office success for Sony by any yardstick, netting an impressive $90.1 million across its initial 3-day release. This box-office smash bodes very well indeed for Venom fans expecting an immediate symbiotic sequel, with leading man Tom Hardy stating previously that a potential Venom 3 will only be greenlit if Let There Be Carnage is successful commercially.

To date, Sony’s Venom franchise has followed a very linear pattern as it attempts to establish Venom’s origin story within its own Spider-Man universe. Venom 2018, despite its zany odd-couple scenes featuring Brock and Venom, ultimately relies on standard superhero coming-of-age fare as the pair resolve to save the world from Venom‘s nefarious Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed). Venom: Let There Be Carnage largely continues this trend, introducing a greater threat in Carnage but ultimately leaning on ideals of unity and teamwork to ensure the protagonists come out on top.

Yet Venom 2‘s final scenes completely subvert the franchise’s delineated structure, setting up several avenues for a sequel. Venom: Let There Be Carnage‘s post-credits scene confirms Venom’s long-awaited entrance into the MCU, meaning a third Venom installment’s potential swells exponentially in the presence of current Marvel entities such as Spider-Man and Shang-Chi. Despite its final MCU destination, Venom 2‘s penultimate scenes also bolster the viability of a Sony-verse set Venom sequel, given the new threads the film’s coda establishes.

Eddie & Venom’s Teleportation Sets Up Multiple MCU-Based Sequel Options

The Venom: Let There Be Carnage post-credits scene generates so much buzz as it intrinsically alters the relationship between Marvel and Sony superhero movies forever. Eddie and Venom’s tropical vacation at the end of Venom 2 is incredibly short-lived before there is a blinding flash of light and the pair awaken in a different hotel room. The telenovela previously blaring on their hotel television has also curiously been replaced, now displaying a fanfare news report hosted by Sam Raimi’s incarnation of J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons). His news segment on Spider-Man’s revealed identity is a direct continuity to Peter Parker’s unmasking in the final scenes of Spider-Man: Far From Home, delivering a bombshell moment that sets up Venom and Eddie existing within the MCU.

Eddie and Venom’s teleportation sets up an immediate sequel option for Venom 3, which looks to be putting Venom on a collision course with his historical nemesis Spider-Man. Introducing Tom Holland’s Spider-Man to Tom Hardy’s Venom is a gratuitous act of fanservice by both the Venom and MCU creative teams, who have long been building toward an inevitable showdown with the web-slinger in one form or another. Although originally planned as Andrew Garfield’s Sony-based Spider-Man, porting Venom into the MCU allows Tom Hardy’s symbiote to capitalize on the popularity of the MCU’s burgeoning Phase 4 and do battle with Tom Holland’s beloved Spidey incarnation. Whether Venom will make an unexpected appearance in the highly anticipated Spider-Man: No Way Home given its multiverse ties remains to be seen, but it is abundantly clear that a Spider-Man and Venom crossover within the MCU is now inevitable.

The vague nature of how Eddie and Venom arrive within the MCU via unexplained teleportation also allows future Venom sequels the luxury of tapping into the MCU Phase 4’s multiverse. Placing Venom within this current continuity gives the Venom creative teams ample flexibility to pit Eddie and his symbiote against all manner of foes that were previously outside of their existing IP purviews. Buying into the multiverse also keeps the link between the Sony and Marvel Spider-Man universes alive, allowing an almost seamless transition of previously established Sony characters such as She-Venom and Toxin to enter the MCU should the studios wish, and even upcoming Spider-Man villains like Morbius and Kraven the Hunter.

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe Still Holds Rich Promise For A Venom Sequel

The beauty of Venom 2‘s post-credits scene using the multiverse is that this seemingly establishes a two-way portal between Sony and the MCU’s pre-existing universes. A key proponent of this theory is J. Jonah Jameson’s character journey, who jumps from Raimi’s Sony Spider-Man trilogy to the MCU’s Spider-Man canon seamlessly through a couple of post-credits scenes. Yet despite the obvious and tantalizing option of porting other interesting Venom characters into the infinitely more successful MCU, Sony’s Spider-Man universe still holds rich promise given Venom 2‘s final scenes.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage puts in serious legwork to ensure that Sony’s Venom universe is not immediately cold when its MCU post-credits scene is unveiled. A prime example of Sony’s Spider-Man universe still holding direct sequel promises is Stephen Graham’s Mulligan/Toxin symbiote character arc, with the dogged detective lying prone on death’s door at the end of Venom 2 before his eyes snap open with a strange glow. Mulligan’s bonding with a minute piece of Carnage confirms his transformation into the symbiote Toxin, mirroring his comic book origins in which Mulligan harnesses his symbiotic powers to become a legendary crime-fighting hero.

Toxin’s introduction at the end of Venom 2 also sets in motion a series of events for other Sony-verse stories touched upon throughout Venom: Let There Be Carnage to come into play. Jared Leto’s upcoming portrayal of Morbius, The Living Vampire in Sony’s Spider-Man universe suggests a return to the Ravencroft institute featured so heavily in Venom 2. Morbius is synonymous with Ravencroft in the Marvel Comics canon, which is also the birthplace for the much-touted movie option of the Sinister Six. In this way, Toxin’s crime-fighting history sets him up as a perfect recurring opponent for Sony’s continued antihero movie push across the next few years.

Venom’s transferral to the MCU proper is, as of now, not stated to be permanent, meaning a Venom sequel still set in the Sony-verse is still in play. Venom and Eddie’s characters still have many ties to Sony’s Spider-Man universe that would make for compelling viewing, with Anne Weying/She-Venom topping this list alongside the aforementioned Mulligan/Toxin. Wherever Venom appears next, Venom 2 has set up a plethora of options for a Venom: Let There Be Carnage sequel to set up and utilize.

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