WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, in theaters now.
Ever since the release of the first Venom film in 2018, fan speculation around a Spider-Man appearance in the Tom Hardy-led franchise has been rife. Now, Venom: Let There be Carnage has delivered on fan hopes and promised the crossover is coming. While Spider-Man does not appear in the film itself, a tantalizing post-credits scene appears to show Venom unexpectedly traveling through the multiverse to arrive in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, teasing his potential role in this December's Spider-Man: No Way Home. However, a few moments in the scene suggest Hardy's Venom may not be as unfamiliar with the wall-crawler as fans probably expected.
The Venom sequel's post-credits scene leaves no room for doubt that a crossover with Tom Holland's Spider-Man is on the way. Another Daily Bugle newscast led by J.K. Simmons' J. Jonah Jameson, in the vein of the one seen in Spider-Man: Far From Home's post-credits sequence, plays on the television Eddie and Venom are watching. The broadcast then cuts to an unmasked Spider-Man (Peter Parker's identity is now out in the open, thanks to Mysterio). Universes truly have collided, but Venom appears to suggest this isn't the first time.
The post-credits scene picks up where the film left off, with Eddie Brock and his symbiotic other half, Venom, now on the run from the law. While in hiding in an unidentified tropical location, watching TV in their hotel room, Venom tells Eddie about the symbiote hive-mind. He claims the symbiotes have amassed "eighty billion lightyears of hive knowledge across universes" and offers to give his human host a tiny glimpse of the experiences recorded in the hive-mind. For a moment, it seems as though Venom is doing exactly that, as the room shakes and a strange light flashes around them -- but the symbiote insists this is not his doing.
Suddenly, they are in a different hotel, with fresh towels laid on the bed and J. Jonah Jameson yelling about Peter Parker from the television set. Venom emerges, leering at the footage of Spider-Man on the screen. When Eddie asks him what's wrong, Venom only responds with "That guy," leaning into the screen and licking Peter's face. Something seems to be drawing Venom to Spider-Man, even though these versions of the characters have never met. And the explanation as to why Venom reacts this way to the sight of Peter may lie in his earlier conversation with Eddie.
It appears likely that the events of the post-credits scene are the fallout of Doctor Strange's reality-warping spell, teased in the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer. Strange's actions seem to be the cause of Alfred Molina's Doc Ock, last seen in Spider-Man 2, arriving in the MCU and so could well bring Venom into the mix as well. If the symbiotes possess a hive-mind that transcends universes, it is possible that other symbiotes have met other versions of Spider-Man -- knowledge Venom would then be able to access. It is even possible that, through the multiversal symbiote hive-mind, Venom is connected to other versions of himself who have met Spider-Man in their universes. Given Venom's comic origin, first serving as Spider-Man's black costume before bonding with Eddie Brock, it would make sense that the symbiote would feel drawn to Spidey on sight.
Given that the Venom of Sony's film franchise has so far been depicted as more of an antihero than a villain, drawing on the character's stint as a "Lethal Protector" in the comics, it is somewhat unclear what kind of relationship the character will have with Spider-Man. While some fans are speculating Venom may be an ally rather than a foe, if the two characters do adopt their traditional enmity, the symbiote hive-mind could explain this -- if Spider-Man is known to other symbiotes of the multiverse as an enemy of their kind, Venom could be driven to attack the wall-crawler through sheer instinct or to prove himself to his people.
See Venom enter the Spider-Verse in Venom: Let There be Carnage, in theaters now.
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