Venom 3 Retcons Important MCU Moment?

The SSU, or Sony Spider-Man Universe—yeah, we were surprised to find out it had an official name, too—has a weird relationship with the MCU. It all started when Sony stopped trying to compete with Disney and instead joined forces with the studio to finally bring Spider-Man into the MCU. When Sony decided to start making its own comic book movies, starting with Venom (2018), fans assumed that the two studios would be sharing Tom Holland’s web-slinger.

For whatever reason, that never happened.

Instead, the first Venom had no real ties to the MCU. Nor did Venom: Let There Be Carnage—at least until the credits rolled. The post-credits scene of Let There Be Carnage seemingly transported Eddie Brock and his symbiote into the MCU itself, evidenced by a brief appearance from Spider-Man, albeit on a TV Brock is watching.

The scene tied into another post-credit scene—this one attached to Spider-Man: No Way Home—where Eddie Brock was pulled back into his own universe, but not before leaving a small piece of the Venom symbiote behind in the MCU.

Fans assumed these two after-credit scenes were setting up Venom 3 as well as a possible showdown between Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and his own version of the symbiote. The first trailer for Venom: The Last Dance seems to prove the second assumption false, however.

The scene at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home revealed that Eddie Brock was chilling at a bar while the events of the film played out. When Doctor Strange’s spell yanks Eddie back to the SSU, a small piece of Venom lands on the bar and starts pulsating. A similar scene in the Venom 3 trailer shows a new character played by Chiwetel Ejiofor in what appears to be the same bar, putting a glass over what appears to be the same pulsating symbiote in front of the same bartender.

For all intents and purposes, it would appear that Venom 3 is reversing any ties the film was supposed to have with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. The real question is why? Why would Sony purposely spoil one of the only things about the SSU fans were actually excited about?

There are plenty of theories online about how it’s not retconning anything—that it’s just Earth-688’s version of the No Way Home scene. No offense to the fans coming up with these theories, but they’re missing the point. It doesn’t matter how the scene ends up playing out when Venom 3 actually hits theaters. Sony clearly wants fans to connect the two scenes together, whether they are actually related or not.

Why Sony would want it to appear as though Venom 3 was retconning the scene—especially in the very first trailer—is a question only Sony can answer. Maybe they wanted to lead with the fact that the movie wouldn’t have any connections to the MCU. Get ahead of any fan outrage before the movie’s release later this year.

Maybe they just wanted to generate some early buzz for the film by presenting fans with a mystery right off the bat. Perhaps Sony is just being Sony and continuing to have no idea what it’s doing with its Spider-Man-adjacent properties. That would certainly explain why the Venom 3 trailer features Rhys Ifans, AKA the Lizard—a villain that has appeared in two different Spider-Man franchises, both in different universes than the Venom films.

Whatever the reason that Venom 3 is retconning the ending of Spider-Man: No Way Home—or at least giving the illusion that it is—the movie still looks like a hoot thanks to Tom Hardy’s continued brilliance playing both Eddie Brock and Venom.

Hopefully, that wacky buddy comedy energy is enough to cancel out Sony’s usual convoluted will-they-won’t-they relationship with the MCU. Otherwise, it looks like the Venom series will go out with a whimper rather than a bang.