Note: This article contains spoilers for Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
Tom Holland's Peter Parker meeting Tom Hardy's Venom has been an exciting prospect since the Lethal Protector's first standalone film arrived in 2018. Now, after three years of uncertainty and nail-biting teases, Venom: Let There Be Carnage has finally tied those two universes together. The film's post-credits scene shows Venom and Eddie seemingly being transported into a hotel room in the MCU, as the two catch the Daily Bugle's news report about Peter Parker killing Mysterio.
This moment opened the door for Spidey to cross paths with his symbiote alter-ego. When that will happen is unclear (though it's not unreasonable to assume it will occur in No Way Home), but as Andy Serkis recently revealed, their highly anticipated meeting could have taken place in Let There Be Carnage.
Chatting with The Hollywood Reporter, the director explained how the movie's post-credits scene changed throughout development, and revealed that there were originally plans to have Spider-Man play a role in the story:
“[The mid-credits scene was] 100 percent in flux [...] It was something that they talked about from before I even came on to the movie. There were moments where [Spider-Man] was going to be in the story, potentially, and then he wasn’t. But no, we decided that we wanted to really examine the Venom-verse first. So, as we were going through principal photography, the inevitable discussions had to be had, but it wasn’t until very, very late on that we reached the precise notion of the teaser that we wanted to lay in there.”
No Way Home will pit Peter Parker against enemies from past Spider-Man franchises, such as Doctor Octopus (from Spider-Man 2) and Electro (from The Amazing Spider-Man 2). With that in mind, it's interesting to think about the possibility of Spidey playing a role in Let There Be Carnage, which, timeline-wise, would have happened prior to his dip into the multiverse in No Way Home.
Could this mean that, initially, the Venom-verse and the MCU were supposed to be in the same world, but Sony and Marvel Studios settled on having them as separate universes to merge later on? It's difficult to tell, but it's an interesting question to ponder.
Having Peter Parker in Let There Be Carnage in a larger capacity would have likely been a treat (who wouldn't love to see the Wall-Crawler brawl it out with Cletus Kasady, after all?). Having said that, Venom seemingly being a part of Spider-Man's multiversal shenanigans opens a world of exciting possibilities for the Lethal Protector and his wall-crawling nemesis.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is currently in theaters.