We haven't seen much from Stephen Graham's Detective Patrick Mulligan in the trailers for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, but it does look like the movie will pit him against Eddie Brock. How that encounter will play out remains to be seen, though it wouldn't be remotely surprising to see him become Toxin either in the third act of this movie or in a post-credits scene setting up the next one.
In the comics, his symbiote is the spawn of Carnage, and Pat struggles to balance his heroic side as a cop with the darker urges of his "other." While the character doesn't have the most storied of histories, new comments from Graham definitely point to this cop having a somewhat sinister side.
"He's got a chip on his shoulder for a lot of reasons," he says. "There was a major incident as a young rookie, where he shot a young girl – it mentally scarred him and he lost the hearing in his left ear, which became a disability for his police career and got him assigned to menial jobs. He was constantly overlooked by the hierarchy of the police system, and he’s an angry, bitter man."
"Eddie is getting the last interview with Cletus Kasady – something he feels he should be entitled to, and not some snotty rogue reporter," the actor adds, hinting at tension between the two.
It feels a lot like we should expect the stage to be set for something more with this character down the line, and Venom 3 adapting the Venom vs. Carnage comic book (which saw Spider-Man caught in the middle of an all-out war between Venom, Carnage, and Toxin) seems likely.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage has been brought forward and will now release on October 1.