In Venom: Let There Be Carnage's post-credits scene, Eddie Brock was teleported from his reality to Earth-616 (a.k.a. the Marvel Cinematic Universe).
His beaten-up Mexico hotel was replaced by what looked like a 5* resort, with the Venom Symbiote taking great interest in a TV news report about the wall-crawler. The stage was then set for a meeting between the two characters, only for Spider-Man: No Way Home to end with the reveal that Eddie never left his resort.
However, Venom did leave a piece of himself behind on Earth-616 in a scene clearly meant to open the door to Tom Holland's Peter Parker getting his own alien suit (which, in recent weeks, has become a rumoured plot point for the upcoming Spider-Man 4).
With Eddie sent back to where he came from, only a bartender - played by Ted Lasso's Cristo Fernández - was left to comment on the fact his sole customer vanished without paying his tab.
In today's Venom: The Last Dance trailer, we see Chiwetel Ejiofor's mystery villain capture that lone piece of Venom, essentially retconning Spider-Man: No Way Home's stinger.
It doesn't make a lick of sense but it's got fans talking and feels a lot like the Morbius trailer. That movie's teaser included graffiti of Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man labelling him a murderer, a sequence which didn't make it into the final cut.
We can't believe Ejiofor's baddie has the power to travel between worlds and this seems to be Sony's way of backtracking and making it so that Venom is no longer on Earth-616...unless Eddie travelled back to his world where there's an identical bar with an identical bartender, and left an identical blob behind.
When Spider-Man: No Way Home was released, there was a chance of it being Peter's MCU farewell, so plans for a Spider-Man/Venom crossover may have been scrapped in the years since.
This is far from the only baffling moment in today's Venom: The Last Dance trailer as The Amazing Spider-Man star Rhys Ifans also makes an appearance. You can learn more about that here.
Venom: The Last Dance stars Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Peggy Lu, Alanna Ubach, Stephen Graham, and Rhys Ifans. The movie is directed by Kelly Marcel from a screenplay she wrote, based on a story by Hardy and Marcel. The film is produced by Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, Amy Pascal, Kelly Marcel, Tom Hardy and Hutch Parker.
Venom: The Last Dance will be released in theaters on October 25. Check out this apparent retcon below.