The latest trailer for Morbius dropped today, and the response has been surprisingly positive from fans. There’s still some skepticism about Jared Leto’s oft-delayed vampire superhero caper, but at minimum, it looks to be a wild ride through Marvel’s supernatural corners. But one aspect that’s got fans debating is which universe it’s set in.
The trailers are stuffed full of nods to previous Spider-Man movies, some overt and some more subtle. Redditors have pointed out that we’re getting the MCU’s Vulture and the Spider-Man identity reveal from the end of Far From Home, the Raimiverse Daily Bugle logo and Spider-Man wall-art, The Amazing Spider-Man‘s Oscorp, and references to Black Cat and Rhino. On top of that, Morbius says “I am Venom” and they reference “that thing in San Francisco”.
So where’s all this going? My first thought that was Morbius is set to tie in with Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s multiversal shenanigans. With the MCU Spider-Man’s wish going awry, various universes may start bleeding into one another in the same style as Into the Spider-Verse, causing this tangle of influences to different eras of Spidey.
On the other hand, Morbius was shot in early 2019 for a mid-2020 release so it’s unlikely they’d have had this much of an advance heads up of the No Way Home script.
For me, the key to all this is Michael Keaton’s Vulture. Everything else can be written off as a fun nod to viewers paying attention, but if you have straight-up characters from the MCU that means it’s an MCU movie, right? Or, perhaps, this is merely the Venomverse universe version of Vulture who never met Tom Holland’s Spider-Man? Fans have already been debating the topic to death over on Reddit, and you can find some of their own theories below.
Okay, now I’ve got a headache. Let’s hope Morbius clears some of this stuff up for good, as these overlapping parallel dimensions are beginning to get confusing.
Morbius hits theaters on January 28, 2022.
