With Tom Holland’s Spider-Man saying goodbye to the MCU and hello to Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters (they have got to think of a better name than that), it’s inevitable that he’ll cross webs with Tom Hardy’s Venom (which nearly already happened). But how could this work?
After all, in the original comics, Venom’s entire origin story revolves around Spider-Man. The character hates him because both the symbiote and Eddie Brock feel wronged by Spidey. The alien symbiote was rejected by Peter because of its insidious effects and Brock was fired from the Daily Globe after Spider-Man exposes one of his scoops as untrue.
As we saw in Venom though, none of that happened. So, why would Sony’s version of Eddie Brock even care about Spider-Man? Well, there are a couple of minor retcons that could just about make this work.
One key line in Venom that might fix things was when they referred to Brock having to relocate to San Francisco after “the Daily Globe Incident.” This is a direct reference to his comic-book origins and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to expand this line into an explanation that a young Spider-Man caused Eddie to lose his job.
Despite that, I’d imagine they’re going to have to find a more immediate reason for Venom and Spidey to be at odds with each other. Perhaps the plot will see the symbiote being inadvertently transferred to the web-slinger early in the film. While Spider-Man would inevitably reject it, he’d face anger from Eddie Brock for stealing ‘his’ symbiote, especially if Brock’s temporary lack of superpowers meant he was unable to prevent a tragedy occurring.
I’m just spitballing here, but if I can come up with a workable plot in a couple of minutes, I’m sure Sony can do the same with their legion of screenwriters. However Spider-Man and Venom’s first on-screen meeting goes though, it’s also very likely that they’ll eventually team up to stop Carnage. Who knows, maybe that outlandish rumor of Sony adapting Maximum Carnage as Venom 3 was true after all?
