Looking at how much money Venom: Let There Be Carnage has brought in since premiering in theaters last Friday, we’re going to dive right into spoiler territory on the assumption you’ve already seen the movie by now, with the credits scene having dominated the online conversation ever since.
Something as simple as a jarring shift in reality was all it took to place Tom Hardy’s Venom in the same place as Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, cementing that the symbiotic superhero is now technically part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s been a long time coming, with fans salivating at the prospect of the two Toms either teaming up or facing off on the big screen at last.
In a recent interview with ComicBook, Let There Be Carnage director explained what he wanted to accomplish with the stinger, both in terms of the standalone Venom franchise and the myriad of crossovers that are now distinct possibilities.
“We wanted to leave the audience knowing that these universes are going to somehow collide and we wanted to do it in such a way that it still leaves. It’s opening up more questions. I suppose, I mean, that was the intention of it to. It is a tease. It’s a tease, in the fullest sense of the word.”
That’s an awfully long-winded way of saying “because Sony wants more money”. Venom is soon to be a billion-dollar property on its own, and the MCU’s Web-Slinger has already starred in four movies that hit ten figures globally. The studio even rebranded its entire mythology as Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, so there was no way Let There Be Carnage was going to end without so much as a tease of things to come.