What to watch before ‘Madame Web’

The Sony Spider-Man universe, or the SSU as most call it, continues to hobble along whilst expanding upon the lore and filling out a world filled with Spider-Man characters and villains whilst lacking the web-slinger himself.

Madame Web will introduce a bunch of new Spider-characters, none of which are Spider-Man. The reason for this has to do with Studio deals and contracts and honestly, it’s a bit of a headache. What’s important to know is what you need to watch before you see this film.

We’re going to have to break that down a bit, first of all, the film can work as a standalone feature, so you don’t necessarily need to watch anything else to understand this one. However, it might help your understanding of the universe the story takes place in to watch a few of the other Sony films.  

Madame Web will be a part of the SSU; meaning it is very likely that we’ll be seeing references to events and characters we already know; we might even get a few cameos. So, let’s start with all the films that take place in the same universe first, then we can discuss any multiverse elements and films related tangentially to the upcoming spider-flick.

The Venom films

Obviously Venom and its sequel, Venom: Let the be Carnage are pretty important. The first film was the launching point for Sony’s MCU adjacent universe. It introduced fans to the SSU, a Spider-Man cinematic universe where Spider-Man is nowhere to be seen. Despite lacking everyone’s favorite web-head, it was a pretty good start. Tom Hardy’s funny but sometimes unhinged performance as Eddie Brock was enough to make fans look past some of the more glaring flaws. 

The events that take place in both films have been referenced in the only other SSU: Morbius. Is there a chance that Madame Web will also make references in a similar way? Probably not as the film is actually set before the events of both Venom movies, but we could see a younger Eddie Brock make an appearance, although he likely won’t have a massive impact on the plot.

Morbius (2022)

That’s right, it’s Morbin’ time. So far Morbius is the only other character to get his own movie in Sony’s super successful and totally not cobbled together universe. This film wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms by fans when it was released. In fact, it’s received a somewhat legendary status as one of the worst superhero films since the MCU raised the bar back in 2008.

Due to the poor reception, you’d think Sony would maybe avoid referencing it too heavily in future, but it is still a part of that universe, so if you’re really excited for Madame Web and want to be completely clued up then I’d say it’s worth sitting through Morbius.

Madame Web and the multiverse of loosely connected films

Both Venom and Morbius had end credits scenes that linked the films to the MCU and the concept of the multiverse. We also had Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock appearing in the end credits of No Way Home so it’s pretty much confirmed that there’s some overlap between these different universes. 

Even if Madame Web takes place in a different world, her character has a lot to do with the multiverse through something called ‘The Web of Life’ so watching these other films, despite being only tangentially related still makes sense. Venom canonically appearing in an MCU film kind of gives us an excuse to binge everything in the MCU. Although the Spider-Man films are probably the most relevant.

There are also theories that Sony’s Spider-verse actually takes place in the Andrew Garfield (Peter 3) universe. So watching those could be worth your while too. And what the heck, may as well watch the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films at this point too. After all, they all shared the screen in No Way Home.

The animated Spider-verse films could also be worth a watch. As the most recent film, ‘Across the Spider-verse’ referenced the Web of Life connecting it directly to Cassandra Web’s character.

What else is there?

You could go even further, if you want to know a bit more about the character of Madame Web she appears in multiple episodes of Spider-Man: The Animated Series. She’s only in a handful of episodes, but the Animated Series is just great in general and if you haven’t seen it yet you definitely should.

Madame Web will swing into theaters on Feb. 14 2024.