Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a.k.a Venom 2, features what is arguably the biggest end credits scene of the past few years — one that might ultimately be more pivotal than the movie itself.
Before we get to the actual scene, though, here is the part where I ask you to please not read any further unless you want to be spoiled. This is your chance to close the tab and click away.
Seriously — spoilers below.
When the first Venom movie came out in 2018, one of its credits scenes introduced Carnage (Woody Harrelson), who became the titular villain of the 2021 sequel. Setting up a sequel and establishing a villain — that’s a pretty big reveal for the end credits of a film!
In a similar vein, 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home also featured a revelatory credits scene, one in which Peter Parker’s identity was revealed. That scene appears to be the setup for the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Notably, both the Venom and Spider-Man franchises are produced or co-produced by Sony. Given the studio’s recent track record of swinging for the fences in its credits scenes by using them to tease upcoming movies, the events of Venom 2’s credits scene suggest a future film in which Spider-Man, Venom, Venom’s human host Eddie Brock, and possibly the Marvel multiverse are all going to get very familiar with one another — sooner rather than later.
What happens in Venom 2’s mid-credits scene
At the end of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eddie and Venom have fled to a desert island. The remote locale allows them to evade law enforcement while giving Venom a chance to live his best life — there are abundant small animals to eat, there’s no one around so he can switch between his forms, and so on. The movie’s credits scene picks up from there as Venom and Eddie are watching television in bed.
Spurred by what they’re watching (I think it’s a telenovela, but I’m not quite sure), Venom says that he’s been keeping a secret from Eddie. It turns out that Venom is carrying some “80 billion light-years” of knowledge as a symbiote and asks Eddie if he would like a taste of that knowledge via some kind of mind-merge. Eddie thinks this sounds rad and says yes.
Venom begins the mind-merge process, and then the time jumps. There’s a flash in the distance. The entire room vibrates. Eddie seemingly goes into a state of shock, but when he comes to, the rustic room he and Venom were staying in has transformed into a luxury resort. There’s a half-naked man in the bathroom, who asks Eddie what they’re doing in his room.
Before Eddie can answer, J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) appears on the room’s television screen in a breaking news report we’ve seen before: It’s a similar broadcast to the one in the end credits scenes for Spider-Man: Far From Home andreveals the identity of Spider-Man as Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. The Venom 2 scene ends with Venom licking the screen — which, yes, creepy.
What the scene suggests about future movies
Venom 2’s credits scene raises one big question and drops one giant reveal. The big question: What exactly happened to Venom and Eddie?
There are a couple of possible answers. Perhaps their mind-merge moment somehow altered their reality. It could very well be that Venom’s eons of knowledge were never meant to be shared with humans.
Or maybe they were mind-merging during a moment when something else altered their reality. It is certainly possible that their change in scenery was somehow caused by Doctor Strange’s spells in the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home. It also could have been caused by an event along the lines of the Bruce Banner snap in Avengers: Endgame, which brought back all the life in the universe that had previously been destroyed by Thanos.
Banner’s snap certainly could have triggered the events in the Venom 2 credits scene — particularly a time jump that turns Eddie and Venom’s island shack into a luxury hotel room. However, that seems slightly unlikely, because the J. Jonah Jameson/Spider-Man reveal happens in a credits scene for Spider-Man: Far From Home, and that film chronologically takes place months after the events of Endgame. There wouldn’t be a breaking news report revealing Parker’s identity so suddenly after Banner’s snap.
So it’s probably more likely that magic performed by Doctor Strange (or performed by someone nefarious who’s pretending to be Doctor Strange) is at play. This possibility is supported by the trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home movie, which comes out this December. In that trailer, we see Peter Parker asking Strange to cast a spell that will make everyone forget his identity. When Strange agrees, the magic he uses seems to screw with reality, opening the door to the multiverse — the idea that there are parallel realities and dimensions existing concurrently at any moment — and making it possible for Doctor Octopus, the villain from 2004’s Spider-Man 2, to show up in the 2021 movie featuring an entirely different Peter Parker.
No matter what caused the jump/dimension warp in the Venom: Let There Be Carnage credits scene, it is directly linked to the scene’s big reveal: Venom, Eddie, and Spider-Man are all part of the same world. The idea of a Venom/Spider-Man crossover has been discussed by Sony as a possible future storyline, but the Venom 2 credits scene provides the first onscreen confirmation that the two characters occupy the same cinematic universe. The scene is undoubtedly intended to tease a meeting between them, whether in a future Venom movie or a future Spider-Man movie — and that meeting could theoretically take place as early as December, in the upcoming No Way Home.
