We knew to expect some connective tissue with the world of Spider-Man in the first Morbius trailer, but we weren’t expecting this. The first look at Sony’s next villain-centric Spidey spinoff after Venom arrived this morning and revealed that the movie, and by extension the whole of Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters, has much stronger ties to the MCU than we thought. And it does so by featuring the shock return of a fan favorite villain.
The final scene of the trailer sees Jared Leto’s Morbius walking through an alley when a familiar voice calls his name. It’s none other than Michael Keaton. “Michael Morbius…” says the Spider-Man: Homecoming star. “Got tired of doing the whole good guy thing, huh? What’s up, Doc?” And, there you have it, the Sony-verse is instantly revealed to be one and the same as the MCU.
Sure, the trailer doesn’t outright name Keaton’s character here as Adrian Toomes AKA the Vulture, but there are plenty of clues pointing to this being the case. For one, the white jumpsuit he’s wearing closely matches the one Toomes wore in Homecoming‘s post-credits scene, once he was locked up in jail. Likewise, the supervillain appears to be standing by a police car. So, clearly Toomes is being escorted out of prison for some reason. No doubt he ends up escaping – thanks to Morbius? – to turn up in a future film.
Fans are already theorizing that Morbius will set up the formation of the Sinister Six. By confirming that Sony’s movies take place in the MCU, this means Tom Hardy’s Venom and Jared Leto’s Morbius could team up with the likes of, yes, the Vulture and Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio to make Peter Parker’s life a misery. Whether this is the case or not, Morbius definitely just shot up the must-see lists of Marvel fans everywhere, and for good reason.