Nothing in the carefully-curated world of blockbuster franchises happens by accident, so the interest of comic book fans was piqued when it was revealed Stephen Graham had boarded the cast of Venom: Let There Be Carnage as a San Francisco cop named Mulligan, who enlists Eddie Brock to help him find the whereabouts of Cletus Kasady’s undiscovered victims.
In 2004, Marvel introduced New York City police officer Patrick Mulligan into the mix, who ended up becoming the symbiote known as Toxin. That’s about as far from a coincidence as you can get, so it’s a foregone conclusion at this stage that we’ll be seeing yet another alien parasite debuting in Sony’s shared universe eventually.
A new rumor from Giant Freakin Robot goes one step further, positing that Toxin will be the villain of the Spider-Man/Venom crossover that everyone’s expecting to happen in the not too distant future. While it hasn’t been confirmed officially as of yet, let’s not kid ourselves and pretend that it’s not one of the top items on Sony’s agenda.
Of course, we don’t know if Venom and Spider-Man will meet as friends, enemies, loose allies or anything else, so there’s no guarantee that they’ll be teaming up to fight a common threat when their paths eventually cross. Then again, seeing Toms Hardy and Holland bouncing off each other would be much more exciting for fans than watching CGI recreations of their characters smash into each other as part of a weightless action sequence, so there’s every chance they’ll partner up against a shared foe whether it’s Toxin, the entirety of the Sinister Six or whoever else.