Is Venom 2 In The MCU? Full Trailer Explained

Venom: Let There Be Carnage finally dropped a trailer which seemed to include Spider-Man references and maybe a name drop of the Avengers….. But were there really any MCU references or are we just looking for something that isn’t there? This is your breakdown of the Venom 2 trailer, which has finally arrived just about four months before the movie. We are going to run through all of the Easter eggs and references we found in the article below (or video on our YouTube channel)! If you have some, drop them in the comments and let’s see what we find.

The trailer opens in Eddie Brock’s apartment but I think the message here is that this is now Venom’s apartment, Eddie just lives in it. Then we’re in San Francisco and Mrs. Chen’s convenience store — you’ll remember Eddie and Venom defended her and this store in the first movie. If you look closely on the right side of the shot where Eddie and Venom walk in, you’ll see Marvel legend Stan Lee on a magazine cover.

Then we go to Venom’s San Quentin prison, which is the same prison where Scott Lang was held to start the Ant-Man movie but, there are more ways this can tie Venom to the MCU…

In Venom‘s post-credits scene, we saw Cletus Cassady (aka Carnage) in a prison jump suit. Now, prison jump suits don’t have all that many fashionable styles, but it does seems consistent enough with the person jump suit we saw Adrian Toomes in in both the post-credits scene of Spider-Man: Homecoming. We saw Michael Keaton in character as Toomes in the trailer for Sony’s other Marvel movie, Morbius, wearing that same jump suit.

Also worth noting: the correctional officers in the Homecoming post-credits scene and the Venom post-credits scene have the same badges and patches in the same places on their uniforms but, again, I don’t want to put too much emphasis on this because I don’t know how many different styles of police uniform and badge are out there.

We did see Venom going to eat a head but I’m pretty sure this one is going to be rated PG-13 again so I don’t think we will see that play out in head-smashing form.

We get more Spider-Man ties when Eddie is reading the Daily Bugle online to try to dig up some info about Cletus, and in the next shot we see a police officer reading the Daily Bugle in newspaper form. Both of these use the same Daily Bugle logo, which is the logo from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, not the updated green logo we saw for the digital Daily Bugle in Spider-Man: Far From Home‘s post-credits scene. I have trouble thinking this could be taking place in either of those canons, because there was already a Venom in Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 and the logo sets it apart from the MCU’s.

Director Andy Serkis said in a trailer breakdown for IGN that this Venom takes place in his own world and is — quote “unaware at this point of other characters like Spider-Man.”

The character reading the paper in the photo above is Mulligan. He is a character who goes on to get a symbiote of his own and become Toxin on the pages of Marvel Comics. When Mulligan closes up his paper, there are just enough new letters for us to think it says the words “Avengers” and “Nightmare” on another page. Nightmare is a rumored villain of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness but this movie releases before that one. So, the word could be a story about “Passengers,” or “Messengers, “or anything else ending in “E-N-G-E-R-S” that is not “Avengers” having a “Nightmare” of a day.

Then we’re off to Ravencroft, an Institute for the Criminally Insane from the pages of Marvel Comics that has housed some of the biggest super villains and often ends up being tied to Spider-Man. Its history though, also has ties to Shuma-Gorath who could be in Doctor Strange 2 and Mephisto, so, do what you will with that information.

In the case of Venom 2, we’re meeting Naomi Harris as Shriek, real name Frances Barrison, who has some important powers like telekinesis, which we very quickly in a shot of her in a cell, and she also has a sonic beam but Cletus is probably going to appreciate her dark empathy, which essentially means she can bring the worst out in people. In comics, the team up to escape Ravencroft, so we will probably see a version of that in this movie. She also falls in love with Cletus, so, they might turn out to be quite a power couple here.

Cletus also smashes a spider, which… you know.. Spider-Man reference? I guess? The spider isn’t the only thing to die. Thankfully they killed the terrible red wig from Venom’s post-credits scene which we see just before Cletus transforming into Carnage and something tells me all of these people watching the execution are actually about to be on the receiving end of it.

And, boom, end on the money shot of Carnage because, of course, this movie will Let There Be Carnage, and he actually looks great. Overall, I think this was an okay trailer. It didn’t get me particularly hyped for the story of the film but it delivered the look of Carnage we needed and hopefully the story becomes a bit more clear and therefore exciting as more trailer get dropped.

What did you think of the trailer for Venom: Let There Be Carnage? Did you catch any Easter eggs or references? Drop them in the comment secretion or send them my way on Instagram. For more updates, head over to ComicBook.com/Marvel and subscribe to our YouTube channel!