Spider-Man: No Way Home's Secret Sixth Member of the Sinister Six
Warning: this story contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home. Five Multiverse villains are one member short of forming a Sinister Six in Spider-Man: No Way Home. His secret identity exposed by The Daily Bugle's J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) and framed for murdering Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), the unmasked Peter Parker's (Tom Holland) identity crisis causes him to ask Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to make the entire world forget the face beneath the mask. But the spell, intended to restore Spider-Man's anonymity, backfires and brings multiple "multiversal trespassers" who know Peter Parker is Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
At first, Spider-Man and Strange contain the sinister supervillains let loose in the MCU: the Green Goblin (Spider-Man's Willem Dafoe), Doctor Octopus (Spider-Man 2's Alfred Molina), Sandman (Spider-Man 3's Thomas Haden Church), the Lizard (The Amazing Spider-Man's Rhys Ifans), and Electro (Jamie Foxx, who did not learn his enemy's secret identity in The Amazing Spider-Man 2). They have to return the villains to their universes before they destroy the fabric of reality, even if it means sending them to their deaths: Strange reveals most of the villains are fated to die fighting Spider-Man.
Peter tries to change their fates by "curing" Spider-Man's enemies, but the insane Norman Osborn's split personality — the maniacal Green Goblin — turns the villains against Peter to stay in the MCU, where they can live and wield power unlike any they've known before. In the end, it takes help from Peter #2 (Tobey Maguire) and Peter #3 (Andrew Garfield) to cure the villains and magically return them to their universes.
All of them except the unofficial sixth member of the "Sinister Six," who makes his MCU debut in a mid-credits scene ending Venom: Let There Be Carnage. It's Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), bonded with an alien symbiote to become the "lethal protector" of Sony's Spider-Man Universe.
Strange's magic pulls Brock into the MCU in the final moments of Venom 2, but before he can crossover with Spider-Man, Brock glows and disappears when Strange successfully casts a second spell at the end of No Way Home. The Spider-Man mid-credits scene sees Brock, drunk at a bar in Mexico, in the middle of a history lesson about Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and Thanos (Josh Brolin) when he's expelled from the MCU — leaving an inky black speck of symbiote behind.
In the comics, Venom briefly joins Sandman's new version of the Sinister Six to kill Spider-Man. The "Another Return of the Sinister Six" storyline in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 2 #12 and Peter Parker: Spider-Man Vol. 1 #12 teams Venom with Sandman, Mysterio, Electro, Vulture, and Alexei Kravinoff, son of Kraven the Hunter, to form a version of the Sinister Six out for revenge against Doctor Octopus.
Because MCU Peter at first tries to help the multiversal villains with a "team-up," the version of the "Sinister Six" appearing in No Way Home resembles the "Ultimate Six" of the Ultimate Spider-Man Universe. In the seven-issue limited series Ultimate Six, the Green Goblin plots to recruit Spider-Man and blackmail him into joining his team of five villains: Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Electro, Sandman, and Kraven the Hunter.
See how Spider-Man's deadliest enemies gang up to form the Sinister Six in ComicBook's Back Issues: Sinister Six.
More Spider-Man: No Way Home Coverage
How Doctor Strange Solves Spider-Man's Identity Crisis in the Comics
Back Issues: Spider-Man's Strangest Tales With the Sorcerer Supreme
Spider-Man: No Way Home is now playing exclusively in theaters.
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