Venom 3 and Madame Web Might Be Building Sony's Secret Multiverse Plan Around Loki's Tree

It is easy to forget what happened the last time we were with Eddie Brock and Venom in Venom: Let There Be Carnage back in October 2021, because so much has happened since then: Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Quantumania, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and Loki season 2 all seemed to reinvent how the multiverse works. But I think we need to go back to that Venom 2 post-credit scene, because as far as Sony is concerned, there still seems to be a plan for how all these Spider-Man adjacent characters connect back to Tom Holland's Peter Parker and the events of No Way Home.

My theory, the short version, is that Sony and Marvel have both agreed to depict the multiverse as a vertically oriented tree, with the Spider-Verse represented as a separate organism living on that tree, like a spiderweb strung between the branches. The shared theme across both sides of the franchise, the tree and the web strung on it, is that these characters are controlled by destiny and are strengthened by their capacity to break that destined fate.

Venom's Post-Credit Trip to the MCU Was Never Explained

In that 2021 post-credit scene, Venom and Eddie are in a hotel room in Mexico when Venom tells Eddie, "we all have a past, Eddie, wa you hiding stuff from me? 80 billion light years of Hive knowledge across universes would explode your tiny little brain." Then the room shakes, a golden light appears, and the furniture warps into a nicer hotel room. Eddie and Venom are confused, with Venom insisting "it wasn't me" when asked what happened. I think we forget that something else must have brought them into the MCU, because Venom mentioned 80 billion light years of hive knowledge across universes, a reference to a shared knowledge of Venom symbiotes across the multiverse.

Once transferred, Eddie and Venom see J. Jonah Jameson's Daily Bugle broadcast about an unmasked Peter Parker, the cliffhanger from Spider-Man: Far From Home picked up in the first act of No Way Home. That means this transfer happened before Peter even went to Doctor Strange to open the multiversal rift. Venom's own insistence that he did not cause the jump, combined with the timing, is what makes me think something else, some outside force, was responsible for bringing them there.

Miguel O'Hara's Web of Life and Destiny Reframed the Multiverse as a Tree

In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Miguel O'Hara describes the connection between the Spider-Verse and the broader multiverse: "this is everything, this is all of us woven together in a beautiful web of life and destiny," calling it the arachno-humanoid poly-multiverse. To me, the nomenclature joke, Spider-Verse versus arachno-humanoid poly-multiverse, is just different universes having different names for the same thing. The key detail is that Miguel displays all of reality as a glowing blue branch, a visual we had previously associated with the sacred timeline from Loki and the Quantumania mid-credit scene, just reoriented 90 degrees to look like a tree.

Five months later, the Loki season 2 finale made the exact same pivot, with Loki taking over the sacred timeline as the new god of stories and turning it from a horizontal loom into a tree inspired by Yggdrasil. Marvel Animation doubled down on that visual in the final shot of What If...? season 2, when the Watcher unveils the tree to Captain Carter. According to What If director Bryan Andrews in an interview with comicbook.com, that final shot came together while the team was designing a Jack Kirby influenced depiction of the multiverse, before Marvel Studios called and suggested they depict a tree instead, with both teams of artists working together on the final look under a shared deadline.

Venom Infections Are Already Part of the Spider-Verse's Web of Destiny

Another detail from Miguel's explanation of canon events in Across the Spider-Verse is that he included Venom infections within the arachno-humanoid poly-multiverse. I think that was Sony's way of suggesting symbiotes in the multiverse are part of that spider-associated web of life and destiny, that their hive mind runs on the same arachno frequency that powers spider-sense. That spider-sense is a form of precognition, arguably the one truly magical and supernatural part of every spider hero's power set, and it is also what they have in common with Cassandra Webb, Madame Web.

Madame Web's Clairvoyance Mirrors Loki's Role as Caretaker

Madame Web is a clairvoyant, and in the Madame Web film she uses her ability to see the future to try to save three other spider heroines, Julia Carpenter, Mattie Franklin, and Anya Corazon, from Ezekiel Sims, who supposedly wants to kill them. It seems the movie gives Cassie her powers through some lineage tied to her mother, based on a trailer exchange where a character tells Ezekiel, "he was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died."

Whatever quality Madame Web ends up having, the idea of destiny is clearly central to its story, and it is a pretty similar conflict to the heart of Across the Spider-Verse, a movie I think we can all agree is probably going to end up being a lot better than Madame Web. Across the Spider-Verse is the story of a dark older Spider-Man who believes a younger spider person is a threat to reality and must be removed. In the Madame Web trailer, Cassie looks into the future through spider-webby animation, which I read as her looking through the web of life and destiny strung between the branches of the sacred timeline tree, the same tree Loki looks and listens through as the new god of stories. If Loki has been established as caretaker of the multiverse, I believe Madame Web is being set up as caretaker of the Spider-Verse living on those branches, making the two of them parallel figures cursed with knowledge.

My Theory: The Web of Life and Destiny Sent Venom to the MCU on Purpose

So if it was not Venom who brought himself and Eddie to the MCU just to leave a piece of himself behind, who was it? I believe it was the web of life and destiny itself, with Madame Web either witnessing that recruitment or guiding it, in a transaction agreed upon by Loki. Eddie and Venom's brief visit to the MCU was designed to carry out a canon event, or the violation of what should have been a sacred infection by a Venom symbiote native to that reality, meaning a symbiote from another universe will end up infecting the MCU's Peter Parker.

Why does it need to be from an alternate universe? I am not saying Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige are totally on board with this, but I think Sony is going to establish what I would call the Miles Morales rule across the titles it has a hand in: spider heroes are stronger when they break canon and are empowered by influences from other universes. Miles Morales is from Earth 1610 and was bitten by a spider from Earth 42, which is what makes him a mistake in Miguel O'Hara's eyes, but I think Beyond the Spider-Verse is going to prove that mistake is actually something we all need, sharing resources across dimensions and letting incursion handshakes make the multiverse stronger. That is why I believe the web of life and destiny brought Venom to the MCU, to make Peter Parker stronger with a Venom from a different universe.

A Hidden Clue in Madame Web's Title Logo Points to the Statue of Liberty

Don't be surprised if Madame Web or Venom 3 revisit the purple rift around the Statue of Liberty from Spider-Man: No Way Home to explain all this, because if you look closely at the Madame Web title logo, the Statue of Liberty is tucked into the M, the one set piece the MCU, the Spider-Verse, and the Fox X-Men universe all have in common, and a symbol for travelers from other worlds seeking new homes. If there is one thing to take from this theory, it is that the connective tissue between Madame Web, Venom 3, the animated Spider-Verse, and the MCU is trees, webs, destiny, and the Statue of Liberty.

Do you think Sony and Marvel are really coordinating a shared tree and web multiverse design, or is this a coincidence of visual trends across studios?