Despite the franchise's rather rocky history, I'm really disappointed that Sony's Spider-Man Universe ended because I think the best was yet to come. After years of teasing epic Marvel stories and gradually putting together pieces for larger-than-life narratives, SSU ended just as it began laying the groundwork for its two most promising stories. This untimely death leaves me wondering what could have been, especially as the franchise seemed on the verge of its most exciting chapters.
Sony's Spider-Man universe began ambitiously with Tom Hardy Poison in 2018. While it wasn't perfect, Poison found commercial success, paving the way for its sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) and other spin-offs such as Morbius (2022) and Kraven the Hunter. However, despite its potential, SSU struggled to link its narratives cohesively. Each film's story felt like a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit into the others, often missing the spark needed to elevate its characters beyond their origin stories.
SSU kept teasing incredible narratives, but never actually showed them
One of SSU's biggest frustrations was its reliance on teasing future stories rather than actually delivering them. Almost every film has spent significant energy laying the groundwork for narratives that have always been out of reach. For example, Venom: Let There Be Carnage hinted at the greater symbiote loreintroducing tantalizing connections to Knull without fully exploring them.
Knull's invasion of Earth – a plot that could have brought cosmic stakes and united disparate elements of the SSU – it was one of the most tempting. However, this remained a dangling thread, left unexplored by the franchise's premature end. Similarly, Morbius featured an intriguing post-credits scene that teased the formation of the Sinister Six.
While the execution left a lot to be desired, the potential for a villain-centric team-up movie was undeniably exciting. A Sinister Six film could have united the likes of Venom, Morbius, Kraven, and even Michael Keaton's Vulture, creating a compelling ensemble of antiheroes to rival the MCU's Avengers. But instead of diving into this rich potential, the SSU seemed stuck in an endless cycle of origin storiesnever moving towards the climate narratives many expected.
SSU's best narratives would have come in the sequels
The most compelling narratives of the SSU were clearly reserved for future chapters. This is particularly evident when examining the Poison trilogy. While the first two films were fun in their own right, they are best played as set pieces. Venom: The Last Dance ended up being the culmination of the serieswith the trilogy just hitting its stride.
In addition Venom: The Last Dancecountless exciting narratives have been created for the follow-up to SSU.A Kraven the Hunter could have delved deeper into his morally complex version of justice, while a Morbius the sequel had the opportunity to course-correct and better integrate its titular character into the larger SSU tapestry. These films may finally have shifted the franchise's focus from setup to payoffdelivering the grand narratives hinted at in previous episodes. Unfortunately, the abrupt conclusion of SSU left these stories untold.
SSU continued to miss the goal of its own franchise
A major failure of the SSU was its apparent misunderstanding of its own identity. While the franchise was ostensibly built around Spider-Man's rogues' gallery, it failed to effectively embrace what made these characters compelling. Instead of portraying them as villains, the SSU reinvented its protagonists as sympathetic antiheroes. This approach worked to some extent with Venom, but felt forced in other cases, like Morbius and Kraven.
By turning its villains into protagonists, SSU has diluted the darker, more morally ambiguous appeal that differentiates Spider-Man's bad guys from traditional heroes. Furthermore, the SSU lacked a unifying vision. Each film operated in isolation, with little effort to build a cohesive climax. Unlike the MCU's methodical construction of interconnected stories, SSU's narratives felt disjointed, as if they were competing rather than collaborating.
The most obvious thing is that the absence of Spider-Man himself has left the franchise without a central figure to anchor its stories. Although SSU attempted to carve out a niche as a villain-focused universe, struggled to justify this approach without the web-slinger at its core. In the end, SSU's failure to capitalize on its potential – combined with its propensity to invent stories it never presented – underscores why its premature end feels so devastating.
The pieces to greatness were there, scattered throughout the franchise like leftover emotion. However, the franchise I never managed to put them together. And now we are left wondering what could have happened if the SSU had the opportunity to fully realize his ambitions.
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