It’s unknown who the villain will be in Spider-Man 4, but Peter’s next adventure already has three big villain mysteries to solve.
Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is coming back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Spider-Man 4, and in addition to following Peter Parker in a completely new chapter in his life, it has three big villain mysteries to solve. Peter’s third MCU adventure, Spider-Man: No Way Home, was key in the development of this connected universe’s multiverse and its upcoming multiversal conflicts, as it saw Peter and Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) accidentally opening the gates of the multiverse, but it ended with a major twist that changed Peter’s life and will set the tone for his next movie.
In order to close the gates and prevent major multiversal chaos, Spider-Man asked Strange to cast a spell that would make the world forget Peter Parker, and so he did. At the end of No Way Home, Peter was shown all alone, starting over from scratch in a tiny apartment and making his own Spider-Man costume, which makes way for some interesting stories for Spider-Man 4. However, that’s not all Spider-Man 4 has to cover, as past Spider-Man movies have left a couple of villain mysteries that must be addressed soon, and they are all about Adrian Toomes/Vulture (Michael Keaton), Mac Gargan/Scorpion (Michael Mando), and Venom.
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Spider-Man 4 Needs To Explain What’s Happening With Vulture (After Morbius)
After the Battle at Leipzig-Halle Airport in Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man returned in his first solo adventure, Spider-Man: Homecoming, where he faced his first villain: Adrian Toomes. Toomes was the owner of Bestman Salvage, who lost his job after Damage Control took over salvaging operations in New York City. This led him to become a black market arms dealer along with his co-workers, and with the help of Tinkerer, he got a flying exo-suit made with Chitauri technology and took the identity of Vulture. Toomes’ illegal activities caught the attention of Spider-Man and led to a fight between them, which ended with Spider-Man saving Vulture’s life and leaving him for the authorities to arrest him. The last time Vulture was seen in the MCU, he came across Mac Gargan, who asked him if he knew the identity of Spider-Man, which Toomes denied.
Adrian Toomes made a surprise appearance in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe in Morbius, as the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home transported him to that universe. As he didn’t commit any crimes in that universe, Toomes was released and he developed a new Vulture suit. Toomes appeared in the post-credits scene of Morbius, where he approached Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) and suggested they form a team. Spider-Man 4 has to explain why Vulture didn’t return to his universe after the final spell in No Way Home, as well as what evidence he had to blame Spider-Man for being transported to another universe, as that line made no sense.
Spider-Man 4 Still Needs To Pay Off Homecoming’s Scorpion Tease
Another bad guy introduced in Spider-Man: Homecoming is Mac Gargan, a criminal who was about to make a deal with Vulture to buy new Chitauri and Ultron-based weapons. Gargan met Herman Schultz on the Staten Island Ferry to buy the aforementioned technology, but Spider-Man arrived and stopped his plans, and Gargan was arrested. At the end of Homecoming, Gargan came across Toomes in jail, telling him he blamed Spider-Man for his injuries and had friends on the outside who also wanted revenge on the web-slinger, and they just needed to know his true identity. Toomes denied knowing who Spider-Man is and left, and Gargan hasn’t been seen again.
Gargan now has a reason to go after Spider-Man, and it’s unclear who are those friends also looking for revenge against the young hero, but the MCU has continuously ignored him and how Homecoming set him up to become Scorpion. Spider-Man 4 has to finally pay off Homecoming’s Scorpion tease, and if the next Spidey movie will feature Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) as an antagonist, he could bring Gargan/Scorpion back by hiring him for whatever his plans might be. Scorpion could also be hired by J. Jonah Jameson, just like in the comics, to find Spider-Man’s true identity, which is something they both want to know, or he could bond with the Venom symbiote, which leads to the next villain mystery that has to be solved in Spider-Man 4.
RELATED:The MCU Already Has The Perfect Scorpion Fix (Thanks To Spider-Man 4)
Spider-Man 4 Has To Deal With No Way Home’s Venom Setup
Spider-Man: No Way Home was packed with surprises, and one of the biggest ones arrived in the mid-credits scene, which linked to the one in Venom: Let There Be Carnage. No Way Home’s mid-credits scene saw Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock trying to understand the MCU with the help of a bartender after he and Venom were suddenly transported to the MCU in the post-credits scene of Venom 2. Before Eddie could fully understand what had happened, he and Venom were taken back to their respective universe, but the symbiote left a piece of itself in the MCU. Spider-Man 4, then, has to explore what will happen with the symbiote and who it will bond with, which could either make way for new enemies or see Peter wearing the long-awaited symbiote costume.
Can Spider-Man 4 Answer All Of Its Villain Mysteries?
The MCU’s Spider-Man has already dealt with more than one villain in the same story and it managed to avoid the dreaded mistakes of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, but that doesn’t mean he has to keep facing various villains at the same time. One of the biggest reasons why Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 failed was that it had too many villains and they were all underdeveloped, but No Way Home avoided these mistakes as the villains had already been introduced in other movies, and they were given a shared storyline. However, Spider-Man 4 is facing the challenge of answering three very different villain mysteries, and in Toomes’ case, there’s a lot to be answered and fixed, so one movie with two other villains might not be enough.
Who Will The Actual Villain Of Spider-Man 4 Be?
Although Spider-Man 4 is in the early stages of pre-production and as such plot details are unknown, there are already theories and rumors on who its villain will be. The most common one is Venom, thanks to the above-mentioned No Way Home mid-credits scene, as the symbiote could bond with different characters and make way for various villains, and another highly-rumored villain is Kingpin, more so as Spider-Man is expected to go back to being a street-level hero. Other possible villains for Spider-Man 4 are Hobgoblin (which would make way for a very personal and emotional storyline for Peter as he would see his best friend become a villain) and the MCU’s version of Green Goblin. Spider-Man 4 is at risk of having too many characters, but it needs to solve the mysteries of Vulture, Scorpion, and Venom.
