After a record-breaking number of delays, Morbius starring Jared Leto as the title character/classic Spider-Man villain will finally make its way into theaters on April 1. To herald its arrival, Sony has released a final trailer for the film, which has led to one nagging question following the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home: How the heck is Michael Keaton in this thing?
Granted, Michael Keaton’s Vulture popped up in the very first Mobius trailer, but his presence is the all more confusing considering No Way Home did not smash together the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Sony’s Spider-Man Universe as expected. An end credits scene featuring Tom Hardy’s Venom made it clear that the MCU and Tom Holland’s Spidey will remain in separate film universes. This creative decision will only make things more awkward for Sony as it continues to make movies about Spider-Man villains in a film universe where he doesn’t even exist.
But, again, this raises the pressing question of how Keaton’s Vulture is in Morbius despite being an MCU character. An easy explanation would be that Morbius is now set in the MCU, but there’s a problem there: The previous trailer included numerous references to Venom thus placing the movie in the Sony universe. However, if those references are removed from the final film, that could solve the puzzle and might be what’s happening. Back in November, Keaton revealed that he was filming some “Vulture stuff,” which could be new scenes to massage Morbius into the MCU.
The other option is that, somehow, Keaton’s Vulture is in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. If so, his presence in Morbius would highlight that the multiversal clean-up at the end of No Way Home wasn’t so tidy after all. A fact that we know is true thanks to the latest trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness that heavily suggests Strange and Spidey did some serious damage to reality.
Morbius opens in theaters on April 1.
