Spider-Man: No Way Home Villain Wants A Shot At Venom

One of Spider-Man: No Way Home's bad guys wants to tackle Venom!

By Apeksha Bagchi | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

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After a long wait, Spider-Man: No Way Home has finally swung its way into the theaters. And given its mind-blowing storyline, it is already earning some pretty big bucks at the box office. As we know, the film debuts some expected (thanks to the trillion leaks before its release) and unexpected surprises. As we know, Doctor Strange’s botched spell allows five villains from two different realities to hop into MCU’s Earth. But though these villains were most probably destined for a one-time appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Rhys Ifans (who plays Dr. Curt Connors/Lizard) already has future plans for his character and the next superhero he thinks he should go up against.

(Major spoilers ahead from Spider-Man: No Way Home)

Recently, Rhys Ifans sat down for a chat with Inverse to promote his upcoming film, The King’s Man, wherein he will be seen playing the real-life character of Rasputin, the famously controversial Russian mystic. During the interview, he spoke at length about Spider-Man being a “great adversary to the Lizard” as they’re “both based on creepy crawlies”. Soon, the conversation veered off to his role as the Lizard in Spider-Man: No Way Home and he was asked which Marvel superhero he wants to fight next. 

As the conversation took place before Spider-Man: No Way Home was released, Ifans initially hesitated to answer the question, thus prompting his King’s Man co-star Djimon Hounsou to pitch in that it should be Lizard vs. Venom. And apparently, Ifans is also on-board with the idea as he enthusiastically responded to the possibility by exclaiming that the Lizard going against the alien symbiote would be one “messy” fight. 

rhys ifans Lizard

Well, the creative minds behind Marvel can easily add this super fight in the future now that the multiverse has been blown wide open in the MCU. In the post-credit scene of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, we saw Eddie and Venom whisked away to MCU’s reality, thanks to Doctor Strange’s botched spell in Spider-Man: No Way Home. By the end of the film, Strange stitched up his first botched spell with another and seemingly succeeded in closing all the breaches to different realities thus transporting every “guest” to their respective universes, including Venom. 

But the second post-credits scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home confirmed that Doctor Strange didn’t completely manage to rectify his errors and the fabric of reality is still very much fractured. While both Rhys Ifans’s Lizard and Tom Hardy’s Venom belong to different realities, who is to say that Strange’s messed up sorcery didn’t land them in the same universe or sent Eddie away to a reality where there is another Doctor Connors? 

The Connors a.k.a. Lizard we know was cured by Peter in Spider-Man: No Way Home before being sent back to his reality, but there is the possibility of Venom going against an alternate version of the villain, still played by Ifans. For now, bringing back the Lizard might look impossible given that he has seemingly fulfilled his purpose — by upending Tom Holland’s Peter’s life and giving him the reason to finally come out of the shadow of Iron Man. But we also never imagined a film that would feature three versions of Spider-Man at once, now did we? It’s the MCU after all, anything and everything is always possible!