It’s been a while since Eddie Brock and his symbiote Venom have graced the screens with Venom: Let There be Carnage in 2021. With the third and final instalment of the Venom franchise hitting the big screen on Friday, it is time to play catch up.

Venom not only has subplots and loose threads in the SSU (Sony Spider-Man Universe) that need tying up, he’s also shown up in the MCU briefly, sparking speculation about whether Tom Holland’s Spider-Man will have a cameo in Venom: The Last Dance, releasing on October 25. Don’t remember what we are talking about? No worries, here are the movies you need to rewind to.

VENOM (2018)

It goes without saying that you need to brush up on Tom Hardy’s version of Eddie, a struggling investigative journalist who bonds with a symbiote called Venom, an alien form that bonds with hosts on Earth to survive. In Venom (2018), Eddie gets him and his girlfriend Anne (Michelle Williams) fired while following a story about the Life Foundation, leading to a break-up and her eventually dating someone else. We also realise there are more symbiotes in the world, one of whom, Riot, becomes the main villain.

Eddie and Venom’s relationship starts with distrust and slowly evolves into a functional partnership of sorts. Venom needs to eat human brains to survive, and they decide to eat only the bad guys. They are also sensitive to sound and hurt by fire, points that need to be remembered for The Last Dance since these weaknesses are likely to be exploited by the big baddie Knull, the God of Symbiotes.

It is also important to remember that the film version of Eddie and Venom are not as villainous as the comics portray. This version is more of an anti-hero and eminently likeable.

VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE (2021)

Eddie and Venom’s relationship evolves further in this film to a more couple-ey chemistry — yes, they bicker and fight; no, they can’t do without each other. We see Eddie throwing Venom out during a spat and Venom ends up leaving in a snit but not for long. Venom can’t find a suitable host and Eddie can’t save the world without Venom.

The film not only shows us that there are more dangerous forms of symbiotes than Venom — serial killer Cletus Kasidy’s (Woody Harrelson) symbiote Carnage, for example — but also hints at the presence of a multiverse in the film’s mid-credit scene and a multiversal symbiote hive mind. We also see them transported to a universe in which J. Jonah Jameson is talking about Tom Holland’s Peter Parker being Spider-Man on TV, connecting Venom to the MCU, something fans would be very excited to see.

SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME (2021)

A film that introduces the multiverse in a big way also explains the mid-credit scene of Let There Be Carnage. When Dr Strange casts a spell that cracks open the multiverse that pulls three different Spider-Mans together, it also pulls Eddie and Venom into the MCU. And in the end credit scene we see Eddie talking to a bartender and figuring out the world of superheroes and the Avengers. But before they can meet anybody, Dr Strange reverses the spell and they are sent back​​ to their universe, leaving a piece of Venom back in the MCU. Whether Tom Holland will show up in The Last Dance is something we are eagerly waiting to find out.

SPIDER-MAN 3 (2007)

The first time we saw Venom on screen was in Spider-Man 3. Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man fights Topher Grace’s version of Eddie Brock who bonds with the symbiote to become Venom, which is portrayed as a kind of darker version of Spider-Man. In this film the symbiote changes the host, amplifying aggression and violence. Sam Raimi’s version that existed before the SSU is closer to the comic books in that the character is far more villainous than Tom Hardy’s version.

Why do you need to watch a film that old? Well, with Let There Be Carnage hinting at a multiversal symbiote hive mind, it is not too difficult to imagine that the SSU version might have knowledge of the other Venom, and with Spider-Man: No Way Home confirming the existence of Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man in the multiverse, it is not too hard to imagine that the other version of Venom maybe referenced in some manner.