Morbius is…Batman!

No, he isn’t, but the trailer for the upcoming movie released Tuesday raises the question of not who he is, but where in the multi-dimensional Spider-Verse this villain (or anti-hero) is operating.

The new trailer does clearly introduce the character, played by Jared Leto, and shows his origin story and gives an idea of his powers, like flying, super-strength and speed, along with the more atypical echolocation and cravings for human blood. (Reminder: Morbius is not technically a vampire.)

This trailer begins with Dr. Michael Morbius, who is searching for a cure to his affliction (he can only walk with the aid of crutches), traveling by helicopter to a cave only accessible by air, where he is swarmed by a ton of bats, who apparently do enough damage in the attack to change his DNA. In the comic books, Morbius’ traditional origin happens when bat DNA fuses to his with electroshock therapy.

From there, Morbius gets his powers and is ostensibly the hero of this movie; Matt Smith, who appears for a few frames as his character, Loxias Crown, will play the bad guy here. But the real story in this trailer are the basket of Easter eggs tying this movie to several previous Spider-Man (or Spidey-adjacent) movies.

Originally set to release on July 10th, 2020, this film was delayed several times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A trailer was released back in January of 2020, but since then, the studio has had time to rejigger Morbius to make it fit within the expanded contours of a Spider-Verse that may be adding elements from all of its modern-day iterations in the upcoming No Way Home feature premiering in December.

Eagle-eyed fans have noticed that the Morbius trailer contains references to all three major live-action Spider-Man franchises as well as a Venom shoutout. At one point, Morbius passes by a poster that says MURDERER on it—a reference to the Spider-Man being accused of killing Mysterio in Far From Home, but with a picture of what looks to be Maguire’s Spidey suit. Michael Keaton, who appeared in Homecoming as Vulture, is in the trailer, too. And the trailer has a city skyline shot where “OSCORP” – the logo from Amazing Spider-Man – shines visibly from one of the buildings.

Continuing on, Morbius picks up a copy of The Daily Bugle, and reading fast we see headlines referring to The Amazing Spider-Man‘s Black Cat and Rhino. Or maybe it’s about an actual rhino. Finally, the Morbius trailer drops a callout to Tom Hardy’s Venom, with an FBI agent saying, “We haven’t had anything this good since that thing in San Francisco.” By acknowledging Venom, this movie could be setting up a League of Sony Supervillains (or even the Sinister Six?)

The worlds of the various Spider-Man bad guys already crossed wires this year; in the end credits scene of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock gets taken to a different universe, which features a breaking news bulletin from J. Jonah Jameson telling the world that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Tom Holland is there, and it sets in motion that he’s in the same universe that we see in the MCU.

Morbius will drop on January 28th, 2022, which is after Spider-Man: No Way Home could have opened up the multiverse, including former wall-crawlers Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and their villains, as rumored. If that happens and we see the various Spideys spreading out into multiple superhero universes, then perhaps Morbius would now have scenes that deal with the fallout of that fracture.