| Warning: This story contains full spoilers for Morbius and its post-credit scenes, as well as Spider-Man: No Way Home. The newly-released Morbius appears to hint at a connection between Sony's Universe of Marvel Characters and some Spider-Man movies we've seen before – but director Daniel Espinosa jokingly says Sony would kill him if he confirmed anything. Morbius the living vampire is an age-old Spider-Man villain, and the movie could point to a connection to Andrew Garfield's Amazing Spider-Man movies. Given the recent clamour for an Amazing Spider-Man 3, it wouldn't be a huge surprise for Sony to want to connect their villains with an existing version of the hero. However, during an interview with IGN, Espinosa explained why he couldn’t explicitly join the dots between Morbius and a wider Spider-Man universe – seemingly because Sony itself doesn't want to pin anything down just yet: “There are people at Sony that will have me shot [for saying anything] because then I will force them to commit to something,” he explained. “I have my thoughts and opinions and they are in the movie, and that's what I'm pushing for.” So, Espinosa couldn’t tell us which Spider-Man universe Morbius is in – but there are hints within the movie – notably a familiar name in the Daily Bugle. As we saw in one of the trailers, a front page from the iconic fictional newspaper seemingly mentions Rhino – one of Spider-Man’s most recognizable villains, and one that just happens to have appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Then there’s the Oscorp tower which can be seen in the city skyline in Morbius. The building’s Oscorp logo is the same one that appears in The Amazing Spider-Man series. This could bode well for an Andrew Garfield comeback. Unfortunately, Espinosa couldn’t fully confirm whether Morbius exists in Andrew Garfield’s Amazing Spider-Man universe. “The Morbius universe is the same universe as Venom," Espinosa explained, before joking, "How the powers that be will commit to a certain hero [i.e. Spider-Man] is in a small briefcase that has a bomb around it. So, again, I will be killed [for committing to anything].” It's worth pointing out that, confusingly, a trailer for Morbius also included an image of Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man suit, drawn from the PS4 Spider-Man game. It's not clear if that's an Easter Egg, a clue, or just a bit of set dressing we're looking into too much. An interesting extra wrinkle here is in this movie's connection to the MCU. With Michael Keaton's Vulture (once of Tom Holland's Spider-Man movies) appearing in a Morbius post-credits scene, we now have a fresh confirmation that the Sony universe is part of the wider Marvel multiverse being set up in the MCU movies (which also saw Venom make a cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home). We've also seen Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Men appear in the MCU before returning to their own realities – given Vulture's now been pulled into a different reality too, it's possible it's the same one as Garfield. Although we haven’t seen a Spider-Man in the Venom/Morbius-verse just yet, it seems like a distinct possibility at this point. Espinosa himself explained that Spider-Man is seemingly pivotal to the multiverse. “If you look at most of how they created the different timelines in Marvel in the comic books, in all universes, you have versions of almost all characters in those universes, but they have slightly different approaches to who they are, if they're good guys or bad guys,” he explained. “But in some of those universes, a few of them, you don't have a Spider-Man,” he admitted, before adding: “That's very rare. The Spider is almost like a totem character within the Marvel universe that, as we found out a couple of years ago, the powers of the Spider are much more vast and intricate than we thought from the beginning. Therefore, one of the fundamental capacities of the universe is to have a Spider.” It seems we won't have a definitive answer for some time just yet, but Morbius definitely hints at the future of Spider-Man that Sony has planned out. Check out our guide to Morbius to find out more about the living vampire, and why not take a look at some of the Morbius easter eggs we’ve seen in the trailers so far. Morbius stars Jared Leto as Dr. Michael Morbius alongside Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, and Tyrese Gibson. Daniel Espinosa directed the film based on a screenplay by Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama. Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter. | 
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