'Spider-Man: No Way Home' post-credit scene and secret trailer, explained

The lead-up to Spider-Man: No Way Home’s release had fans asking tons of questions and speculating about whether or not some familiar faces from old Spider-Man movies would appear in the latest MCU venture. One question that nobody really had, however, was whether or not there would be a post-credits scene. Like almost every Marvel movie before it, No Way Home does indeed have post-credit scenes.

Warning: This post spoils Spider-Man: No Way Home’s post-credit scenes and also has some spoilers about the rest of the movie.

Technically, there’s really only one post-credits scene in No Way Home. That one, a continuation of Venom: Let There Be Carnage’s post-credits scene, takes place in the middle of No Way Home’s credits. Stick around until the very end, though, and you’ll get to see the first trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Let’s start by unpacking the first, true post-credits scene, which introduces Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and Venom to the MCU… very briefly.

The Venom Post-Credits Scene

October’s Venom sequel, Let There Be Carnage, ended with Eddie and Venom on vacation in some tropical resort. In a post-credits scene, Venom reveals to Eddie that Symbiotes have access to information that all other Symbiotes from all other realities have, but just as he’s preparing to blow Eddie’s mind, something happens. They’re transported to a different reality, and Venom sees Tom Holland’s Spider-Man get unmasked on the TV. 

The events of No Way Home explain what happened to Eddie and Venom in Let There Be Carnage. Doctor Strange’s botched spell didn’t make everybody except MJ, Ned, and Aunt May forget that Spider-Man is Peter Parker — it brought in people from other realities who do know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. (Presumably, though this Venom has never met Peter Parker, he knows of him because of the Symbiotes’ reality-spanning database of shared knowledge.)

But, unlike Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin, Lizard, Electro, Sandman, and two other Spider-Men, Venom and Eddie never make it to New York to throw down with Peter. Instead, as the post-credits scene reveals, Eddie and Venom spent their time down in the tropics, drinking at a resort bar and trying to make sense of this new reality. Speaking with the bartender, Eddie expresses disbelief that there are superpowered people just everywhere in the MCU and that the big alien threat in this reality, some purple guy, loves gems instead of eating brains. (The bartender does not take kindly to them making fun of Thanos, because the Mad Titan did make his family disappear for five years.)

But, just as a (very drunk) Eddie and Venom decide it’s time to see more of this new reality, they disappear. Presumably, this is taking place when Doctor Strange casts the spell that sends all of the multiversal visitors back to their own realities. However, one little drop of Symbiote goo remains on the bar counter, and as the camera zooms in… it moves. 

So, there’s a possibility that the MCU’s Spider-Man could come into contact with a Venom of his own, but Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and the Venom we know are back in their wholly Sony-owned film franchise. Honestly, it’s a pretty good joke/troll that their time in the MCU is limited to two (2) post-credits scenes, and he didn’t really do anything in them other than get drunk at a bar. 

The Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness Trailer

After all the credits have rolled, audiences can get a first look at Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, which is set to premiere on May 6, 2022. There’s a very ominous aura to the whole trailer, and it appears that the multiversal Spider-Madness that Strange unleashed has had some lasting after-effects. 

There are glimpses of some new characters, like Xochitl Gomez as the Young Avenger America Chavez and the tentacled, one-eyed monster Gargantos, a classic comic book Doctor Strange villain. There are also some returning characters, like Benedict Wong’s Wong and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Karl Mordo, who seemingly still thinks that sorcerers are a threat to reality (and it doesn’t seem like he’s… totally wrong based on what’s happened.)

And, as promised, Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff makes her first post-WandaVision appearance. She’s still off wherever she fled to after the events of her Disney+ series, living in quiet solitude and wondering when somebody is going to find her to try to hold her accountable for what she accidentally did to the residents of Westview, New Jersey. But, that’s not what happens. 

“I knew sooner or later you'd show up. I've made mistakes and you're…” she begins when Strange appears before he cuts her off.

“I'm not here to talk about Westview,” he says.

“Then what are you here for?” asks Wanda.

“We need your help,” he says.

“Against what?” she asks.

“What do you know about the multiverse?” Strange says.

There are then a series of quick exciting shots before the trailer ends with a whammy — WandaVision isn’t the only Disney+ Marvel show that’s lending a character to In the Multiverse of Madness. 

“I'm sorry Stephen... I hope you understand…” says Mordo. “The greatest threat... to our universe... is you.”

The trailer then cuts to an evil-looking version of Doctor Strange who says “Things just got out of control…”

It’s possible that this is a red herring because Marvel loves to make their trailers misleading to build hype and get people speculating, but it sure seems like this is the evil Doctor Strange from the animated What If…? series on Disney+. That Strange went mad when Christine Everhart died and in his attempt to change fate, he became so powerful that he doomed his universe. He was redeemed, somewhat, when the Watcher got him and some other multiversal cast-offs to stop a rampaging Ultron who was using the Infinity Stones to wreak havoc across the multiverse. But, if the implications of the Multiverse of Madness trailer are to be believed, he’s still out there and he’s a threat to the MCU as we know it. 

Presumably, the In the Multiverse of Madness trailer will be released online shortly after No Way Home premieres, so there will be ample time to watch and re-watch it over and over again, and for there to be full, in-depth breakdowns of what it all means. In the meantime, you can catch it if you stay till the very end of Spider-Man’s latest adventure.