“Across the Spider-Verse” shows footage of “canon events” involving Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Men, and it even name-checks Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Earth-199999, aka the MCU. Strange’s spell at the end of “No Way Home” returned said Spider-Men (and the movie’s reformed villains, all transported in because they knew Spidey’s secret identity) from the MCU to their respective universes. This is why it didn’t make sense to see Michael Keaton’s Vulture, let alone his Chitauri-tech MCU suit, in “Morbius” — because Strange’s spell was supposed to set everything right and put everyone back where they belonged.

As Vulture (the website, not the supervillain) notes, Strange’s spells have a way of producing “unforeseen consequences,” however. Until now, fans could only speculate that the displacement of Keaton’s Vulture (who learned Spider-Man’s secret identity as Peter Parker in “Homecoming”) might be one of those. “Morbius” director Daniel Espinosa added fuel to the “No Way Home” fire last year when he said in the press: “The events of ‘No Way Home’ had the effect of transferring Venom and Vulture (and maybe others ) back and forth between the MCU and the Venom Universe.”

“Across the Spider-Verse” introduces another possible answer that could retcon what Espinosa said. The movie has Oscar Isaac’s Miguel O’Hara refer back to the end of “Into the Spider-Verse,” when Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) saved the universe from the Kingpin (Liev Schreiber)’s super-collider. Miguel indicates that Miles saved the whole multiverse, but left a hole in it big enough for outsiders like Donald Glover’s live-action Prowler to make random incursions into other universes where they don’t belong.

This suggests Vulture’s incursion into “Morbius,” which, as he says, “has to do with Spider-Man,” might have happened because of Miles and the super-collider, and not Tom Holland’s Spider-Man.