Who Is Chiwetel Ejiofor Playing in Venom 3?

One of the most prominent villains from Marvel’s past just appeared in Marvel’s future and it’s a little bit confusing. Monday, Sony released the first trailer for Venom: The Last Dance, the third, and final, film in the Venom trilogy. In it, we see a character played by actor Chiwetel Ejiofor who, not so long ago, played Baron Mordo in Doctor Strange. That version of Mordo wasn’t in the Strange sequel, so did he go from hunting the Sorcerer Supreme to alien symbiotes?

We don’t think so. io9 reached out to Sony for clarification of the character’s name and role and has not heard back as of publication. If we hear back later, we’ll update this post. Without the facts though, we’re forced to speculate. The internet seems to think he’s a character named Orwell Taylor, the leader of a military group called The Jury from Marvel’s comics, which hunted down the Symbiote. And even if that isn’t true, it makes much more sense for the actor to be anybody but Mordo in this film.

The trailer itself toys with this. We see the character, along with one played by Juno Temple, in some kind of massive, hidden, underground lab with symbiote-like substances in there. Then he’s in the same bar where we last saw Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) in Spider-Man: No Way Home’s post-credit scene, where Eddie left a piece of symbiote in the Holland Spider-Man universe before going back to his own. (Eddie’s universe also briefly appeared in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse via Peggy Lu’s Mrs. Chen, who shows up here.) Ejiofor’s character captures the goo alongside the Tony Stark stan bartender played by Cristo Fernández.

Now, as far as we knew, the bartender and the drop of goo are in the main MCU universe. Baron Mordo exists in that universe. Did Mordo have an identical twin? Did someone at Sony forget how No Way Home ended and get it wrong? Could the trailer be a purposeful decoy or are we not supposed to question it at all?

There’s also the added mystery of Rhys Ifans appearing briefly in the trailer. Ifans, best known for his breakout role in Notting Hill, played Dr. Connors aka The Lizard in the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man films, before reappearing in No Way Home. Is Ifans playing Connors here? Or just another instance of oddball casting? We don’t know. Unfortunately, we still don’t know who Chiwetel Ejiofor is playing in Venom: The Last Dance. However, we think it’s highly unlikely he’s Mordo, much more likely he’s literally anyone else, and the casting was much less concerned about MCU continuity than it was with awesome actors being in the film. Or, maybe, that at least two actors from other multiverses (Ifans and Ejiofor) appearing as new people is some type of commentary on that.

If we find out more, we’ll let you know. Though we might just have to wait to see until Venom: The Last Dance hits theaters on October 25.

Correction: 1:15 p.m. 6/3/24 – The original version of the article said Ejiofor wasn’t in Multiverse of Madness which wasn’t accurate. The version of his character from the original Doctor Strange wasn’t, and that’s been clarified.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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