While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has a sprawling set of movies and television series with dozens of characters that cover decades of story, Sony’s Spider-Man related universe is only just beginning. Characters like Venom, Morbius, and Kraven the Hunter are all typically part of Spider-Man’s story in Marvel comics, and they all have (or are getting) their own stories through Sony. Though Kraven the Hunter is typically a Spider-Man villain, he has worked with heroes in the past, and it appears he’ll be the hero of his story as Alessandro Nivola was recently cast as the villain for Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s titular Kraven.
Though there have been several cast members announced, and a handful of comic book characters named for the movie, there are still a lot of characters who have connections to Sergei Kravinoff in the comics that could make an appearance. There is, after all, an entire family of Kravinoffs who become hunters of unique beings, and there are quite a few villains that they do business with. There are a lot of Marvel comic book characters that could be fun to see on screen.
Sasha Kravinoff
Originally Aleksandra Nikolaevna, she takes Kraven the Hunter’s last name when the two eventually marry. Comic book fans don’t see much of the woman he nicknames Sasha in the early days of his stories, but if the movie is telling the early days of Kraven’s career, Sasha would be a good addition to the movie.
Rumors suggest that Ariana Debose has already been cast as Calypso, a sometimes love interest and ally of Kraven’s, but the hunter has children with Sasha whom he also raises to be hunters. When the two first meet, Sasha appears to be nothing more than the daughter of a wealthy family who cares for her ailing father (which could be an interesting role for the previously cast Russell Crowe). The two severely misjudge one another though as Sasha eventually murders her own father and covers it up, and takes on Kraven’s task of hunting down Spider-Man after Sergei dies. Sasha as the loving wife and mother who is actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing could certainly be fun for the audience to see come to life.
She and her young daughter even kidnap and hold Madame Web for an extended amount of time, trying to gain information on Spider-Man, hoping to resurrect her dead husband. That could allow for the two movies in development to tie together.
Gog
The audience is going to be interested in seeing just what kinds of creatures Kraven hunts. While he doesn’t intentionally hunt Gog, Kraven does find him at the location of a crashed alien ship.
Gog is originally the pet of a royal family on a faraway planet whose inhabitants end up engaged in a civil war. The ship containing Gog is sent away from the planet, and he crashes on Earth, where he ends up roped into several different villain schemes over the course of his time there. He starts, however, as a creature Kraven the Hunter decides to keep for himself. That’s unusual since Kraven’s hunts usually end with the creatures dead. Gog, at one point in the comics, ends up being 300 feet tall, so he would definitely be a massive CGI undertaking, but he’s also shrunk down using Pym Particles at another point, and made small enough to keep in someone’s house.
The Sablinova Family
Sometimes, villains have heroes as allies. That’s especially the case when comic book history gets slightly rewritten (or retconned) with new team-up combinations. Avengers 1959 did just that, introducing a new team that included the likes of Namora, Nick Fury, Sergei Kravinoff (Kraven the Hunter), Dominic Fortune, Victor Creed (Sabertooth), and Ernst Sablinova (the original Silver Sable).
Ernst and Sergei were friends and hunting buddies for a time. They frequently traded war stories about their experiences. Ernst’s daughter grows up to be the vigilante and mercenary Silver Sable, taking the nickname her father had while hunting down Nazi soldiers after World War II as her own codename. Introducing the Sablinova family as allies of the Kravinoffs could be a good way for Sony to test the reception to the characters for their long in-development Silver Sable project. Initially, Silver Sable and Black Cat were expected to co-star in a movie together, but the project was put on hold. Depending on just when Kraven the Hunter’s movie is set, Silver Sable could be introduced as a woman establishing her own name in the hunting world as well.
Morbius
Morbius and Kraven, both being Spider-Man adjacent characters, have crossed paths a handful of times in the comics before. Considering Kraven’s reputation as the man who can hunt the most dangerous creatures though, it would make sense that he would be interested in hunting someone like Morbius, a “living vampire,” in the same way that he would be interested in hunting Spider-Man.
Morbius, based on the trailers for the movie, is more interested in helping others than he is in serving his own needs, so the movie will likely see him as more of an anti-hero, much like Venom. The trailers, however, have also hinted that he’ll see a connection to Vulture, a Spider-Man villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Connecting the universe further with Morbius, or even Vulture, making an appearance in Kraven the Hunter’s story would be a nice way to remind the audience that all of these villains (or anti-heroes) come from the same comic book world. Of course, just how connected their movie stories will be remains to be seen, and Kraven’s brother, another Spider-Man villain who uses the name Chameleon, is also set to appear in the movie, which could leave it stuffed with too many villains if Morbius also appears.
Madame Web
There hasn’t been much news on the development of the Madame Web movie so far. All fans know is that Dakota Johnson is rumored to be cast as the titular character. Just which version of the character isn’t yet clear, but her casting at the same time as the Kraven characters could suggest that she’s set to make an appearance in the Kraven movie as well.
Considering her path crosses with the Kravinoffs when they go on the hunt for Spider-Man, it could be little more than a cameo to set up her own movie. Madame Web, a powerful telepath with a connection to the Spider-heroes, is present in a handful of Spider-Man stories to warn him of the future, but she plays a larger role in his multiversal stories. The original version of the character is an older woman with a rare neurological condition that leaves her blind and confined to a complicated web-like machine to keep her alive. Her successor is one of the women who previously took on the codename Spider-Woman after being experimented on and ending up with a variety of abilities. Either version could be a nice tease for Madame Web’s solo outing, and could set up the Kravinoff family’s interest in the many Spider-powered heroes that emerge over time.
Kraven the Hunter is currently in development and is rumored to begin filming in 2022.