Morbius might not be quite as well known as a Spider-Man villain like Venom, but that hasn’t stopped comic book fans from dissecting trailers for the Morbius movie, looking for hints to the larger Sony Spider-Man universe and Easter eggs. Of the nods to the larger Spider-Man mythology in the trailers, there are things like graffitt branding Spider-Man a murderer, and the signs for companies like OsCorp and Horizon Labs.
While OsCorp, owned by the Osborne family in the comics, might not get much screen time in the movie, Horizon Labs is sure to. More than an Easter egg according to official Daily Bugle Tik Tok promotional material, Horizon Labs is where the titular Dr. Michael Morbius (played by Jared Leto) works. He’s not just the leading researcher in blood-borne diseases, but he’s the director of the company. The company, however, has a relatively short history in the comics, but it certainly makes for an important location.
The Origin Of Horizon Labs
Horizon Labs first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #648, created by prolific Spider-Man writer Dan Slott and drawn by Humberto Ramos. The idea was that the facility was a leading scientific research group in the world, developing new technology in seven labs across its facility. It also had a “floating lab” in a large boat called the Zenith that operated when the main lab in Manhattan was shut down.
Amongst some of the interesting advancements in technology in the lab were weapons to combat supernatural creatures like vampires, werewolves, and zombies, Reverbium (a metal derived from Vibranium), as well as a break room that actually existed for its employees 24 hours into the future. Each of the seven specialty labs had a doctor and research team that explored a different scientific discipline, hence the eclectic creations from the facility.
In the movie universe, if the same types of scientific advancements are followed, the company could have rivaled Stark Industries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Of course, just how connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe Morbius really is remains up in the air as Sony’s standalone “villain” movies are said to exist in a separate universe, like Venom.
How Horizon Labs Connects To Morbius
While Morbius is the director of the facility for the movie, he also has a comic book connection to Horizon Labs. In the comics, he’s the scientist in charge of what is designated as Lab 6.
Interestingly, not a lot of his experimentations and research out of Horizon Labs are well known in the comics. What is known is that he was using the lab space granted to him to work on a cure for his own vampire-like condition, not unlike what’s seen in the trailers for the movie so far. While his experiments for his own cure tend to be more misses than hits in the comics, there is one thing he creates in the lab that might be of interest to the audience: anti-spider virus serum.
The anti-spider virus serum is a serum that actually removes Spider-powers from an individual who has them. That could set Morbius up to have a confrontation with his own version of Spider-Man if Sony’s shared villain universe becomes successful beyond the Venom movies.
How Horizon Labs Connects To Spider-Man
Of course, it’s important to note that Morbius isn’t the only super-powered person who develops technology for Horizon Labs - or even the only person working toward his own end. In the comics, some of the scientists actually work for secret groups like The Hand, a group previously seen in live action Marvel series Daredevil. Peter Parker is also employed by Horizon Labs for a while.
Peter actually shares Lab 7 with Otto Octavius (yes, that would be Doc Ock) and helps to create a number of different pieces of technology, like the Cryo Cube 3000, which is capable of freezing living beings without harming them.
More than that though, Peter uses Horizon Lab’s resources in secret just as Morbius does, but he does it to work on advancing Spider-Man’s technology. He creates his own bullet-proof Spider-armor and motorcycle helmet along with a stealth suit that actually bends light around it to render Spider-Man functionally invisible.
Horizon Labs as a location provides a strong connection point between Micheal Morbius and Peter Parker, that is, if Sony decides to ever show audiences which Peter Parker Michael Morbius shares his world with. They have multiple Spider-Men to choose from, after all, and it’s clear after the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home that the audience won’t be turned off by multiple Peter Parkers in multiple universes. Fans are especially clamoring for Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man to return, which could easily be done in Sony's non-MCU movies. Morbius running Horizon Labs could be the jumping off point to do just that.