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Pity poor Kraven the Hunter — by which I mean the new movie, in theaters December 13, not the Marvel character with the same name who’s the inspiration for said movie. The character, after all, has been around for 60 years with multiple beloved comic book stories to his name (including at least one stone-cold classic, 1987’s Kraven’s Last Hunt) and a penchant for coming back stronger than before when you least expect it, as all good supervillains do. The movie, however, is another proposition altogether, and one that doesn’t necessarily feel particularly necessary at this point in time.

A vehicle for Aaron Taylor-Johnson — who superheroes audiences have already seen in both the MCU as Quicksilver in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, and earlier in 2010’s Kick-Ass and its 2013 sequel — Kraven the Hunter is the sixth movie in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, a shared cinematic setting named after a character who doesn’t actually appear in it. That in itself feels like a signifier of the strength of the idea, but we also have another for anyone unconvinced: although Kraven will be the sixth in the series, three of the other five movies have been Venom features, with Tom Hardy’s ersatz Eddie Brock leading the way. The other two are the high-profile flops Morbius and Madame Web.

Needless to say, Kraven is under scrutiny for how well it’ll perform at the box office, especially coming on the heels of the curious case of Venom: The Last Dance — a movie which underperformed expectations in its opening weekend in the US, only to stick around in theaters and box office charts longer and more strongly than originally anticipated. (Internationally, it’s a far simpler story: it was a hit outside the U.S. for the most part.) If Kraven follows the example of Sony’s non-Venom movies in this universe, it’ll likely cement the idea that Sony’s Spider-Man Universe can’t work without Tom Hardy as its heart, and even with Hardy, things aren’t necessarily guaranteed to be a success.

In a strange way, should Kraven follow in the footsteps of its Spider-Man Universe siblings and flop at the box office, it might be a good thing for fans of the MCU, as it might push Sony into moving into closer co-ordination with Marvel Studios for future projects, as has already happened with Spider-Man himself. (Hence his not being part of the cinematic universe that’s named after him; he’s too busy in the MCU proper.)

The last time Sony found itself at an impasse with its Spider-Man properties, it brought in Marvel to relaunch the character with Tom Holland in the role and Spider-Man at the center of the MCU. With the creation of the multiverse since then — and the official, canonical insertion of all previous cinematic Spider-Men into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe mythos — Sony now has the potential to have its cake and eat it, too; until the end of Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027, we can assume that the multiverse will continue to be an ongoing concern for the MCU. Should Kraven fail and Sony go back to the drawing board, there’s literally an option to build an all-new Spider-verse (no pun or allusion intended) that allows for Marvel Studios input in a standalone world that can, in theory, be kept intact moving forward no matter what happens to the larger MCU storyline.

Does this mean that fans should want Kraven the Hunter to fail? Of course not — not least because it’s unclear whether or not Marvel Studios or Sony would have any real interest in an arrangement as suggested above. And there’s also the opportunity that Kraven will be a smash hit, replacing Venom as the center of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe going forward. We’ll know by this time next week, I suspect.

But if it does flop… well, the odds of a new Spider-reboot any time in the next few years, with Marvel Studios co-producing certainly seem to be a lot more favorable. If nothing else, that’s a very interesting concept to imagine, especially as the MCU as a whole might be looking for some new memorable bad guys to play with in future movies…

Kraven the Hunter is in theaters December 13. Buy tickets on Fandango or Atom Tickets.