Spoilers ahead for the plot and ending of Venom: The Last Dance.
Venom: The Last Dance concludes the journey of former journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his gooey, alien symbiote Venom (Hardy) in an emotional showdown that gives both characters a sense of closure. Hardy and director Kelly Marcel have said that The Last Dance would end the Venom trilogy that began in 2018 and continued in Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021). Still, the mid- and post-credit scenes suggest Venom’s dance card may not be full just yet.
The Mid-Credits Scene — the King in Black
The central plot of The Last Dance revolves around Venom trying to stop the creator of the symbiotes, Knull (Andy Serkis), from escaping his celestial prison and returning all of existence to the Void, the blackness that predates the universe. All Knull needs to free himself is the Codex, a metaphysical key created through perfect symbiosis, which Venom and Eddie have achieved. The only way to destroy the Codex is for either Venom or Eddie to die. Venom and a host of other symbiotes held captive at Area 51 manage to stop Knull’s army of monstrous alien Xenophages from acquiring the Codex. Venom ultimately sacrifices itself, destroying the Codex and giving Eddie a new chance at life.
But that’s not the end of Knull. In the mid-credits scene, he promises that with Venom gone, the universe is no longer safe from him. Marcel recently told IGN, “The King in Black is way too powerful for ‘one and done.’ This film introduces Knull, but it just touches the beginnings of his story. Marvel’s greatest film villains are developed over time.†What this means in terms of the future of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe remains to be seen, but Knull’s comics creators, Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman, made an entire book event around the character in 2020’s King in Black, which saw Venom, Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, and an army of symbiotes take on Knull. That kind of team up seems too ambitious for the MCU-adjacent SSU, but there’s always the chance we could see characters from Sony’s films, like Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson); The Last Dance’s newest symbiote, Agony (Juno Temple); and maybe even some pop-culture redemption offered to Morbius (Jared Leto); the three Spider-Women (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor); and Madame Web (Dakota Johnson). But what about the star of the show? What about Venom?
The Post-Credits Scene — It’s Alive!
Early in the film, Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) makes note that the Venom symbiote is shedding, leaving little pieces of itself behind because it wants to live. We saw a remnant of this shedding left in the MCU during the mid-credits scene of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). Strickland captures a sample of another piece of Venom in The Last Dance, but there’s no telling of how many of these tiny pieces of Venom were left around. But at least one was found by a cockroach, seen in the post-credit scene of the latest Venom film. The symbiote-clad cockroach touches a test tube vial that held the electricity-based symbiote Agony, and the Venom symbiote is given a shock, suggesting a resurrection.
Venom, or at least a version of him, seems destined to return to the screen. But don’t be so sure that the next time we see Venom it will be with Eddie, at least not for a while. Venom allowing his human partner to live a normal life and find happiness was his parting gift, and he wouldn’t want to spoil that. But another character who has taken on the mantle of Venom in the comics is introduced in the film’s last act: Agent Thompson, seen here as a masked soldier under Strickland’s command who loses both of his legs while battling a Xenophage. He has no dialogue and we never see his face, but to comics readers, his dismemberment will immediately recall the way Flash Thompson, Peter Parker’s former high-school bully turned friend, loses his legs in the Iraq War and, under military control, bonds with the Venom symbiote, allowing him to walk and perform missions around the world as the gun-toting Agent Venom. Focusing on a new character seems like the natural next step for the Venom franchise, sending it on a new mission of global and galactic scale.