It’s here, Venom and Eddie Brock’s story comes to an end with the third and final installment of the Venom trilogy, that sees the investigative journalist and symbiote on the run from an existential threat to both human and symbiote.
While the Venom franchise has been a mixed bag, there’s no doubt that the franchise has delivered immense financial success to Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. The first movie grossed US$856.1 million worldwide, while the sequel — despite receiving mixed reactions — still made an impressive $506.9 million. Crucially, Venom became the character that Sony could place as the centerpiece of its universe. (Sure, they’ve also got Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, but he’s technically a part of the MCU. It’s unnecessarily complicated, I know.)
So what does Venom: The Last Dance – supposedly the final movie in this trilogy – mean for the titular character and Sony’s Spider-Man Universe moving forward?
It’s hard to tell really.
On the one hand, this movie introduces so many new elements that it feels like the set up for a whole other trilogy of movies. On the other, it does so little with these new characters and concepts, that none of it matters, leaving us with more questions than answers.
Ted Lasso’s Juno Temple is introduced as Dr. Teddy Payne, a brilliant scientist and symbiote expert, whose brother was killed by a lightning strike. We have no idea why that last piece of information is important to us, but it’s right there in a pointless dream sequence.
At various points in the movie, you will see a mysterious shadowy chap standing around staring at screens. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s General will say things like “the six have been reconstituted” but not explain what any of it means. Rhys Ifans is also in this. Only he’s not playing Dr. Curt Connors, a.k.a. The Lizard, but there is absolutely no reason given as to why he is in the same universe as Venom.
And then there’s Knull, the father of the symbiotes, and an existential threat to everyone on Earth. This is a Thanos-level villain who appears in shadow and is totally underutilized in the movie. His motivations are boiled down to a couple of lines in the film: he wants to break free from his prison through a tool known as the Codex, a MacGuffin which is contained within Eddie and Venom and only appears when they merge into their true suited form.
Apart from a few scenes, Knull is barely shown throughout the movie. The only times we see him are during the opening sequence and towards the end when Venom foils Knull’s plan to break free from his prison. While it’s understandable for Sony to play the long game, Venom: The Last Dance criminally undermines the potential to raise the stakes, considering the personal connections all symbiotes have with their creator. (According to a long line of comic storylines, Knull created the entire symbiote race, slayed celestials and gods, and in certain timelines, consumed all of reality.)
Tom Hardy, who has played Eddie Brock in the trilogy of Venom films, revealed in a recent interview with Screen Rant that he has no regrets in concluding his journey with the Marvel icon, stating that nothing has been left out as everything has been “surgically chosen and delivered, like right down to the shots.” I beg to differ.
Perhaps the more interesting question would be about Knull’s future in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. With director Kelly Marcel hinting about future Knull plans beyond Venom: The Last Dance, the door is wide open for the primordial entity to return. Let’s remember that symbiotes work as a hive mind, and several are aware of the different universes that others have encountered, so it’s safe to say that Knull could be a formidable multiversal threat to the Avengers.
This, of course, is entirely dependent on Kevin Feige’s plans for the MCU.
Spider-Man 4 could also be an exciting avenue to pay off the different storylines from Spider-Man: No Way Home and Venom: The Last Dance. Fans have been eagerly waiting for Tom Hardy and Tom Holland to interact on the big screen— something teased in Venom: Let There Be Carnage’s post-credits scene, but retconned in both Spider-Man: No Way Home, and again in this movie.
Overall, Venom: The Last Dance is a fitting end to the dynamic duo’s financially lucrative yet creatively questionable trilogy. It has everything you can expect from a Venom movie and sets the path for future possibilities within Sony’s Spider-Man universe. For what it’s worth, at least Venom wasn’t as forgettable as almost all the other installments from Sony’s Spider-Man universe.
