Venom: The Last Dance post-credits: is Venom really gone?

Venom: The Last Dance (2024), starring Tom Hardy, ends with two extra scenes. The mid credits scene sets up Knull as a future threat, and the post credits scene hints that Venom is not completely gone. My take is that both scenes point toward an eventual Spider-Man crossover. I also don't think that crossover is coming in Spider-Man 4, and I don't think Sony can pull off any of this until it gives these films real traction.

Spoilers for the ending of Venom: The Last Dance follow.

The mid credits scene reveals Knull's face and sets him up for the future

The first extra scene brings back Knull and finally shows his face, setting him up for the future. The scene is extremely short. His dialogue runs: "Your champion has fallen. Your planets will be mine. The King in Black is awake. I will kill your world. Everyone will burn, and you will watch." That is when his face is shown, and up close you can see it is a motion capture performance from Andy Serkis.

Oddly enough, I thought Knull looked a lot like Snoke, another character Andy Serkis did motion capture for. Some of the complaints about the CGI not being the best may be legitimate. My only gripe was that I looked at Knull and suddenly saw Snoke.

Some people speculated that the line "and you will watch" was aimed at someone on Klyntar who is offscreen. I think it is more likely that the whole speech is rhetorical. He is talking out loud, and the scene is foreshadowing his return later on.

Is Knull the villain of Spider-Man 4?

Many rumors leading up to this film said Knull might be the villain, and that Spider-Man 4 might turn out to be King in Black. Hearing him say that the King in Black is awake may have piqued some fans' interest.

At the time, though, industry insiders were walking that report back. I think it is a lot more likely that Spider-Man 4 will be something much more centered on the MCU, maybe even tied to Doctor Doom, rather than an attempt to bring Knull in from Sony's universe. As I see it, Sony is setting Knull up as one of its future crossover villains.

Whether Sony ever gets there, with "stinkers" like Morbius and Madame Web on its record, remains to be seen. Still, Knull is clearly a future threat. Sony is not leaving him as a one off, and he is coming back somewhere down the road. We just don't know what those plans look like yet.

The post credits cockroach suggests Venom is not completely gone

The post credits scene might seem odd at first, but it foreshadows the return of Venom after we thought he was gone for good at the end of the film. We are back on the beach, where the bartender emerges from the cave he has been hiding in. The beach is decimated from the final battle in the third act, and he reacts by screaming.

Then we see a broken bottle sitting on top of a rock, and a black cockroach climbing up that rock. The cockroach implies that Venom is not all the way gone. He sacrificed himself, but a small piece of him may remain.

That one small piece of symbiote, bonded to the cockroach, could mean Venom comes all the way back and seeks out Eddie again, or at least returns in some form. It could also lead to what we think will be an inevitable team up with Spider-Man eventually, which could end up bringing in Knull. Again, I do not think that is happening in Spider-Man 4.

I enjoyed Venom 3, but Sony needs Spider-Man

To be as frank as possible, I enjoyed Venom 3 overall. I think it is a film that knows what it wants to be and manages to be that. But I am extremely tired of Sony's Spider-Verse without Spider-Man, and I think the only way Sony fixes this is by including Spider-Man.

Tom Hardy has said he is done with Venom, that this is the last dance and the end of the franchise. I don't think he is lying. I think he knows, as Sony does, that they have reached the end of making these Venom movies without a Spider-Man. Eventually the character needs to be tied back to Spider-Man, with the two becoming enemies at first and then maybe friends to take on Knull.

Why a Knull crossover needs traction first

Setting up Knull as the overarching villain for a major Sony crossover is ambitious, and it is something Sony needed to do to keep a carrot out in front, a reason for making these movies in the first place. My reaction, though, is the same as when we started hearing a year or two earlier that Sony was working toward a Spider-Verse crossover. You have to get traction first, with characters we care about and relationships between them, before you can build to a crossover.

The only recent time Sony managed that was Spider-Man: No Way Home in the MCU, which united Spider-Man with other versions of himself. That connection did everything it needed to do for the film. If Sony can find a way to make sense of Tom Hardy getting to the 616, or Spider-Man getting over to wherever Venom is, perhaps through the broken multiverse that is part of the MCU, all of that would be amazing. But Sony has to get some real traction first.

Morbius and Madame Web are the opposite of traction. At the time, Sony also had yet another film disconnected from Spider-Man in Kraven the Hunter, even though Kraven is a Spider-Man villain. I do like that they embraced the R rating there, which is how Let There Be Carnage should have been done.

Here is the truth: "a crossover is only as good as what you're crossing over." Sony may have a couple of pieces in Venom and Spider-Man that seem to make sense and could build toward a Knull crossover. But unless Sony catches some real traction with its own projects, keeping Spider-Man isolated in the MCU while making solo rogues gallery movies without him "is simply not it."

What Tom Hardy's comments mean for Venom's future

When Tom Hardy talked on the press junket about this being it, about not coming back and this being the finish of the trilogy, I believe what he was saying is that there will be no more solo Venom movies. That holds regardless of Venom appearing in the post credits scene and the symbiote clearly still being out there.

That changes once Sony finds a way to cross him over with Spider-Man, and that film doesn't necessarily have to carry a Venom title. That is the way Tom Hardy comes back. He even said as much when he was asked point blank in one of those interviews what would be enough to bring him back: Tom Holland and Spider-Man, specifically.