Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

Eddie and Venom flee Mexico toward New York, hoping to prove that Eddie did not commit the crime he is blamed for. Strickland runs a secret government program at a base that is about to be shut down, and it studies symbiotes that have fallen to Earth. Knull, a godlike being locked away in space, sends hunter creatures called Xenophages to take back a Codex that can free him. Eddie and Venom carry that Codex inside them, and it can only be destroyed if one of them dies.

A Xenophage attacks them in the air, and they escape the soldiers and make their way to Las Vegas with a friendly family of alien enthusiasts. There they are reunited with Mrs. Chen, but both are captured by Strickland's team and taken to the base. Two scientists, Teddy Paine and Sadie, help free Venom, who rejoins Eddie after Eddie is shot. Venom then lets the other captive symbiotes loose, and they bond with the staff to fight the Xenophages.

Knull learns where the Codex is and sends more hunters, which begin to overpower the defenders. Venom chooses to sacrifice himself, merging with the hunters and dragging them into tanks of acid. A badly wounded Strickland turns on the creatures and sets off explosives, and Teddy bonds with a symbiote to shield Sadie from the blast. Eddie wakes in a hospital, is promised that his record will be cleared if he stays quiet about what he saw, and visits the Statue of Liberty to honor his lost partner.

Venom does not survive: he dies destroying the Codex and the Xenophages, which ends the immediate threat to Earth. The sacrifice answers the problem set up earlier, since the Codex could only be destroyed if one of the pair died, and Venom is the one who chooses it. Eddie lives, is allowed to walk free, and is alone for the first time in years.

How does the death actually happen? At the base, the freed symbiotes bond with the staff to hold off Knull's hunters, but the Xenophages keep coming and begin to overpower the defenders. Venom merges with the hunters and drags them into tanks of acid, so the sacrifice is a set piece rather than a quiet goodbye. Strickland, badly wounded, turns on the creatures and sets off explosives, and Teddy Paine bonds with a symbiote to shield Sadie from the blast. In my opinion, that detail matters, because it shows the symbiotes as something that can protect people as well as consume them, which is the idea the whole series has circled since Venom 2018.

In my opinion, the Statue of Liberty scene is where the film tells you what it wants you to feel. After a story about two beings who bickered constantly and could not be separated, the closing image is of Eddie alone in the city he was heading for all along. Compare that with Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which closed on a beach holiday and a mid-credits link to Jameson and Peter Parker. That film ended on a joke and a door into the wider Spider-Man world, while this one ends on loss. It could be argued that the promise of a cleared record, in return for silence about what Eddie saw, is a cold reward for a man who has just lost his partner.

The two scenes after the credits point forward. Knull declares that the universe is no longer safe now that Venom has fallen, which sets him up as a larger future threat, and Variety's explainer reads the bartender and cockroach scene as a sign that symbiote material may still be out there. That is a reading of the scenes, and no sequel is confirmed. For where the series goes next, see spider-man beyond the spider-verse.

Yes, Venom: The Last Dance has two extra scenes: Knull speaks during the credits, and the bartender wanders a ruined base after them. Neither features Eddie, which is a sharp change from how the Venom films usually tease the next chapter.

In the first, Knull announces that the universe is no longer safe now that Venom has fallen. The line works as a villain's reaction shot to the film's central sacrifice, and it keeps the threat from the Codex story alive even though the Codex itself is gone. Andy Serkis voices Knull, so the same filmmaker who steered Venom: Let There Be Carnage from behind the camera is the voice promising trouble here.

The last scene follows the Mexican bartender through the burned remains of the base. A black cockroach crawls out beside a broken vial that held a Venom sample. In my opinion, this is the more intriguing of the two, because it is a small, quiet image that suggests a symbiote could return through something as humble as an insect. Variety's explanation of the film's ending and post credit scenes reads it the same way. Compare that with the earlier sequel, whose mid-credits scene tied the character to Jameson and Peter Parker and so pointed at the wider Spider-Man world. This film points only at its own corner of the universe, so a sequel is possible but not confirmed.