MAJOR SPOILERS IN THIS ARTICLE! Venom: The Last Dance’s ending has left Marvel fans asking one big question: Is the Venom symbiote dead or alive?
The final act of Venom 3 upped the stakes for Eddie Brock/Venom (Tom Hardy) as the symbiote god Knull (Andy Serkis) tracks him down and sends a pack of symbiote beasts to kill venom and extract the “codex” inside him, which can free Knull from his prison. Even with the help of “The Imperium” group, and a new group of symbiote comrades fighting by his side, Venom must ultimately face the fact that he cannot outrun Knull forever.
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Venom has one option left to destroy the codex and save the universe: Eddie dies, or the symbiote dies. The symbiote ultimately makes the sacrificial play, tossing Eddie to safety and dragging the horde of beasts into a fatal acid bath outside Area 51. Eddie survives but is left all alone, pardoned of all his crimes as Venom, and moves to NYC to restart his life.
Is Venom Alive or Dead After The Last Dance?
By all measures, the Venom symbiote dies in a mix of acid and fire along with Knull’s beasts during the Battle of Area 55. However, Venom 3‘s post-credits scene offers a slim hope of possibility that Venom is not gone forever.
The post-credits scene takes us back to the wreckage of Area 55. The “bartender” (Ted Lasso’s Cristo Fernández) that Eddie Brock met while hopping between realities had been captured by The Imperium for questioning; well, the bartender managed to survive the battle and was freed to escape, only to emerge into a scene of fiery, post-battle carnage. The bartender runs off into the desert, while the camera pans down to reveal a single cockroach landing on a rock, and approaching one of the vials that housed the electric-charged symbiote, Agony.
A lot of viewers saw Venom: The Last Dance’s post-credits scene as an Inception-style litmus test. Earlier in the film, Area 55’s head scientist Dr. Payne (Juno Temple) exclaimed that cockroaches could survive any level of disastrous event; we also get several sequences where the Venom symbiote is able to swiftly move and/or change forms by hopping between animals. It’s not hard to argue that those moments were foreshadowing the twist at the end and that the Venom symbiote managed to get a piece of itself clear of the acid and fire and onto a roach.
So did Venom survive? Probably depends on how The Last Dance does at the box office. Even with Tom Hardy being done as Eddie Brock, there is always the option to recast the character or bond the Venom symbiote to any of the other Spider-Man Universe characters that have worn it at one time or another – including Peter Parker.
Venom: The Last Dance is now in theaters.