Pretty much since Sony announced the title of Venom 3 was Venom: The Last Dance, speculation started that Venom and/or Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) would die in the movie. Amping up speculation? Hardy and writer/director Kelly Marcel have been very clear that as far as they’re concerned, there’s no Venom 4… This is indeed the last go-around for Venom and Eddie. So is Venom dead in Venom 3? Does Venom die?
Spoilers past this point, if you want to know what happens in Venom: The Last Dance. Seriously.
Yes, Venom dies in Venom 3. Or at least, seems to die, because there are several outs for the symbiote if Sony does decide to move forward with a Venom 4. Here’s a brief bit of recap, as well as some options for how Sony could bring back Venom — if not Eddie Brock — if they really want to.
Here’s How Venom Dies In Venom 3:
In the movie, Venom and Eddie are being chased by two, opposing forces. On one end you’ve got Xenophages, massive symbiote hunters, sent to Earth by Knull (Andy Serkis). Knull is a destructive god who created the symbiotes and the Xenophages. A millennia earlier the symbiotes trapped him in a prison on the planet Klyntar. Knull knows that Venom has something called the Codex in him, a key that can free him from the prison… So he sends first one, then several Xenophages to Earth to bring him back.
If Knull does get the Codex and escape, he’ll bring eternal darkness to the entire universe. He’ll also burn it to the ground. Seems like fire and darkness are in opposition to each other, but whatever, I’m not Knull, God of the Symbiotes.
Anyway, on the other side is a soldier named Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who runs military operations at Area 55, the secret facility under Area 51. He works for a shadowy organization that is never revealed and wants to capture and destroy Venom to keep him out of Knull’s hands.
Side note: Area 51 is being decommissioned, and Strickland is melting everything down with enormous tubs of acid. We’ll come back to that in the next paragraph.
In the final battle, after symbiotes like Lasher, Phage, Scream, and more join the fight against the Xenophage, it looks like all hope is lost when even more Xenophages are sent to Earth. Separating from Eddie, Venom grows to an enormous size to bring the evil aliens under the acid bath (see, told you we’d get back to that). Strickland has been impaled by one of the Xenophage’s tails, but Eddie helps him get to the acid area in order to activate it.
Venom puts Eddie under a protective piece of metal to stop the acid from killing him and says something to the effect of, “Goodbye for now.” The acid melts Venom and the Xenophages, but not enough. So Rex uses his lighter to blow everything up, including himself, Venom, and the Xenophages.
Given the self-healing alien hunters don’t come back from that, it’s likely they are done for — as is Venom. The movie ends with Eddie heading to the Statue of Liberty, something Venom always wanted to see, while “Memories” by Maroon 5 plays. The end.
So, How Could Venom Come Back From The Dead In A Potential Venom 4?
Again, to be clear, unless they’re lying or Sony backs up the money truck, Tom Hardy is done playing Venom at this point. However, there are a few possible ways Sony could bring back Venom, anyway.
The biggest one is that at the top of the movie we loop back to the end credits scene from Spider-Man: No Way Home, which found Eddie and Venom in the MCU, with Cristo Fernández playing a bartender. In that scene, a little bit of Venom got left behind. They get sucked back to the Sony universe in this movie, and Cristo is still there, albeit with longer hair. And once again, they leave a bit of Venom behind. However, that Venom bit gets captured by Strickland before Cristo can touch it, and taken back to Area 55.
While the, er, area above Area 55 has been destroyed, the Venom sample may be still around in the facility underground. So if it is, it can bond with someone else, and still be Venom. I’d suggest Fernández because that would be fun, but honestly could be anyone.
To throw out some other options here, Venom already seemingly died in an explosion once, in the first Venom movie. Instead, Venom survived inside Eddie. How? It’s never properly explained, but if Venom can survive a rocket explosion, an acid bath explosion doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal.
But there’s actually a third option here, which has been established in Marvel Comics, and is teased in Venom: The Last Dance. On Klyntar, we see what looks like an ocean filled with discarded symbiotes. That likely is a representation of the Symbiote Hive-Mind, something that was teased in the post-credits scene on Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Basically, it’s a combo afterlife/graveyard/waystation for symbiotes that connects them all over not just the universe, but the multiverse.
What that means is… Literally anything. By which I mean that they can use this device to bring in a Venom from an alternate universe (someone get Topher Grace on the phone), or have Venom escape from the symbiote afterlife, as he has in the comics, or some other option I haven’t thought of yet. Basically, like most things with comic-based movies, dead is dead until it’s not.
So yes, Venom is dead at the end of Venom 3. But if Sony decides they want him back, he’s coming back. The only thing is, his voice might sound a little different without Tom Hardy on board.
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Actually a little bit of venom got left behind at the bar in the beginning
That was what Rex captured in the vial! There’s some in the mcu, not in the Sony universe