• Homepage
• news
• Venom: The Last Dance says no to your MCU hopes and dreams

news

Venom: The Last Dance says no to your MCU hopes and dreams

Vaseline Posted on October 26, 2024

The new and apparently final film in the Venom trilogy, Venom: The Last Dancedoubles down on the ‘no Spider-Man’ attitude. And while there are many possible reasons why there never was a Tom Hardy/Tom Holland Venom/Spidey crossover – ranging from creative decisions to legal or contractual decisions and perhaps even the politics of the relationship between Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios and Sony – the funny. is, the previous Venom film And the previous Spider-Man films seemed to finally establish a connection between the two universes. But that setup is simply hand-waved away in The Last Dance, as if to say, “Oh, you fans thought we were getting ready for something big? Nohhh.”

2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage featured a post-credit scene where Hardy’s Eddie Brock/Venom was somehow seemingly transported into the MCU. Once there, the bonded pair see on TV that J. Jonah Jameson has revealed Peter Parker’s identity to the world (from the ending of Spider-Man: Far From Home), and Venom licks the screen right where Spidey’s face is and says “that guy.” The symbiote was clearly very interested in Peter for some strange reason.

It felt like Sony was having a confrontation with me!

Two months later, Spider-Man: No Way Home was released, and in those films post-credit scene we saw that Eddie/Venom’s very short journey into the MCU had already come to an end. Immediately following the Let There Be Carnage scene, Eddie/Venom is sitting in a bar talking to a bartender (Ted Lasso’s Cristo Fernández) about all the “superhumans” living in this universe. “Maybe I should go to New York and talk to this Spider-Man,” he says, before suddenly being magically whisked away… but not before leaving the smallest piece of Venom symbiote on the bar.

And That It seemed like Marvel Studios was going to get Hardy out of the MCU as soon as possible.

It was also the last time we saw Eddie/Venom before The Last Dance, and in fact they are still in the MCU at the start of the new film. The bar scene above is even repeated for us, but it’s an abbreviated version with some key bits missing. While the “purple alien who loves rocks” is still mentioned in The Last Dance, the other “superhumans” are not talked about, and in particular there is no mention of… Spider-Man. The line about Eddie/Venom going to New York to find the wallcrawler is also gone. (Venom even makes a comment about being tired of the multiverse before they leave.)

The funny thing is that The Last Dance has a recurring thread about Hardy’s character(s) wanting to go to New York. Only now it’s not to find Spidey, but rather because the symbiote always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. You can almost tell that an earlier draft of the script is about the pair trying to get to Manhattan to find Spider-Man, as was previously set up in not one but two different post-credits scenes, but then the decision was made: “Um, we are going in a different direction.” And who not Would you like to see Lady Liberty in person?

Fernández’s bartender turns out to have a counterpart from the Venom universe (you can tell them apart because the guy from the Venom world has long hair!). And indeed, he intervenes The post-credit scene of The Last Dancealthough it is unclear what that will actually achieve. Earlier in the film, Eddie/Venom left a small part of the symbiote in the bar, just as they had done in the MCU. So maybe that will lead to a new take on Venom for Sony? But what about the piece of symbiote that remains in the MCU? At the pace that Marvel has ignored revelations from the post-credits scene in recent years, I wouldn’t be surprised if we never hear about it again.

My colleague Tom Jorgensen (who reviewed Venom: The Last Dance for IGN) pointed out that it would have been cool if Eddie finally reached New York at the end of the film, only to see the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man swinging through the skyline. Fans have long speculated that the Hardy Venom films are set in that world. So even if Tom Hardy never appeared as Venom again, that could have been an interesting way to end his story. His Venom never met Spider-Man, but Spider-Man do exist there after all.

But instead, it feels like Sony has closed the door on the MCU after teasing what could have been.