Spoilers for the plot and ending of Venom: The Last Dance.

Venom: The Last Dance concludes the journey of former journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his gooey alien symbiote Venom (Hardy) in an emotional confrontation that gives both characters a sense of closure. That’s what Hardy and director Kelly Marcel said The last dance would put an end to the Poison trilogy that started in 2018 and continued in Venom: Let there be carnage (2021). Still, the mid- and post-credits scenes suggest that Venom’s dance card may not be full yet.

The central plot of The last dance revolves around Venom trying to prevent the symbiotes’ creator, Knull (Andy Serkis), from escaping his heavenly prison and returning all of existence to the Void, the darkness that predates the universe. All Knull needs to free himself is the Codex, a metaphysical key created through perfect symbiosis, which Venom and Eddie have achieved. The only way to destroy the Codex is to let Venom or Eddie die. Venom and a host of other symbiotes held captive in Area 51 manage to stop Knull’s army of monstrous alien Xenophagen from acquiring the Codex. Venom ultimately sacrifices himself, destroying the Codex and giving Eddie another chance at life.

But that’s not the end of Knull. In the mid-credits scene, he promises that with Venom gone, the universe is no longer safe from him. Marcel recently told IGN: “The King in Black is far too powerful for ‘one and done’. This film introduces Knull, but only scratches the surface of his story. Marvel’s greatest movie villains have been developed over time.” What this means in terms of the future of Sony’s Spider-Man universe remains to be seen, but Knull comic creators Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman created an entire book event around the character in 2020. King in blackpitting Venom, Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men and an army of symbiotes against Knull. That kind of collaboration seems too ambitious for the MCU-adjacent SSU, but there’s always a chance we could see characters from Sony’s films like Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson); The last dance‘s newest symbiote, Agony (Juno Temple); and perhaps even a pop culture redemption offered to Morbius (Jared Leto); the three Spider-Women (Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor); and Madame Web (Dakota Johnson). But what about the star of the show? What about Venom?

Early in the film, Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) notices that the Venom symbiote is shedding and leaving little pieces of itself behind because it wants to live. We saw a remnant of this loss left in the MCU during the mid-credits scene of Spider-Man: No way home (2021). Strickland captures a sample of another piece of Venom The last dancebut there’s no telling how many of these little pieces of Venom remain. But at least one was found by a cockroach, as seen in the latter’s post-credits scene Poison film. The symbiote-clad cockroach touches a test tube vial that contained the electricity-based symbiote Agony, and the Venom symbiote receives a shock, suggesting a resurrection.

Venom, or at least a version of him, seems destined to return to the screen. But don’t be so sure that the next time we see Venom it will be with Eddie, at least not for a while. Venom allowing his human partner to live a normal life and find happiness was his parting gift, and he wouldn’t want to spoil that. But another character who has taken up the mantle of Venom in the comics is introduced in the film’s final act: Agent Thompson, seen here as a masked soldier under Strickland’s command who loses both his legs while fighting a Xenophage. He has no dialogue and we never see his face, but for comic readers his disfigurement will immediately bring to mind the way Flash Thompson, Peter Parker’s former bully turned friend in high school, loses his legs in the Iraq War and , under military control, is losing ties. with the Venom symbiote, allowing him to walk the world and carry out missions as the armed Agent Venom. Focusing on a new character seems like the natural next step for the Poison franchise, sending it on a new mission of global and galactic scale.