[Editor’s note: The following post contains spoilers for both “Venom: The Last Dance” and its post-credits scenes.]
The wacky “Venom” franchise has stood out among the crowded superhero milieu for various reasons since it first landed with a lobster-scented bang in 2018: mostly because the Tom Hardy-led series is indeed actually wacky. It’s zany, silly, even stupid, with a comedic edge the vast majority of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has never been quite capable of tapping into. And yet, as has become wearingly familiar, even a series that hinges on the bond (definitely loving, maybe even romantic) between a gruff journalist and the alien symbiote who takes over his body is beholden to certain genre tropes.
Like the post-credits scene that sets up big, fan service-y stories for future iterations. When the first film arrived in 2018, the Ruben Fleischer-directed hit came with a pair of ’em. At the time, I wrote: “Like its distant MCU brethren, Fleischer uses a pair of scenes to introduce possibilities for a potential sequel while also drumming up interest in another imminent Spider-Verse film.” Those scenes were the most standard and expected elements of the film, and while that was annoying at the time, they have proven out in the intervening years. That’s rare.
Since Hollywood went superhero-wild after the release of “Iron Man” in 2008, multiple post-credits scenes have become part and parcel of these films. But as they’ve increased in volume (looking at you, James Gunn!), they’ve decreased in actual veracity. In short, a lot of these scenes promise major changes to the MCU or DCEU and then go nowhere.
Sometimes, that’s because of forces beyond studio control (consider the post-credits scenes for “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” which whole-heartedly leaned into Jonathan Majors’ Kang as our next Big Bad before he was axed from the franchise). Sometimes, that’s because they promise something that otherwise proves hard to deliver (like the introduction of major stars, from Charlize Theron to Harry Styles). Maybe time will prove some of these out. More likely, it will prove even more of them to be, in the grand scheme of these grand franchises, pointless.
The first “Venom” film included a pair of post-credits scenes that — miraculously! — led into both the second film, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” and the wider Spider-Verse at large. The first one introduced Woody Harrelson as Carnage, who went on to (gasp!) actually play Carnage in “Let There Be Carnage.” The second one offered a preview of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” a bit of a transparent play to drum up support for what would go on to become one of the best superhero films of all time, but still, one rooted in something that was actually going to happen in this sprawling franchise.
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” got a bit more ambitious with its single post-credits scene, in which director Andy Serkis offered 1.) more insight into Venom’s early years as part of an alien symbiote hive mind, which, yes, comes into play in the third film in the trilogy, “Venom: The Last Dance” and 2.) then pulled Eddie and Venom into Earth-616 (the planet in which the majority of the MCU takes place). Now that’s a hell of a move, one that hinted quite strongly that Eddie and Venom were about to (finally!) join up with the rest of our beloved Marvel superheroes.
Alas. The third film in the franchise, the Kelly Marcel-directed “The Last Dance,” opens with a choice that’s somehow both bold and insane. More than that, however, it directly upends and unravels the last piece of cinematic “Venom” lore we’ve seen on the big screen — that “Carnage” post-credits scene — and finally dispels the notion that any of this stuff actually matters when it comes time to make a new film.
When the film opens, Eddie and Venom are still kicking it on Earth-616, with a beleaguered bartender attempting to explain Thanos and “The Blip” to their (very) drunk single being. But it doesn’t matter, not at all, because soon enough, they’re snapped (blipped? sucked? tossed?) back to their old Earth, their old universe, their tiny entry in the string of multiverse pearls, and any indication that they’re going to ever interact with the rest of the wider, known MCU brethren is removed.
On one hand, kudos to Marcel and company for instantly doing away with any notion we might have had that a post-credits scene matters. On the other, what are we even doing here? Even more annoying: what does this mean for the two (yes! still two!) post-credits scenes that follow Marcel’s film and the practice in general? Our plea: stop them now. Or, at the very least, stop using them as a vessel to introduce what scans as major, important plot points.
Listen, if your own film so happily, so giddily, and so essentially nixes post-credit scenes as a delivery mechanism for key information, it’s over. Let’s stop now.
[One more time: The following post contains spoilers for both “Venom: The Last Dance” and its post-credits scenes.]
1. A New Baddie
In the spirit of completism and with the bone-deep knowledge that this is likely all meaningless to what will unfold in subsequent “Venom” films (which, to be noted, have not been officially announced in any capacity), an attempt to explain how “Venom: The Last Dance” winds down in its final moments.
Let’s get to the bad news without getting too far into the weeds of the film’s story — which is convoluted and confusing, the kind of thing that made a fellow critic and bonafide comic book nerd say to me after the screening, “Even I don’t understand this”: The film ends with Venom dead, having sacrificed himself to kill off a bunch of alien baddies who were sent after him and Eddie to steal back what is essentially a key, the only thing that can free their evil creator and overlord Knull (played by Andy Serkis!). But while Venom is dead (whatever that amounts to in superhero-land), Knull is not. He’s just been thrown off-course.
And so, our first post-credit scene takes us back to Knull (this Fandom page offers some very good context and backstory) and the “primordial void” he occupies. Knull might be down, but he’s not done, and soon, he’s whining about how this isn’t over (“The King in Black is awake”), and he’s still gonna come after us (Venom, Eddie, symbiotes, humans, whoever). Let us place bets now on how this will pan out in Marvel movies and “Venom” offerings to come. (The odds look, ahem, null to us.)
2. Like a Cockroach
Early in the film, two seemingly disparate events happen: The Mexican bartender (Cristo Fernandez) who attends to Eddie and Venom in both universes is hauled off by Chiwetel Ejiofor’s General Strickland to chat about what the heck he saw, while Strickland’s team also snaps up a little blob of Venom left behind, and then later Dr. Teddi Payne (Juno Temple) informs a pal (an Army dude working at Area 51) about the incredible ability for cockroaches to survive nearly everything.
In the final post-credits scene, we see the bartender escaping from a decimated Area 51, with the camera then zooming in on a broken vial that contains a surviving symbiote that Dr. Payne snatched up earlier, which is soon approached by a cockroach. Fade to black! So, is our Mexican pal about to become one with the surviving symbiote? Truly, who is to say?
Some things don’t die. Post-credits scenes that are any more revelatory than this one? They should.
A Sony Pictures release, “Venom: The Last Dance” is in theaters now.
