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 sticky alien symbiote Venom (Hardy) in an emotional showdown that gives both characters a sense of closure. That’s what Hardy and director Kelly Marcel said The Last Dance would end that Poison Trilogy that began in 2018 and continued in 2018 Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021). Still, the mid-credits 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 as he attempts to stop the symbiote’s creator, Knull (Andy Serkis), from escaping his heavenly prison and returning all of existence to the Void, the blackness that predates the universe. All Knull needs to free himself is the Codex, a metaphysical key created through the perfect symbiosis that Venom and Eddie have achieved. The only way to destroy the code is for either Venom or Eddie to die. Venom and a host of other symbiotes held captive in Area 51 manage to stop Knull’s army of monstrous alien xenophages from acquiring the codex. Venom ultimately sacrifices himself, destroying the code and giving Eddie a new chance at life.

But that’s not the end of Knull. In the mid-credits scene, he promises that the universe will no longer be safe from him after Venom’s death. Marcel recently told IGN, “The King in Black is far too powerful for ‘one and done.'” This film introduces Knull but only touches on the beginnings of his story. “Marvel’s greatest movie villains evolve over time.” What this means for the future of Sony’s Spider-Man universe remains to be seen, but Knull comic book creators Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman have a whole in the 2020s Book event created around the figure King in Blackin which Venom, Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men and an army of symbiotes faced off against Knull. This kind of collaboration seems too ambitious for the MCU-aligned SSU, but there’s always a chance we’ll see characters from Sony’s films, like Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson); The Last Dance‘s newest symbiote, Agony (Juno Temple); and perhaps even pop culture salvation 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?

At the beginning of the film, Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) notices that the Venom symbiote is losing itself, leaving small parts of itself behind because it wants to live. We saw a remnant of this hair loss 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 those tiny pieces of Venom were left. But at least one was found by a cockroach, as seen in the final film’s post-credit 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 big screen. But don’t be so sure we’ll see Venom with Eddie next, at least not for a while. Allowing Venom, his human partner, to live a normal life and find happiness was his parting gift, and he wouldn’t want to spoil that. However, the last act of the film introduces another character who took on the role of Venom in the comics: Agent Thompson, here as a masked soldier under Strickland’s command who loses both legs in a fight against a xenophage. He has no dialogue and we never see his face, but for comic readers, his dismemberment will immediately bring to mind Flash Thompson, Peter Parker’s former high school bully and eventual boyfriend, losing his legs in the Iraq War and under military control Forms bonds with the Venom symbiote, allowing him to run around the world and carry out missions as the armed Agent Venom. Focusing on a new character seems like the natural next step for him Poison franchise and sends it on a new mission of global and galactic proportions.