Venom: The Last Dance Review – A 7/10 Symbiote Farewell

🖤 Introduction

🕸️ This review is part of our Sony Marvel Universe Hub – every Sony Spider-Man, Venom and Marvel film ranked and explained.

Six years after Tom Hardy first shared a body with a toothy alien who wanted to eat everyone’s head, the Eddie Brock story reaches its conclusion. Venom: The Last Dance is, depending on your relationship with this franchise, either a satisfying farewell or a bewildering escalation — and quite possibly both at once. The film takes the Venom mythology cosmic, introduces one of Marvel Comics’ most imposing antagonists, and delivers the single most emotionally resonant scene in any of the three films. It also meanders through its second act like a man who took a wrong turn and is too proud to check the map.

The result is a 7/10: messy but enjoyable, structurally untidy but emotionally coherent where it counts. The Eddie-Venom double act is the engine, and Tom Hardy — who also co-wrote the screenplay — understands these characters well enough to keep the film running even when the plot loses its thread.

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A brief note on what the SSU actually is and why it matters for understanding The Last Dance: the Sony Spider-Man Universe was built on Sony’s rights to Spider-Man’s extended cast and villains. Crucially, it was never supposed to be Spidey-less — Sony built the first Venom film assuming Spider-Man would eventually cross over, once the MCU licensing arrangement with Marvel could be extended to Sony’s own universe. That crossover never materialised in the way Sony planned. The Last Dance is therefore a trilogy finale that was always missing the character who was supposed to anchor its conclusion. It is a monument to making the best of a changed situation, and on those terms it mostly succeeds.

That box office number is worth holding: the Venom trilogy has made nearly two billion dollars across three films, largely on the strength of Tom Hardy’s performance in a role that most observers expected to fail. Whatever you think of these films structurally, the audience relationship with Eddie and Venom is clearly real, and The Last Dance understands that relationship better than any entry since the original.

🌑 Narrative Architecture: Going Cosmic

The Last Dance picks up in the immediate aftermath of Let There Be Carnage, with Eddie and Venom on the run after their brief, disastrous brush with MCU continuity. They are wanted, exhausted, and heading across America in a sequence that plays like a road movie with a symbiote in the passenger seat. This opening stretch is the film at its most relaxed and its most charming — Hardy playing Eddie’s weary exasperation against Venom’s boundless appetite for chaos and chocolate.

The cosmic threat arrives in the form of Knull: the god of symbiotes, an ancient primordial entity who created the symbiote species as weapons and has recently escaped his galactic prison. He wants his creations back. Specifically, he wants Venom, who turns out to be something more significant in symbiote mythology than a simple alien parasite on a human host. This revelation gives the trilogy’s conclusion an emotional weight it did not necessarily earn across the first two films, but Hardy makes it land through sheer conviction.

Knull is a genuinely imposing antagonist. His design — vast, shadow-wreathed, visually rooted in the comics’ most striking imagery — is the best realised villain design in the SSU. He does not monologue or explain himself. He simply pursues, with the patient certainty of something that has existed since before light. The film wisely keeps him at a remove for most of its runtime, allowing the threat to build rather than deflating it through overexposure. When he does finally arrive in full, the scale is satisfying.

The plot surrounding this threat is where The Last Dance is at its weakest. The middle act lurches between locations and subplots without the momentum the first and third acts generate. A detour involving a military scientist and government operatives tracking the symbiote adds complications without adding drama. The pacing is uneven in exactly the ways the Venom films have always been uneven — bursts of sharp, funny character work interrupted by plot mechanics that nobody seems particularly invested in.

🤝 The Double Act: Why Hardy Holds It Together

The honest reason to watch any Venom film, and this one in particular, is Tom Hardy. His performance as Eddie Brock — specifically as two distinct personalities inhabiting one body and conducted as a single, frequently arguing character — remains one of the genuinely strange and entertaining achievements in modern blockbuster cinema. Most actors would have played this straight. Hardy found the comedy in it, the affection, and eventually the tragedy.

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The Last Dance gives the Eddie-Venom relationship its clearest emotional articulation. The question of what each of them is without the other has hovered over the trilogy since the first film, and the conclusion addresses it directly. There is a scene — deliberately not described in detail here — that functions as the genuine farewell between the two halves of this double act, and it is more affecting than any scene in the first two films. Hardy earns that moment through three films of investment in these characters, and it pays off.

Kelly Marcel, who co-wrote all three Venom screenplays and directs this one for the first time, understands the tone that makes these films work: slightly off-kilter, comfortable with absurdity, never quite taking itself as seriously as the production design might suggest. The alien creature designs are inventive. The action sequences are kinetic and creature-heavy in ways that justify the home cinema treatment. The film is never boring.

📺 The Viewing Experience: Big Creature Energy at Home

The Last Dance is a film built for a decent home cinema setup. The Knull sequences — all shadow and tentacle and cosmic scale — are exactly the kind of imagery that benefits from a large screen and a good sound system. The symbiote visual effects across all three films have been consistently impressive, and this entry pushes the canvas further than either predecessor.

The PG-13 rating is appropriate: darker in tone than the first Venom film but not genuinely frightening. The Knull imagery leans toward the unsettling rather than the graphic. Kids who enjoyed the earlier films will be fine with this one, though the emotional register of the conclusion will land differently for adults who have followed the trilogy from the start.

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Is Venom: The Last Dance worth watching?

Yes, especially if you enjoyed the previous Venom films. It is the messiest entry in the trilogy but delivers on the Eddie-Venom chemistry and provides a satisfying, surprisingly emotional farewell. Worth a single watch even if you have been lukewarm on the series.

Who is Knull in Venom: The Last Dance?

Knull is the god of symbiotes in Marvel Comics — an ancient, all-powerful entity who created the symbiote species and wants to reclaim them. He is the villain of The Last Dance and represents the biggest threat the Venom trilogy has attempted. The film uses him effectively as a looming presence even if his screen time is controlled.

Do I need to watch the previous Venom films first?

Yes. The Last Dance builds directly on the events of Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), including character relationships and plot threads established across both films. Jumping in cold will leave significant gaps in character motivation. Watch them in order.

Is Venom: The Last Dance suitable for kids?

It is rated PG-13 for creature violence and some intense sequences. The Knull-related imagery is darker than earlier entries, but nothing is graphic. Fine for kids 12 and up, particularly those who have already seen the earlier Venom films.

Is Venom: The Last Dance connected to the MCU?

The relationship between the Venom films and the MCU is complicated. The Last Dance remains in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe rather than main MCU continuity. The previous film featured a brief post-credits crossover moment, but The Last Dance largely stands apart from those threads and wraps the trilogy on its own terms.