Venom: The Last Dance served as a swan song for Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and the alien symbiote that occasionally hijacked his body. The 2024 film introduced Knull, the evil god of the symbiotes, to the fray, and Venom sacrificed itself to save the world from Knull’s terror, ending the trilogy on a bittersweet note. Sony’s struggling superhero universe, which included duds like Madame Web and Morbius, seemed to perish with the end of its most successful property, but The Last Dance might not quite be the end for this corner of the Sonyverse. Its live-action world is all but DOA, but it could survive by jumping into Sony’s animated Spider-Verse.
Sony’s live-action anti-hero projects have mostly been grim affairs, and each (aside from Venom) failed to make any cultural or commercial impact. The animated films tell a very different story, though: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse kept Sony’s multiverse alive with a blend of stunning animation and a heartfelt, ambitious adventure. And though the studio is struggling to bring that saga to an end with the long-gestating Beyond the Spider-Verse, animation seems to be the best way to keep this entire franchise alive. It’s why Venom will soon join Miles Morales and Peter Parker by jumping to a new medium.
