Venom’s Great Missed Opportunity: He Never Fought Spider-Man

The Venom movies may not be critical darlings, but they certainly have a respectable fanbase all their own. 2018’s Venom introduced us to Tom Hardy’s crusading reporter-turned-symbiotic superhero Eddie Brock. 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage brought one of the Marvel Universe’s greatest rivalries into live-action. And now, in Venom: The Last Dance, the trilogy comes to a close. If Sony is to be believed, this is the final outing for Hardy’s Eddie Brock. There’s just one problem. We never got a Spider-Man/Venom team-up.

Why didn’t Spider-Man and Venom ever directly cross paths in these movies? Why did Sony set about the impossible challenge of establishing Venom without the hero partly responsible for his creation? And is there still hope for Spidey and Venom to meet in a future movie? Let’s take a deeper dive into the biggest missed opportunity in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe.

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe and the MCU

The Venom movies may not have ever included Spider-Man (outside of Let There Be Carnage’s post-credits scene, of course, which doesn’t really count), but that absence wasn’t due to a lack of desire. Hardy made it clear as recently as New York Comic-Con 2024 that he’s ready and willing to fight Spider-Man at any time. At a panel for Venom: The Last Dance, Hardy responded to a fan question by declaring, “I want to fight Spider-Man. I want to fight Spider-Man right now.”

Unfortunately, it’s never been that simple. Sony and Marvel currently share the cinematic rights to the Spider-Man franchise. Essentially, Marvel has been allowed to use Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Sony co-produces the solo Spider-Man movies. At the same time, Sony is free to develop its own cinematic universe, dubbed Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, but the studio seemingly can’t use Holland’s Spider-Man in those movies. To date, the most we’ve seen of Spidey in these movies is a quick glimpse of Peter Parker’s birth in 2024’s Madame Web.

The relationship between Sony and Marvel has been nothing if not tense. There was a point in 2019 when it appeared that the relationship might break down and Sony might pull Holland’s Spider-Man out of the MCU altogether. Had that happened, we might actually have seen Hardy’s Venom and Holland’s Spider-Man team up by now. But the two studios reached a new deal, and so these twin cinematic universes have continued on as before.

The result is that Sony’s Spider-Man Universe continues to be the most ironically named cinematic universe in Hollywood. This is a universe where characters like Venom, Jared Leto’s Morbius and now Michael Keaton’s Vulture coexist, but there’s no indication that Spider-Man is swinging through the streets of New York.

As a result, Sony has faced the unenviable task of introducing a version of Venom with no ties to Spider-Man. That’s a tall order given that the two are inextricably linked in the comics and most other media. Eddie Brock started out as Peter Parker’s professional rival, before inheriting his discarded symbiote costume and gaining the power to punish the person he most hated. The first Venom movie cuts Spidey out of the equation and simply has Eddie bond with the symbiote during his investigation of the sinister Life Foundation. It also eliminates the iconic spider emblem from Venom’s chest. If this universe has no Spider-Man, how can Venom steal his enemy’s symbol?

To Sony’s credit, they’ve managed to craft an entire trilogy of Venom movies without really referencing Spider-Man, much less having him battle Eddie Brock. But it helps that Marvel Comics has also done a lot to distance Venom from Spider-Man over the years. They may have started out as two fundamentally intertwined characters, but over time they’ve really grown apart.

Venom’s Solo Superhero Career

When Marvel introduced Venom in 1988’s The Amazing Spider-Man #299, he was the biggest and most terrifying addition to Spidey’s rogues gallery in years. He also proved massively popular right from the get-go, to the point that Marvel wasted little time in spinning Eddie Brock out into his own solo comics. Throughout the ‘90s, Marvel published a constant stream of Venom comics like Venom: Lethal Protector and Venom: Separation Anxiety.

Thanks to those comics, Venom quickly evolved from Spider-Man villain to a more morally ambiguous anti-hero. He was akin to other fan-favorites like Wolverine and Punisher – a character who generally sought to protect the innocent, but who wasn’t afraid to spill some blood in the process. Spidey and Venom even found themselves becoming reluctant allies from time to time, including in 1993’s Maximum Carnage crossover.

Little by little, Marvel established a supporting cast and a lineup of villains for Venom. The character quickly outgrew his early role as a Spider-Man villain and evolved into a franchise in his own right. Marvel even established a mythology for the symbiote itself, revealing it to be a member of an alien race called the Klyntar.

Marvel began to further experiment with Venom in the early 2000s, as Venom Mania began to wane a bit. Eddie Brock auctioned off his symbiote in the 2004 series Marvel Knights Spider-Man, where it eventually wound up bonded to the former Scorpion, Mac Gargan.

Then Marvel gave Venom a more fundamental overhaul by bonding him with Peter Parker’s ex-high school bully Flash Thompson, now a decorated military veteran struggling with the loss of his legs. Venom became Agent Venom, a government operative trying to use his newfound powers for good while struggling against the symbiote’s baser desires. Flash even joined the Guardians of the Galaxy and became Venom: Space Knight.

Eventually, the symbiote returned to Eddie Brock, but that was the start of Marvel’s most ambitious overhaul of the symbiote mythology to date. In 2018’s Venom series, writer Donny Cates and artist Ryan Stegman introduced Knull, the god of the symbiotes and one of the oldest beings in the Marvel Universe. This self-styled King in Black existed when the universe was an endless void, and he declared war on the Celestials when they began to bring light and life into his beloved darkness. Knull created the symbiotes in his cosmic forge, and even now he calls to them.

To say that reveal truly transformed Venom as a character is a major understatement. The Knull mythology gave Venom a much grander and more ambitious place within the Marvel Universe hierarchy. It helped further distance Venom from Spider-Man. Even Venom’s chest emblem was revealed to be evoking Knull’s symbiote dragons, not Spider-Man’s spider logo.

By now, Marvel has long since proven that it’s possible to tell good Venom stories without involving Spider-Man at all. The character has escaped Spidey’s shadow and become bigger than just Eddie Brock himself. But does that mean Venom should exist without Spider-Man? The Venom movies have a clear template to follow, but will we ever get to a point where Hardy’s Venom and Holland’s Spider-Man do team up?

Knull and Venom’s Cinematic Future

As much as Sony has been teasing The Last Dance as the final outing for Hardy’s Eddie Brock, it’s clear they’re not done with Venom by any stretch. The Last Dance introduces Knull to Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, as these movies finally begin to draw on that rich tapestry woven by Cates and Stegman in the comics.

What’s more, we already have confirmation that Knull’s cinematic debut is just the potential start of a much bigger storyline. Writer/director Kelly Marcel told IGN, “we know full well how important Knull is to the fans, so just as we laid a foundation for Venom, we hope we are doing the same for Knull. The King in Black is way too powerful for ‘one and done.’

“This film introduces Knull, but it just touches the beginnings of his story,” Marcel added. “Marvel's greatest film villains are developed over time. Here, Knull is the threat lurking behind the danger that tests the absolute limits of Eddie and Venom's partnership — but it’s their relationship that remains the heart of this story.”

Knull’s story in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is just beginning. Whether he becomes the main villain of a fourth Venom movie, a crossover between the Spider-Man and Venom series, or something else entirely, we just don’t know. Sony has yet to reveal a roadmap for their cinematic universe beyond Kraven the Hunter, which releases in December 2016. But given how Knull is used in The Last Dance, it seems safe to assume they do have plans in place to continue this universe.

Will Hardy be part of those plans? It certainly seems possible. Despite The Last Dance supposedly being Hardy’s final outing with the character, Hardy is adamant that he’d love to return.

"I've loved every moment of Eddie and Venom and I was really fond of them," Hardy told IGN. "I'd play them any time, you know, because there's a special place that exists within me to want to operate those two characters wherever you put them in whatever capacity. I feel like a sense of obligation and responsibility and duty of care to those two that will never end. I'll always be with them."

Hardy also revealed that they explored other options for continuing the story in The Last Dance, including introducing Eddie’s son Dylan. That’s a reminder that even if Hardy is done with the franchise after The Last Dance, there are ways of continuing the story with a new host for Venom.

But however Sony moves forward with the Venom franchise, it’s past time that Spider-Man became a part of this story in some way. Sony and Marvel already laid the seeds of a potential crossover in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. A post-credits scene in that film sees Hardy drawn into the MCU just long enough to leave a fragment of his symbiote behind. We can only assume that the fragment will find its way to Holland’s Peter Parker in an upcoming Spider-Man movie.

Even if the two characters never directly meet, this is an intriguing connection between the two universes. What happens when Peter bonds with the symbiote? How much does it change things when the Spidey/Venom dynamic is flipped and Peter becomes the second one to wear the black costume? How much influence will Hardy’s Venom have over a hero who’s still very much finding his place in the MCU?

That said, fans probably aren’t going to be satisfied with an indirect Spider-Man/Venom crossover. They want the real thing. And perhaps it’s a good sign that The Last Dance is introducing Knull on such an open-ended note. If anything can cross the boundaries between cinematic universes and bring these two heroes together, it’s the threat posed by the King in Black.

What if the symbiote fragment left behind in the MCU draws Knull’s attention to this other universe? What if it paves the way for a full-fledged Spider-Man/Venom team-up, as the two join forces to protect their respective worlds from an all-powerful symbiote god? That’s certainly one direction Marvel and Sony could go with the upcoming Spider-Man 4. Sony has done a respectable job so far of building a Venom franchise without Spider-Man’s involvement. But now that Venom is well-established, it’s high time he finally gets to meet Spidey. There’s simply too much untapped potential in that dynamic.

But what do you think? Is it time for Holland’s Spider-Man and Hardy’s Venom to meet? Will that team-up happen in the next Spider-Man movie? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

And more more on the future of the Venom franchise, check out our Venom: The Last Dance Ending Explained and brush up on every Spider-Man movie and series in development.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.