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This article contains spoilers for Venom: The Last Dance.
“Your champion is fallen,” sneers the symbiote god Knull in the post-credit scene of Venom: The Last Dance. “The planets will be mine. The King in Black is awake. I will kill your world. Everyone will burn.” With each clipped line, the camera pans up a little bit more, from the black CGI sludge of Knull’s body to the white CGI sludge of Knull’s face.
In the last second, Knull looks directly into the lens to growl at the audience, “And you will watch!”
The scene raises a lot of questions, not the least of which is “who ya talking to?” Given The Last Dance‘s sluggish box office—which is still better than the disasters of Madame Web and Morbius—it seems that even if the Sony Spidey Villain Verse continues past Kraven the Hunter in December, there is little excitement about Knull’s arrival. But let’s say that Sony still wants to try to milk more web fluid from the this spider and pushes a new movie into theaters. Knull is the big bad, a universal threat. Who in Sony’s bullpen is left to stop him?
Enter: The Sinister Six!
Not Spider-Man. Sony has tried to get Tom Holland‘s Spidey or Andrew Garfield‘s Spidey into one of their movies, even shooting an initial version of Madame Web as a prequel to The Amazing Spider-Man, but Kevin Feige keeps blocking their attempts. The manic rom com energy that Tom Hardy brought to Eddie Brock and Venom made the Lethal Protector’s outings at least enjoyable enough to do great at the box office, but Venom (or the symbiote half of the character, anyway) dies at the end of the third film, meaning he’s gone too.
Some might point out that Sony still has a trio of Spider-ladies in Spider-Woman II, Spider-Woman III, and Araña, but those characters didn’t even actually appear in costume, or with fully realized superpowers, in Madame Web. No, the obvious answer is that Sony only has one force strong enough to stand up to Knull: the Sinister Six.
On the one hand, the Sinister Six are the ideal concept for Sony’s beleagured attempt at building a shared universe. Ever since Steve Ditko and Stan Lee introduced the team in 1964’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, the Sinister Six have been one of the cherished aspects of the Spider-Man mythos.
The Sinister Six brought together some of Spidey’s worst baddies, including Doctor Octopus, Sandman, Electro, Mysterio, Kraven, and the Vulture. Over the years, the line-up has shifted a bit, but the central idea remains the same: poor Peter Parker’s life gets worse when his enemies decide that they can get over their differences if it means killing Spider-Man.
When looked at through the eyes of a studio executive who wants to maximize IP, the Sinister Six are an Avengers-level idea. Although Sam Raimi‘s success with Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 allowed him to resist Sony pushing for the Sinister Six, he couldn’t stop Venom. And after Raimi left the property following Spider-Man 3, producer Avi Arad and Sony were free to overstuff The Amazing Spider-Man reboot series with expanded universe ideas, including the mystery of Peter Parker’s secret agent parents.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2, for example, adds Electro and the Green Goblin to the rogues gallery, with Felicity Jones dropping by for a cameo as Felicia Hardy, aka the Black Cat. The movie also positions aun unseen Norman Osborn as a Nick Fury but evil(er), complete with schematics for the Scorpion, the Vulture, and Doc Ock. He even turns Paul Giamatti to a woefully misjudged Rhino during a last scene stinger.
Enter: The Short-Sighted Studio
Sony had plans for a Sinister Six movie in production, but rotating directors and the eventual Marvel deal has left the project in development hell. Crucially, however, the studio has not given up, even though they no longer have Spider-Man available. Instead they’ve been teasing a larger group, first with Michael Keaton‘s Vulture arriving in the Sony universe and meeting Morbius in the desert, and now with Venom: The Last Dance. Throughout Venom 3, military man Strickland talks with a shadowy man about how to stop the monsters from a shadowy planet. The two make ominous references to “the Six.”
Although we don’t know the identities of the Six, we can take an educated guess that shadowy man (who is credited as “Lewis” and played by Reid Scott, who played Dr. Dan Lewis in previous Venom movies, but isn’t clear on screen) will gather Morbius, the Vulture, and Kraven, alongside maybe Chameleon and Rhino, assuming that they survive Kraven the Hunter.
Yes, that only leaves us with a Sinister Five, but Sony has options. Maybe we find out that Michael Mando’s Mac Gargan also zapped over with Vulture and he gets to be Scorpion here. Maybe Gargan gets a symbiote and becomes Venom like in the comics. Maybe the trauma of Area 51 makes Rhys Ifans’ Martin Moon remember his true identity as Curt Connors and he becomes the Lizard? Maybe the White Rabbit’s been hanging out the whole time in this universe and she can join up? Maybe Tom Hardy is paid enough to be convinced there’s another symbiote who could bond with Eddie Brock, like the mysterious (Venom clone?) one during the second post-credits scene? Maybe Madame Web baddie Ezekiel Sims will… nah, that’s too stupid to even joke about.
Exit: Taste and Common Sense!
I don’t know. The point is: Sony still wants a Sinister Six movie. And that’s a terrible idea.
Maybe 12 years ago, the idea of a bunch of supervillains coming together to fight a big bad would seem novel, especially in a movie. But by the time a Sinister Six film comes out, we’ll have had the Guardians of the Galaxy (they’re at best amoral in the first film), Suicide Squad, The Suicide Squad, The Creature Commandos (which is literally The Suicide Squad with monsters), and Thunderbolts (without a definite article but with an asterisk). Baddies teaming up and becoming good guys has become to modern superhero movies what blue lights in the sky were to superhero movies 10 or so years ago.
Worse, Sony comes at the idea with characters best known as internet memes, which is worse than not being known at all. A Sinister Six film is creatively bankrupt and commercially dubious; a clear attempt to cash in on the dregs of a popular IP. Given that it comes at a time when superhero movies might be running on fumes, it would also, probably, be a financial disaster.
Of course, when has that stopped Sony? Still, if having to sit through 90 minutes of uninspired superhero tropes is the cost of getting another amazing Spider-Verse movie, I’ll take it — especially if it means that the producers will give its workers a safe environment and fair compensation.
Because — sorry Knull — Spider-Verse is the only Sony Spider-Man project anyone’s going to watch for a long time.
Venom: The Last Dance is now in theaters.
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