The post-credits scene for “Venom 3” unfolds in the aftermath of the final battle that took place between Eddie Brock, Venom, the xenophage creatures sent by Knull to retrieve the codex, and the rest of the symbiotes who tried to stop them but ended up all being killed. In the end, Venom detached from Eddie, attached himself to the handful of xenophages that arrived to retrieve the codex, and killed them all with a combination of acid and a massive explosion from a grenade.
We return to the burnt and generally destroyed surface of Area 51 above the secret lab, and Cristo Fernández’s bartender character emerges from a cave to see all the destruction the morning after. The bartender walks with confusion, looking for anyone who can help them. The camera settles on a broken vial sitting on a rock, and suddenly, a cockroach flies in and lands next to it.
What makes this scene particularly confusing is that Juno Temple’s character ends up breaking another vial with a symbiote inside of it, and that turns her into the symbiote that seems to be Agony from Marvel Comics. However, this is not the same broken vial. Instead, this seems to be the vial that held the fragment of Venom that Strickland retrieved from that Mexican bar. So what does this mean?
Well, as we saw several times in this movie, Venom can attach himself to various animals, including a horse, fish, and frog. So when the cockroach appears next to this broken vial, we’re meant to assume that, just like cockroaches have done for millions of years, Venom will survive. Furthermore, he’ll likely live on by attaching himself to that cockroach and eventually finding Eddie again. It might be fun to see an entire sequence at some point where Venom attaches himself to various animals on his way back to Eddie. Maybe that’s what the end credits sequence is hinting at anyway, as it shows a bunch of Venom-animal hybrids that we didn’t see in the movie, including a squirrel and an elephant.
Will Venom ever make it to New York City himself, so that he might finally see the Statue of Liberty or meet up with Spider-Man? Only time will tell, but for now, we can be sure that we haven’t seen the last of Venom, even if the tease for his return was unnecessarily confusing.