The Last Dance Could Finally Be Setting Up A Sinister Six Movie

While Venom: The Last Dance brings the Venom trilogy that started in 2018 to a close, it’s clear it’s far from the end of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. Tom Hardy is playing coy about his future as Eddie Brock, and even though Venom: The Last Dance doesn’t directly include the Sinister Six, the team of Spider-Man villains finally have a threat to unite them.

The ‘Venomverse’ has come a long way from its humble roots, and despite plans for a Black Cat and Silver Sable movie falling through, Morbius, Madame Web, and the upcoming Kraven the Hunter have given Sony plenty of characters to stock the infamous ranks of the Sinister Six. There’s no word on whether projects focusing on Nightwatch, Hypno-Hustler, and Jackpot are still moving forward, but closer to home, rumors of a Sinister Six standalone continue to bubble.

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How Does Venom: The Last Dance set up the Sinister Six?

Venom: The Last Dance’s post-credit scenes seem like a missed opportunity when it comes to setting up a Sinister Six movie, and for all its faults, 2022s Morbius did a decent job of queueing them by bringing over Michael Keaton’s Vulture from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While it would’ve been easy to add Keaton and Jared Leto’s Morbius to the cast, the third Venom movie confirms plans for Andy Serkis’ Knull. There are rumors that the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man 4 will focus on Kingpin and street-level villains of the MCU, meaning the Knull arc would likely be left for the SSU to deal with.

Despite Knull failing to escape his prison in the Void during Venom: The Last Dance, he declares victory thanks to the death of Venom as Earth’s ‘champion.’ As well as Knull reiterating the Venom symbiote is gone, he adds :

“Your planet will be mine. The King in Black is awake, I will kill your world, everyone will burn, and you will watch.”

Even though Morbius suggested that the formative Sinister Six would be taking on Spider-Man, it seems more likely that these antiheroes will unite against Knull. Given Knull’s powers in the comics, it was always expected that it would take more than one movie to defeat him, and while some are already sick of Knull, it makea sense to build toward him like the MCU did following Thanos’ debut in The Avengers.

The Knull stinger isn’t the only potential nod to the Sinister Six, as earlier in Venom: The Last Dance, a mysterious character known only as Imperium Leader mentions ‘the Six.’ The leader of the movie’s shadowy cabal is bizarrely played by actor Reid Scott, who previously appeared as Doctor Dan Lewis (the boyfriend of Michelle Williams’ Anne Weying) in the first two Venom movies. Was Scott playing a brand-new character, or was some big reveal that the wholesome Doctor Dan was a villain cut from the movie? Either way, a throwaway mention of ‘the Six’ is the closest Hollywood has got to the Sinister Six in over a decade.

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What Happened to Sony’s Sinister Six Movie?

First introduced in 1964’s The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, the Sinister Six is arguably the most infamous group of supervillains from comic books and has changed a lot over the years. Away from the original lineup of Doctor Octopus, Vulture, Sandman, Kraven the Hunter, Electro, and Mysterio, evolutions such as the Sinister Twelve, Superior Six, and Sinister Sixty-Six have added everyone from Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin to Kingpin, Morbius to Venom. Still, the various Spider-Man movies have never quite nailed them.

If the SSU is planning an Avengers-inspired team-up movie for the Sinister Six, it would complete a journey to the silver screen that was cut short by the MCU. Back when Andrew Garfield was wearing the spandex suit, The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s post-credit scene put the pieces in place for the Sinister Six with a lineup that included Doctor Octopus, Vulture, Kraven the Hunter, and Mysterio – led by the decapitated head of Chris Cooper’s Norman Osborn. This was hammered home by Paul Giamatti’s last-minute return as a mechanized Rhino, while Daredevil’s Drew Goddard was attached to direct.

The Sinister Six standalone was announced in 2013 and was due to hit cinemas before The Amazing Spider-Man 3. Goddard wanted to keep them as villains, and although their goal was to kill Spider-Man, there was a chance Garfield would only appear in a cameo capacity or not at all. Garfield was reportedly as shocked as fans to learn the franchise was being rebooted, and among the casualties, the Sinister Six movie was quietly shelved when Disney moved forward with what would eventually become Spider-Man: Homecoming. That didn’t stop Sony’s Amy Pascal from discussing the project as late as 2018, saying the success of Venom could resurrect a Sinister Six spin-off.

The MCU would eventually do its own take on the Sinister Six (more like the Sinister Five) by leaning into the madness of the Multiverse in Spider-Man: No Way Home. The ensemble brought back villains from the Tobey Maguire and Garfield eras to face off against Holland’s wall-crawling hero, and while particular praise went to the returns of Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe as Doctor Octopus and Green Goblin, Rhys Ifans’ Lizard and Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman felt like little more than an afterthought. The movie also danced around a full lineup of the Sinister Six with the post-credit scene of Hardy’s Venom in the MCU – something Venom: The Last Dance quickly retconned.

Even if a Sinister Six movie hasn’t been officially announced yet, Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Tony Vinciquerra said the “next seven or eight years” of movies had been planned back in 2019. The live-action Spider-Verse continues to wave a complicated web, and fans are quick to forget that if all these movies are connected, Spider-Man could be out there somewhere thanks to the birth of Peter Parker during S. J. Clarkson’s Madame Web. Whether going with the tried and tested formula of the Sinister Six trying to kill Spider-Man or assembling the team against Knull, the team is closer than ever to getting its own outing. The problem is, The Last Dance‘s disappointing box office opening and continued critical panning of the SSU’s output don’t give much hope for the franchise’s future.