Venom: The Last Dance director on why Knull is the right villain for the threequel and Thanos-style hopes for the future: "He's way too big to be one and done"

Venom in The Last Dance — (Image credit: Sony)

Venom: The Last Dance is bringing Sony's Venom trilogy to a close, so, naturally, it needs a huge villain worthy of an epic send-off.

Enter Knull, the terrifying big bad lurking at the heart of the threequel. When GamesRadar+ caught up with director Kelly Marcel in London, we dived deep into why Knull was the right bad guy for The Last Dance – and what might be coming in the future.

"I think we always knew he was the right villain for this film," Marcel tells us. "Ever since Venom 1, we wanted to get him in somehow, but we just knew we had to establish the relationship between Eddie and Venom first, and make Venom kind of his own silhouette before we could start bringing in the really big bads.

"We've always been fascinated with Knull," Marcel continues. "He's obviously the father of the symbiotes, so you can't really do the symbiote movies without him, but he's also way too big to be one and done. So, it's just a little introduction to him. It's just a kind of taster of where he might potentially be able to go with his own movies, in the same way that they introduced Thanos very carefully through the Marvel movies."

Marcel also has a wish list for what she wants to see for Knull next, especially as he's played by Andy Serkis. "I'd like to see him return as absolutely terrifying, and I'd love to see Grendel and more of the sword, and all of the things that we started to build in this world that was so exciting to design and to come up with," she says. "We all know it's Andy Serkis, who I think is the most brilliant voice actor there is. And Knull is mo-cap and CGI, which is what he's famous for and brilliant at. So, I was really excited to get to have Andy doing that, having worked with him on Venom 2.

"And Knull is just one of those characters that I don't think will be beaten very easily," she continues. "So, I think he's certainly got a long storyline ahead of him."

At the moment, Knull's future in the Sony-verse is unclear – but we wouldn't count him out for long…

Venom: The Last Dance is in theaters this October 25. While you wait, check out our guides to all the upcoming superhero movies and how to watch the Spider-Man movies in order.

I'm the Deputy Entertainment Editor here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.