#I think people prefer to believe Eddie's been all-in on Venom so this theory wouldn't make sense

[lady-in-the-lair]

Expanding on this to get it straight in my head and because I don't see much discussion about this.

Martin the Hippie and Eddie have a conversation about the door that opens in your mind at the moment of death, complete with a creepy poster visual aid--"Neureka" (?). There's even a callback to it when Martin and Eddie speak again later. We are meant to remember this.

As the camera pans away from Eddie after Venom's death, he says "Neureka" aloud. To me, focusing on this word is a clear way of showing that only after Venom died did Eddie realize the extent of his feelings for the symbiote.

It's only after this realization that Eddie shows tenderness regarding Venom and admits he needs him in that too-brief hospital scene which, in my mind, is where the movie poignantly ends because what the heck was that tonal shift and montage and song choice and "I won't forget you, buddy 🥴"

I know most people like to picture the two of them madly in love the whole trilogy (as do I, hence all the fics I wrote!), but while Venom is clearly head-over-heels for Eddie since the first time Eddie said "we/us," Eddie has always been more hesitant.

Which makes sense in the movies. After all, Eddie still thought he was in love with Anne almost through the end of Carnage and he and Venom weren't getting along for much of their time together. They've only had a brief honeymoon in Mexico since letting go of Anne and committing to each other, and as we unfortunately see in the movie, Eddie is still not exactly warm-and-fuzzy to Venom.

In all fairness, he's been on the run and hasn't had a lot time to come to terms with the fact that this is his life now, he's with Venom, he will not have the normal life he'd always expected, no family, no kids.

He obviously has a thing for Venom, I don't mean to minimize the Carnage end credit scenes though they felt undeserved after the strife earlier in that movie, but I don't think he realized it was love.

Venom and his's lifeforces are linked...they are one...when Venom dies, some part of Eddie does too, and the door opens....

It's only when Venom dies that the door in Eddie's mind opens and he fully realizes that he would choose Venom over a normal life, that he needs him emotionally after he's no longer in the kind of physical danger that brought him back to Venom in Carnage.

tl;dr: The door opening in Eddie's mind after Venom's death was his Neureka realization that he wants and needs the symbiote on a level he didn't understand until it was too late.

Eddie truly realizing he wants Venom only at the moment of [Venom's] death is just