"Venom: The Last Dance" looks like it will fulfill a tease going back to the 2018 original: a Symbiote invasion of Earth. Their malevolent creator, the ancient villain Knull, is more terrifying than even Thanos—in fact, he's on another level.
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00:00Venom The Last Dance looks like it will fulfill a tease going back to the 2018 original.
00:05A symbiote invasion of Earth, their malevolent creator, the ancient villain Null,
00:10is more terrifying than even Thanos. In fact, he's on another level.
00:14He's a creature of nothingness. He's billions of years old, born in the vast darkness that
00:19came after the destruction of the previous universe and the Big Bang that kickstarted ours.
00:23What's his name, then?
00:25Null.
00:28Then the Celestials brought forth light, and Null was repulsed. While the Celestials saw the dark
00:33as emptiness they could remold, Null saw them as invaders in his domain. His crusade of destruction
00:38is to return the universe to what it was. This is why Null fits as a villain in Silver Surfer,
00:43Black. The Surfer's arc in the book is him brooding over his past as a herald of Galactus.
00:48Norrin Radd may be a kind soul, but to many worlds, he was an agent of death.
00:52So, in Silver Surfer, Black, while thrown back into the primordial past,
00:56the Surfer must face an unmaker like he once was. The book's conclusion is that,
01:00you cannot defeat the dark, but you can find the light inside of you.
01:03King & Black, likewise, ends with Null thrown into the sun and obliterated.
01:07Naturally, darkness is snuffed out by the most powerful light of all.
01:10We'll have to wait and see if the cinematic Null will receive the same fate as the comic one.
01:15Volume 1 of writer Donny Cates and artist Ryan Stegman's Venom is titled Rex,
01:20Latin for King, because that's what Null is to the symbiotes. Originally, Venom and his ilk were
01:26presented as a naturally evolved race of liquid parasites, known in their own language as the
01:30Klyntar. Cates and Stegman, in their Venom run, revised them into Null's creations.
01:36Their power to possess other beings was a way for Null to spread his influence across the cosmos,
01:40and in turn, the symbiotes have a hive mind, because that hive is Null's will, disseminated.
01:46In ancient times, the symbiotes were unchackled from Null's control, so they overthrew and
01:50defeated their master. The symbiote's homeworld is in fact a prison with Null at its core,
01:55as Klyntar means cage. Every god needs followers, too, and for Null, that is the Church of New
02:00Darkness, sometimes called the Cult of Null. A remnant of the symbiotes invading Earth in
02:04medieval times, the Church has endured for centuries awaiting their master's return.
02:10Venom is not the only Marvel villain to whom Null has a deep connection.
02:13Gor the God Butcher was born immortal, but true to his name, he has the power to kill gods.
02:18How? The weapon he wields, the Necrosword. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Gor's Necrosword
02:23is depicted as a shadow-casting longsword that brings forth monsters. In the comics,
02:28it is instead a shapeless black fluid flowing across Gor's body that he can make into blades
02:32and tendrils. Sound familiar? The Necrosword looks and acts a lot like a symbiote because
02:37it is the original one, all black. Null took his own shadow and made it into a sword to fight
02:42against the Celestials, forged with the power of one he'd already slain. Eons ago, Null lost
02:47all black, and Gor found it, becoming the God Butcher. This is actually retcon, as Gor debuted
02:53in 2012, six years before Null. His origin, first told in Thor, God of Thunder No. 6, depicts him
02:59finding the Necrosword from a slain, knight-like god in black armor. Cates and Stegman turned this
03:04unnamed god into Null. Still, it's a nifty explanation that accounts for Gor's venomous
03:09powers and how his weapon corrupts his mind.
03:11The sword chose you. You are now cursed."
03:16Speaking of godslaying, you've already seen the Celestial who Null slayed in the MCU.
03:21It's called Nowhere.
03:23Remember Nowhere from Guardians of the Galaxy? It's the mining colony built into the decapitated
03:28head of a long-dead Celestial. You may not have put much thought into how the Celestial died,
03:33as even ancient beings pass on, and Nowhere is just one more bit of weirdness in the MCU's
03:38most proudly weird films. Null decapitated the unnamed Celestial with his original symbiote
03:44sword, then used its head as a refinery to upgrade his sword into all black. After Null left it,
03:49the head drifted, attracting new settlers and becoming Nowhere. Like Gor, Nowhere's new origin
03:54shows how Null's backstory was woven into the Marvel Universe. In Eternals, we met lead Celestial
03:59Arishem the Judge, who dwarfed Earth itself. Anyone who can kill something that big deserves
04:04to be feared.
04:05Eons ago, Null created two symbiotes in the shape of dragons, one black and one red,
04:10and sent them out on a path of destruction. When they came to Earth, the black one was named
04:14Grendel, after the mythological monster from Beowulf, while the red one was dubbed his mother.
04:19Earth became Grendel's tomb, for he was defeated by Thor, but remnants of his presence — both
04:24physically and in the Church of New Darkness — survived. Grendel awakens in the first issue
04:28of Cates and Stegman's Venom, and winds up being a harbinger of his master's arrival.
04:33If Null himself only has a cameo in The Last Dance, perhaps Grendel could be a third-act villain
04:38for Venom 3. A symbiote dragon is definitely a big enough spectacle to cap off the trilogy.
04:43There's another reason to fear Grendel, too. After his defeat in the comics,
04:46the Church of New Darkness uses his essence to resurrect Cletus Kasady into carnage. It always
04:52did seem odd how casually Let There Be Carnage killed off Venom's only other A-list adversary,
04:57so a revival and team-up with Null could be in order.
04:59Venom The Last Dance oozes into theaters on October 25, 2024.