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A new trailer for Venom: The Last Dance has officially revealed the movie's villain, Knull, the dark god of the symbiotes, seemingly played by actor Rhys Ifans. And with the arrival of Venom's greatest foe (besides Spider-Man, of course), come some questions about what exactly fans can expect from the film which is being billed as the final film in the Venom series.
Naturally, if Sony is looking to take the Venom film series out with a big impact, the arrival of Knull in their Spider-Man adjacent cinematic universe is just about as big as it gets. The villain's comic book counterpart was strong enough to challenge the entire Marvel Universe in the story King in Black, which also established connections between Knull and the Thor mythos, among other heroes and villains.
There's even a big connection between Knull and the Beyonders, who play an important role in the Secret Wars comic story. So how does it all come together, and what could it all mean for Venom in the movies? We'll break it all down right now.
The origin of Knull
Though he was created in 2018 by writer Donny Cates and artist Ryan Stegman, Knull's comic book history starts way, way back at the dawn of the Marvel Universe, which is known to cosmic beings as the Seventh Cosmos - in other words, the seventh universe born in a cycle of endless death and rebirth that spans countless eons, long before humans existed and long after they will be gone. Knull himself is born of the brief window of eldritch darkness that exists between the end of the Sixth Cosmos, and the dawn of the Seventh Cosmos as a being of unending, undying darkness and night.
Knull is appointed the title of 'King in Black,' a position in the cosmic hierarchy which balances out the Beyonders, who are beings of omnipotent power who live outside the Multiverse and who are intrinsically connected to both the original 1985 Secret Wars and its 2015 sequel, both of which provide some inspiration for the upcoming Avengers: Secret Wars film.
But Knull rejects his duties and instead wages a war against the Celestials and the very idea of Light. Rather than fulfilling the King in Black's job of guarding the Multiverse, Knull instead wished to revert the entire Marvel Universe back to the primordial darkness that he was born from, which is often called the Void (Knull and Void, it kinda goes together). This Void is somewhat similar to the concept of the Void in the MCU, as a place outside of time and space.
To wage his war, Knull creates the first symbiote, which takes the form of Knull's weapon, the Necrosword, an artifact that's well-known to Thor fans as the same weapon wielded by Gorr the God-Butcher in both comics and in the film Thor: Love and Thunder (which also included shadow monsters that look a lot like Knull's army).
After the blade is stolen, Knull creates a new army of symbiote dragons that he sent from world to world, engulfing them in shadow, until he ran afoul of none other than Thor himself while attempting to attack Earth in the thunder god's early days. Thor destroys one of the dragons, causing the rest of them to dissipate into thousands of individual symbiotes - the same ones which would eventually become known as the Klyntar and which include Venom and its spin-offs.
As a result, the Klyntar turn on Knull, and he's finally defeated, remaining dormant and trapped in the hive of the Klyntar homeworld for thousands of years.
The King in Black
In the modern day, back on Earth, a cult of Knull dedicated to reviving the dark god plan to use Cletus Kasady, who was then separated from his Carnage symbiote, as a vessel for Knull, attaching a fragment of the original symbiote dragon to him.
This awakens Knull, who is still trapped, and allows him to start taking control of symbiotes on Earth. To stop this, Eddie Brock and Venom absorb the fragments of the original symbiote - but bringing them all back together allows Knull to finally escape captivity and come to Earth with the intent of conquering and enslaving the entire planet with his symbiotes.
When Eddie is killed in battle with Knull in the 2020 story King in Black, which shows what happens when Knull reaches Earth, his son Dylan Brock, who has an intrinsic connection to Knull thanks to having been born with some symbiote powers, becomes the new Venom. Dylan joins the Avengers, X-Men, Spider-Man, and basically every hero on Earth in the fight against Knull, who can only be destroyed by the essence of Light that opposes his cosmic Darkness.
Yes, it's all very complicated in the way that only comics can be - just roll with it.
Eddie is eventually revived by the Light, allowing him to take full control of the power of the symbiotes and hurl Knull into the sun - just about the biggest source of light in any proximity to Earth.
Using the so-called Uni-Power (a cosmic energy that is connected to the hero Captain Universe, who manifests in anyone who absorbs the Uni-Power), Eddie is then able to purge the last bits of the essence of Knull from his son Dylan, finally destroying Knull. And while he could come back someday - death and defeat are rarely forever in comics - Knull has been out of the picture.
Instead, Eddie Brock became the so-called King in Black, a cosmic position which he currently still holds even as he and his son Dylan are going to battle with the rest of the symbiotes picking sides in the current Venom War comic event.
Knull in Venom: The Last Dance
Obviously, the Venom movies all take place in Sony's Marvel Universe, and while Eddie and Venom did indeed once pay a brief visit to the MCU, it was mostly uneventful for them, with no other major characters encountering them or learning of their reality.
Still, it's hard not to think about the connection between Thor: Love and Thunder's Necrosword and Venom: The Last Dance's Knull, who created the sword in comics. And then of course there's the somewhat complex connection between the Beyonders and Knull's station as the King in Black.
For a quick refresher, the Beyonders are cosmic entities who dwell outside the Multiverse and who, in 2015's Secret Wars event, are responsible for nearly destroying it entirely. Only Doctor Doom is able to resist them, saving bits and pieces of various Multiverse worlds and bringing them together as one Pangaea-like reality known as Battleworld.
1985's original Secret Wars is best known as one of Marvel's first all-in type crossovers where nearly every major Marvel hero and villain came together in one massive story, and the upcoming Avengers: Secret Wars is apparently the same kind of deal.
With the big intrinsic comic connections between Knull, the Beyonders, and Secret Wars, it's hard not to imagine a world where Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock/Venom makes it into the Secret Wars movie, if not fully into the MCU at some point - especially considering that the original 1985 Secret Wars is the story that actually introduced the Venom symbiote as a new costume for Peter Parker/Spider-Man.
Could Sony and Marvel be setting up a version of the currently in the works Spider-Man 4 where Peter Parker picks up Eddie Brock's Venom symbiote in Avengers: Secret Wars? Anything is possible, and it's just as likely Sony could ignore that aspect of Knull's mythos entirely.
But we can dream, right?
Venom: The Last Dance releases in theaters October 25.
Eddie Brock tops the list of the best Venom hosts of all time.
