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Venom: The Last Dance is in cinemas now. The seemingly final instalment of the trilogy picks up the story of Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock and his alien symbiote pal as they are transported back to their own reality after the Spider-Man: No Way Home post-credits sequence – and immediately find themselves in a whole heap of trouble and on the run.
While much of the press leading up to the release of Venom 3 has focused on the inclusion of big bad Knull, the more tangible threat for much of the movie comes from his monstrous army. Knull is trying to get his hands on Venom and for that he despatches some Xenophages – alien hunters who are uniquely capable of sniffing out symbiotes in hiding.
Mild spoilers for Venom: The Last Dance
The Xenophages are not unique to Venom: The Last Dance. In fact, they originate in The Hunted, a three-issue Venom story published by Marvel Comics in 1996. Written by Larry Hama and drawn by artist Duncan Rouleau, the series finds Venom wrongly-accused of being a brain-eating killer (I mean, he is that, but not this specific one!) who has been leaving a trail of corpses throughout the city.
Hunted by the N.Y.P.D., Eddie tries to lay low, but soon comes face to face with the real killer: a symbiote-hunting alien known as a Xenophage, who is in town with a few days to kill. "It thinks no more of its victims than a Parisian does of a plump escargot," we learn in one especially lurid caption.
The Xenophage is able to change its shape and size, initially disguising itself from Venom as a cabinet. It's also able to use a neurotoxin to stun symbiotes – and enhance their flavor! The two embark on a massive fight throughout the city that Venom is only able to win by tricking the Xenophage into chowing down on a grenade. It's eventually revealed that all the victims were symbiote hosts like Eddie.
The Xenophage in the comics has a few key differences to the monsters seen in the film. There's only one of them in The Hunted, and a whole bunch in The Last Dance. The creature we meet in the comics is also capable of speech and chats away to Venom while they fight, where the monsters in the movie only roar and chomp. These Xenophages also don't seem capable of full shape-shifting as such – though as we see throughout they're able to reconstitute their bodies after they've been blown up.
Their inclusion in Venom: The Last Dance feels like a remix of the comics' lore, similar to how Mulligan has a symbiote here, but isn't really Toxin as in the comics. Still, it's cool to see this deep cut creature on the big screen and pleasing to see its creators get a nod in the end credits.
Venom: The Last Dance is in theaters worldwide now. For more, check out our guide to the upcoming superhero movies to add to your calendar, as well as how to watch the Spider-Man movies in order.
