Venom 3 Needs To Feature This Fan-Favorite Marvel Villain

When Marvel launched a new volume of Venom’s comic in 2018, it came with a reframing of the symbiote’s origin story. Readers learned the Klyntar symbiotes were not simply one more alien species, but were created by the powerful dark god Knull. In 2018’s Venom #3, Knull reveals himself to Eddie Brock, shortly after trying and failing to force Venom to murder Miles Morales.

Remember The Celestials? Knull decapitates one of them. He’s the kind of guy who makes Thanos lose sleep.

The introduction of Knull in Venom erupts into the 2020-21 line-wide event The King in Black. Knull finally reaches Earth with his army of symbiotes in tow, and he takes control of as many of Earth’s symbiotes as he can manage. He kicks off the event by brutally and quite easily murdering The Sentry, one of the most powerful superheroes on Earth.

The biggest hint that Venom 3‘s villain is Knull is in the trailer for The Last Dance. The first half of the trailer frames the conflict as being between Venom and the military, but then we get a shot of multiple objects burning in orbit and heading for the surface. “Eddie,” the symbiote says, “My home… has found us.”

So if Venom 3 is an alien invasion flick, then the Big Bad at the controls is doubtlessly Knull. What point would there be of it being anyone else? If this is–as Sony is hinting–the final Venom flick, then there’s no reason for the franchise to go out any way other than going out big.

Another potential hint that Venom 3 will feature Knull–or, at the very least, that there’s a lot more going on than is obvious–is the use of David Bowie‘s 1969 classic “Space Oddity.”

I fully accept this may be me reading too much into things, but I find “Space Oddity” a strange choice for The Last Dance trailer. The song is famously about an astronaut lost in space–not an alien invasion. Could that hint that Venom will need to leave Earth in order to confront Knull?

Or maybe I’m being a little too human-centric. Maybe in this case it’s the Venom symbiote who is the Major Tom of the song. After all, from the perspective of Knull and the other symbiotes, by virtue of being on Earth he could be seen as being lost in space just like Tom.

Venom 3 will feature Knull, but don’t expect the guy from the comics. He probably won’t have the same red logo on his chest (just like Venom has never had that white version of it). He won’t be decapitating other space gods or ripping The Sentry in half.

After all, the hero of Venom 3 won’t have people like The Avengers backing him up.

But the Venom 3 villain will be Knull, just like the Infinity Stone-wielding Thanos in the Avengers films was nowhere near as powerful as his comic book counterpart.

At the risk of sounding mean–and I really don’t mean to be–the Venom 3 villain has to be Knull because Venom’s rogues gallery is about as varied as Seth Rogen’s acting career. Venom has three kinds of enemies–symbiotes, the god of the symbiotes, and superheroes.

It’s not going to be superheroes invading Earth with aliens from Venom’s world. There are exactly two interesting symbiotes–one of them is Venom, the other one is Carnage, and Carnage wound up as Venom’s snack in Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Venom 3 is coming and Knull is the only villain left to make it worth seeing.