One Venom 3 Death Ensures Big Changes From The Original Marvel Comics

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Warning: This post contains major spoilers for "Venom: The Last Dance."

At the end of "Venom: The Last Dance," the new villain Knull has been thwarted. The antagonist's hopes of getting his hands on the codex key that would release him from a cosmic prison created for him on the symbiote planet of Klyntar have been squashed. His xenophage creatures are dispatched with by Venom, who sacrifices himself in an acid-soaked explosion to destroy the beasts, ensuring that Knull will not get his hands on the codex created inside of him when he bonded with Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) upon the journalist's brief death in the first "Venom" movie.

But as the "Venom: The Last Dance" mid-credits scene teases, this was just the beginning of Knull's attempts to escape. Now that he's been thwarted, he's dead-set on wreaking havoc on Earth. However, whatever happens with Knull in Sony's Marvel universe on the big screen, "Venom: The Last Dance" and a key character death in the sequel may have ensured that at least one storyline from Marvel Comics would need significant changes if it were to be adapted into a future big screen outing.

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Knull is the creator of the symbiotes, and he sent them across the universe to do his bidding, creating a hive-mind among them that allowed him to both control them and learn of distant worlds. However, when the dragon-like symbiote known as Grendel is attacked by Thor with a bolt of lightning from Mjolnir, the hive-mind connection was severed. This allowed the symbiotes to realize the tyranny of Knull, and when they turned away from his rule and darkness, they also turned Klyntar into a planet-sized prison to contain him.

Unfortunately, when Thor defeated Grendel, the symbiote fell to Earth, and resulted in the creation of a Knull-worshipping cult known as The Church of the New Darkness. There's even a storyline involving the ancestors of Cletus Kasady (aka Carnage) and Jonas Ravencroft (creator of the asylum that would hold many supervillains). However, Grendel froze in the Scandinavian tundra, only to be discovered in 1966 by S.H.I.E.L.D., which wanted to use it to created a symbiote-driven Super-Soldier project.

Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. bonded parts of the Grendel to five different soldiers, creating Sym-Soldiers, and the leader of them was Rex Strickland. The program took a turn when the Sym-Soldiers went A.W.O.L. in Vietnam and were found to be devouring anyone in their path, forcing Fury to send a life-model decoy of himself (basically a sophisticated robot) alongside Wolverine to deal with the situation.

When confronted by Wolverine and the Nick Fury L.M.D., Strickland's symbiote (known as Tyrannosaurus) separated from Strickland's body, but disguised himself as the soldier in order to catch Fury and Wolverine off-guard. A battle ensued, and somehow, Tyrannosaurus came to feel remorseful for what he and the rest of the symbiotes had done. Just before Nick Fury's L.M.D. self-destructs to leave no witnesses, Tyrannosaurus threw Wolverine to safety and tried to shield Strickland from the explosion. The symbiote was blown off Strickland's body, and the soldier died in the blast.

But Strickland's story doesn't end there. His consciousness was stored in the symbiote hive-mind as a codex, and Tyrannosaurus assumed his identity, allowing him to track down his Sym-Soldier colleagues and free them of the Grendel-symbiotes that they were still attached to, all with the help of Venom. Grendel would end up reconstituting itself, but Venom and Tyrannosaurus fused together to immolate Grendel, killing both the dragon-like symbiote and Tyrannosaurus.

Finally, in the symbiote after-life (yes, there's a symbiote after-life in the comics), Tyrannosaurus reunites with Strickland, and they start forming a team of symbiotes to fight back against Knull, who is on the verge of rising once again. It's a whole thing involving a deceased Eddie Brock, Agent Anti-Venom, and more.

The creation of a Sym-Soldier program involving Strickland sounds like it could have been a cool storyline to potentially use in a "Venom" movie. However, "Venom: The Last Dance" makes that a little difficult to pull off.

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Unfortunately, Strickland dies in the final act of "Venom: The Last Dance." While initially antagonistic in his pursuit of Eddie Brock and Venom — not to mention aggressively taking over the secret lab where the symbiotes are stored, due to orders by a mysterious, shadowy man who is never fully identified — Strickland eventually works with Eddie and Venom (as well as a bunch of symbiotes embodying assorted scientists) to stop the xenophages.

In Venom's final moments, he separated from Eddie, wrapped himself around several xenophage creatures, and dragged them to an acid shower that will disintegrate them all. Unsure if the acid by itself will do the trick, Strickland activates a grenade, creating an explosion that completely destroys Venom, the xenophages, and Strickland himself.

If we're being honest, there's always a chance that Strickland somehow survived this. It's a comic book movie after all. Another "Venom" movie could always create a retcon where one of the other symbiotes in the final battle managed to survive and protect Strickland from the blast. Hell, he could even just survive because it somehow wasn't enough to kill him. But based on the post-credits scene, there's really only one tease of survival, and it's not for Strickland, who is likely a one-and-done character in Sony's Marvel universe.

At the end of the day, you don't need Strickland to adapt the Sym-Soldier storyline. Furthermore, I have a feeling that a lot of liberties will be taken with Knull's history in Marvel Comics when it comes to bringing him to the big screen. Of course, that's if Sony even manages to pull off turning him into its version of Thanos, as teased in the mid-credits scene of "Venom: The Last Dance." At this point, I'm not sure anyone cares about how Knull's story continues from here.

"Venom: The Last Dance" is now playing in theaters.