The Venom 3 Trailer Confirmed The Series' Most Powerful Marvel Villain Yet

The marketing material for "Venom: The Last Dance" has already teased one of Marvel's most powerful villains, and the movie's final trailer confirms that he is indeed coming. Marvel's Knull makes his very first live-action appearance in the trailer, threatening Earth in general and Venom (Tom Hardy) in particular. 

This is a significant villain upgrade for the "Venom" franchise. The first two movies' major antagonists Riot (Riz Ahmed), Carnage (Woody Harrelson), and Shriek (Naomie Harris) are effectively just Venom's fellow symbiotes with different power sets. While they all have their place in the untold truth of Venom, Knull is cut from a different cloth. As Venom fearfully tells Eddie Brock (Hardy) in the trailer, Knull is the one who created the symbiotes in the first place, which makes him a threat that's far beyond anything "Venom" movie fans have seen so far. 

What, exactly, makes Knull so absurdly powerful in the comics, and how might he translate to live action? Here's a closer look at the God of Symbiotes and the significant threat he poses.

The final "Venom: The Last Dance" trailer provides many clues about Knull's sudden interest toward planet Earth. Juno Temple's scientist character says that all the symbiotes we've seen so far have been running from something, and Venom tells Eddie that Knull specifically needs something from them. Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham) even states that Venom's bond with Eddie will end everything. That's a lot of foreshadowing, especially combined with the film's title and its logline, "'Til Death Do They Part." 

The trailer does Knull justice by immediately associating him with death and apocalyptic destruction. In the comics, he starts out as a slumbering god of darkness who starts making moves after a group of powerful Celestials find him. He can control the "living abyss" that's effectively a physical manifestation of darkness created to engulf light and life, and uses this power to create a vast army of symbiotes that can take over just about anyone. He's strong enough to be the King in Black — the cosmic darkness deity of the entire Multiverse — but thinks this isn't metal enough. Instead, he wants to simply destroy everything that's not part of his primordial void, and makes spirited attempts to do so whenever possible. 

To give a specific example of the danger Knull poses, the very first symbiote he creates is All-Black the Necrosword, a blade infused with a Celestial's powers. Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have already received a taste of the All-Black in "Thor: Love and Thunder," where Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) wields it on his quest to kill all deities. If the live-action version of Knull wields even a fraction of the original's powers, Eddie and Venom are in for the fight of a lifetime. 

Knull is a massive threat, and the new "Venom: The Last Dance" trailer strongly suggests that he has big and destructive plans. However, it remains to be seen just how hands-on he is in the film. The trailer only shows him in the middle of a vast, gooey place that's likely the film's version of the Symbiote Hive-Mind, sending monstrous minions after Venom instead of personally confronting him. As such, precisely how much we'll actually see the entire trilogy's overarching Big Bad is entirely up in the air ... as is the question of how the protagonists could possibly hope to defeat an entity as strong as Knull if he does decide to enter the battlefield.

Knull is also a considerably dark villain — darkness is his very job description, after all. Since several scenes in the trailer make clear that "The Last Dance" will absolutely maintain the series' joking moments, this raises the question of whether the movie can juggle the trilogy's signature dark comedy with an absolutely brutal antagonist like Knull. Sure, "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" already combines symbiote goofiness with a superpowered serial killer straight out of a horror movie, so there's precedent. Then again, Knull is a different beast altogether, and may not mesh as well with the series' light-hearted notes as Carnage. 

Since Knull is one of the strongest villains who haven't appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, fans will no doubt want to to see him as much as possible in "Venom: The Last Dance." Still, only the movie's premiere on October 25 will reveal whether it treats the King in Black as a prominent scene-stealer or a glorified cameo.