{"id":1014111,"date":"2026-01-11T22:09:42","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T22:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=470588"},"modified":"2026-01-11T22:09:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T22:09:42","slug":"venom-the-last-dance-raises-questions-only-a-true-comics-fan-could-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/venom-the-last-dance-raises-questions-only-a-true-comics-fan-could-answer\/","title":{"rendered":"Venom: The Last Dance raises questions only a true comics fan could answer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Venom,
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Venom: The Last Dance<\/em><\/a> may be one of those \u201cYou just had to be there\u201d experiences. It feels cluttered, confused, and yet remarkably inconsequential. We\u2019re told that the entire universe is at stake in this story, and yet nothing in the movie feels particularly threatening or even meaningful. So many different threads, ideas, and characters are introduced and then dispensed with, ignored, or contradicted, to the point where nothing lands \u2014 not even the supposed ending of this movie series.<\/p>\n

As Polygon\u2019s entertainment editor, I\u2019ve learned that when a comic book movie baffles me this much, I\u2019m probably missing something that was mangled from the source material. It\u2019s always possible the story made more sense in its original form. So I turn to our resident comics super-expert Susana to help me unpack what I just saw. I asked her my big questions from Venom: The Last Dance <\/em>to see if there\u2019s any way bringing in some extra background lore could help save this messy, overstuffed, suspiciously goofy movie.<\/p>\n

[Ed. note:<\/strong> Widespread spoilers ahead for Venom: The Last Dance<\/em>.]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Tasha: <\/strong>Susana, let\u2019s start with the McGuffin at the center of this movie: The codex, a nigh-magical hoobajoo that only the Eddie Brock\/Venom symbiote (both voiced by Tom Hardy) share, and that the movie\u2019s villain, Knull (Andy Serkis) wants, for Reasons.<\/p>\n

Did you follow any of that, Susana We\u2019re told Venom has a codex because Eddie died at some point in these movies, and the symbiote revived him. But the film pretty pointedly doesn\u2019t explain what a codex is or why it would be so rare, much less why it would work as a key to break Knull out of cosmic prison. <\/p>\n

Susana: <\/strong>That\u2019s easy enough \u2014 the \u201ccodex\u201d is an idea adapted from Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman\u2019s 2018 run on Venom<\/em><\/a>. In the comics, a \u201ccodex\u201d is a little trace of symbiote stuff that symbiotes naturally leave behind in the bodies of their hosts, particularly the nervous system. In a pinch, it can be used to tap into the symbiote hivemind. (In the comics, all symbiotes are connected in a species-wide hivemind, natch.) <\/p>\n

In comics, it isn\u2019t one<\/em> codex that\u2019s the key to freeing Knull, but lots and lots of codexes. That\u2019s the main difference here: In the comics, codexes are the furthest thing from rare. They literally happen any time a symbiote bonds with a host for more than a fleeting moment. And thanks to the Venomverse<\/em><\/a> and Venomized<\/em><\/a> events, which were based around symbiotes bonding with all your favorite characters so you can see how cool they look in a Venom-ized suit, basically everybody of note in the Marvel Comics universe has a codex.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Knull was freed in the Absolute Carnage<\/em> event<\/a>, in which a Knull-communing Carnage went on a spree of ripping out people\u2019s spines and eating them, in order to connect their codexes up to Knull, which would allow the god to regain control of the symbiote hivemind. <\/p>\n

Does that help? <\/p>\n

Tasha: <\/strong>In a way! It at least tells me more than the movie does about what a codex is supposed to be or how one is formed. And I can see why people making a movie would want to switch the dynamic from \u201cThis thing is available all over the universe\u201d to \u201cOur protagonist is a unique and special snowflake, and his McGuffin means the action will follow him from scene to scene, wherever he goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

So why would a codex\/a lot of codexes free Knull from alien space jail? And given that we get no information about him in this movie except \u201cHe\u2019s the god of symbiotes, and also, they hate him,\u201d is there a backstory to him that would make him make more sense? Like, why does he want to destroy the universe, and why would this rando death-metal-guitarist guy have the power to destroy the universe?<\/p>\n

Susana: <\/strong>In Cates and Stegman\u2019s comics, Knull is a primordial god of the void, who ruled over the formless black nothing that stretched between the destruction of the 6th Cosmos and the creation of the 7th (our current one). He sees anything that isn\u2019t the darkness of empty space as an encroachment on his domain. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Tasha: <\/strong>That is the most metal thing you\u2019ve ever said.<\/p>\n

Susana: <\/strong>Oh, I\u2019m just getting started. Being the Most Metal is what cosmic superhero comics are all about! <\/p>\n

When the Celestials<\/a> started making the 7th Cosmos, Knull took that as an insult. Bathed for the first time in the light of creation, the god of the void reached into his own shadow and created the first symbiote, in the form of the Celestial-killing blade All-Black, the Necrosword<\/a>. (All-Black was invented by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribi\u0107 for their series Thor: God of Thunder<\/em>. Cates and Stegman retroactively gave it an origin with Knull.)<\/p>\n

The Celestials cast Knull back into the void, but he spent his time manifesting symbiote life from pure darkness, creating a shape-shifting, parasitic horde species fully controlled by a hivemind linked with his own divine consciousness. Then he launched that horde into the universe to devour all that it found.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eventually, Knull\u2019s control momentarily lapsed after a big fight with a young Thor (immortalized by human storytellers as the epic of Beowulf<\/em>), and his symbiote army bonded with mortal hosts, discovering the concepts of \u201chonor\u201d and \u201cnobility,\u201d as Knull put it. The freed symbiotes rose up and imprisoned Knull in a massive ball of their own bodies, which, until 2018\u2019s Venom<\/em> #4, had always been understood to simply be the symbiote home planet. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Tasha: <\/strong>OK, gross. And this is why the symbiotes in Venom: The Last Dance <\/em>are willing to bond with any and every human, including the ones who imprisoned them in tubes in an underground bunker, if it helps them fight off his creatures?<\/p>\n

Susana: <\/strong>By comics canon, yeah. The symbiotes hate him because he was a god-tyrant, and they don\u2019t like being his slaves. He wants to kill the universe because it is anathema to him. And he can do it because he\u2019s a primordial cosmic entity. <\/p>\n

Tasha:<\/strong> And why does he have an army of unkillable CG mega-bugs? <\/p>\n

Susana:<\/strong> Oh, those are from a completely unrelated Venom<\/em> comic<\/a>. I got nothin\u2019. <\/p>\n

Tasha: <\/strong>Speaking of unrelated Venom stuff, I assumed all those symbiotes who show up for the big battle at the end and have distinctive colors and powers are from the comics? That whole sequence smelled like fan-candy to me, apart from the fact that most of those characters immediately get mulched. Was there anyone in there that Venom fans would care about?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Susana:<\/strong> It\u2019s basically fan candy, but for just\u2026 an unspeakably small group of fans. The list of times Marvel Comics creators have tried to make a new symbiote\/host hero or villain stick is longer than my arm, and most of them don\u2019t rate more than a footnote. I\u2019m checking wikis for all of these guys, but the ones on display seem to be based on Toxin<\/a> (Officer Mulligan\u2019s green form), and five more symbiotes roughly inspired by Venom: Lethal Protector<\/em>. That 1993 miniseries, written by David Michelinie and drawn by several artists, introduced a litter of high-key toyetic offspring of the Venom symbiote. <\/p>\n

Those five symbiotes were Riot<\/a> (gray, turns his hands into hammers, etc.), Phage<\/a> (brown, turns his limbs into spikes), Lasher<\/a> (green, has extra back tentacles, attaches to the lady with a Christmas tree pin), Agony<\/a> (purple, uses hair tentacles, attaches to Juno Temple\u2019s Dr. Teddy Payne), and Scream<\/a> (orange\/yellow, also weaponized hair), and they seem to be the templates for Last Dance<\/em>\u2019s extra symbiotes. It\u2019s complicated, though, because the movie doesn\u2019t name any of them, and Riot was technically already used as the villain of 2018\u2019s Venom<\/em> (played by Riz Ahmed).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a two-headed symbiote at one point, but that one seems to be an original design, as best as I can research.<\/p>\n

Tasha: <\/strong>How big a deal is Agony in the comics? Big enough to support her own movie? While The Last Dance<\/em>\u2019s post-credits scene leaves Sony a possible opening for a further Venom sequel<\/a>, the film (title and all) seems to be aimed at shutting down the Tom Hardy Venom series, though Hardy has signaled he\u2019d return<\/a> if Venom got to fight Tom Holland\u2019s Spider-Man in another Sony Spiderverse\/MCU crossover.<\/p>\n

So much of the way this movie treats Dr. Payne \u2014 as if her motivations and backstory are important, even though she doesn\u2019t actually do much in the film, and as if her getting her own symbiote is a climactic, cathartic triumph for the story \u2014 only really makes sense if this movie is also being positioned as an Agony origin story that could be used to launch a new symbiote franchise. Which feels a lot like Sony trying to use Madame Web<\/em><\/a> as a cinematic origin story for a bunch of new Spider-Women<\/a>, but I digress. Clearly Agony doesn\u2019t have Venom\u2019s cultural cachet, but is there anything notable or interesting about her that could support a movie?<\/p>\n

Susana:<\/strong> So, Teddy Payne appears to be a genderbent version of Dr. Thaddeus Paine, who featured as the villain of 1996\u2019s Venom: The Hunger<\/em>, by writer Len Kaminski and artist Ted Halsted. But his backstory has nothing in common with Dr. Payne\u2019s other than a homophonic name and the fact that they\u2019re both scientists, and he\u2019s never merged with a symbiote in comics history. Payne is, in everything but name, an original character. <\/p>\n

As for Agony, I\u2019m going to be honest with you as a comics expert: If I\u2019ve ever read a story with Agony in it, I don\u2019t remember. Commenters are free to call that a gap in my knowledge, but I\u2019m going to call it an indication of Agony\u2019s lack of an established footprint in Marvel Comics canon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Tasha: <\/strong>I mean, I\u2019ve never read a Venom-centric comic, and I knew who Venom was well before the first movie, but I had to ask you who Agony was. I\u2019m coming to all of this in ignorance, so I\u2019m sure not going to claim you should know more about a character I\u2019ve never heard of.<\/p>\n

Speaking of characters I\u2019ve never heard of, though, any idea who the mysterious guy in the control room is? The secretive silhouetted guy who\u2019s so important that he can single-handedly shift control of the apparently massive government-run Imperium project from Dr. Payne to General Strickland on a moment\u2019s notice? The guy who has somehow put up identical networked facial-recognition surveillance cameras all around the world, from downtown Vegas to random alleys in Mexico? Clearly this dude, whose presence and power and intentions and motives are never explained, is some really important and exciting comics reference, right?<\/p>\n

Susana:<\/strong> I have no fucking idea who that man is. Maybe we\u2019ll find out in Kraven the Hunter<\/a><\/em>. Maybe it was just a dropped plotline. <\/p>\n

Tasha: <\/strong>I admit that after seeing the first Kraven <\/em>trailer<\/a> in a theater last week, I have a really hard time believing the tone that movie seems to be going for could jibe at all with the hot-nonsense tone Venom: The Last Dance <\/em>is keyed to. Speaking of which\u2026 A lot baffled me about this movie, including how the Venom symbiote is constantly abusing and overruling Eddie \u2014 literally ripping food out of his mouth or shoving food into it, grabbing and controlling his body, not to mention wrecking his career, his relationships, and his life. And yet Eddie calls the thing his best friend.<\/p>\n

But the thing that alarmed me the most was when Eddie wants to leave Vegas ahead of the various threats coming after them, and the symbiote wants to hang out and dance with Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu), who\u2026 really seems to have a thing for Venom. I mean, the whole \u201cDancing Queen\u201d scene is clearly a goof, but it also involves kinda hentai levels of tentacle-caressing. (Completely apart from being a sequence that makes no sense, since the symbiote is clearly scared of the Xenophage coming after him and Eddie, and yet after an hour of avoiding merging into Venom because it\u2019s dangerous, he drops that concern entirely in order to force Eddie into a dance sequence.) Is Venom\u2026 flirting<\/em>? Do I have to consider Venom a sexual being now?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Susana:<\/strong> Do you have<\/em> to consider Venom a sexual being now? I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s my question to answer, Tasha. What a man and his goo-monster do in the privacy of their own home is none of my business. <\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t read that sequence as having a flirtatious vibe, but that might have been because I was furiously scribbling notes on how wild it was to cut to that scene from one of Dr. Payne sadly contemplating the childhood loss of her twin brother. <\/p>\n

Tasha: <\/strong>I mean, what they do in the privacy of their own home is one thing, what they do in a Vegas penthouse is\u2026\u00a0well, even as I\u2019m typing this, I\u2019m realizing that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. I\u2019m just saying, there are already so <\/em>many consent problems around Eddie and his bestie and their merged Venom form, and this movie really seems like it\u2019s aimed at feeding the fandom debates (and the fanfiction) about whether Eddie\u2019s tolerance of the symbiote comes from some kind of submissive kink.<\/p>\n

But the less said about that, the better. I have so many more questions for you here. Why does Area 51 demolish its buildings with vast tanks of acid? Why does acid that dissolves concrete and rebar into dust within seconds not have any effect on the ground or anything below it? Why is a giant never-ending dust waterfall considered a subtle cover-up for a secret base? Why do the acid-tank biometric controls apparently have settings for \u201csome acid\u201d and \u201cmore acid\u201d which have to be activated separately?\u00a0<\/p>\n

And why does Eddie lie to that poor kid Leaf about aliens not being real? I get that he\u2019s trying to be comforting in the moment, but this is a universe where not believing in aliens can get you killed extremely messily, and the lie doesn\u2019t come across as helpful, just crass. And cowardly. And ironic. And obviously a setup for Eddie having to take it back 20 minutes later. <\/p>\n

Susana: <\/strong>Some questions are beyond even the power of your friendly neighborhood comics expert. <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Venom: The Last Dance may be one of those \u201cYou just had to be there\u201d experiences. It feels cluttered, confused, and yet remarkably inconsequential. We\u2019re told that the entire universe is at stake in this story, and yet nothing in the movie feels particularly threatening or even meaningful. So many different threads, ideas, and characters are introduced and then dispensed with, ignored, or contradicted, to the point where nothing lands \u2014 not even the supposed ending of this movie series. As Polygon\u2019s entertainment editor, I\u2019ve learned that when a comic book movie baffles me this much, I\u2019m probably missing something that was mangled from the source material. It\u2019s always possible the story made more sense in its original form. So I turn to our resident comics…<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1014112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1014111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polygon"],"yoast_head":"\nVenom: The Last Dance raises questions only a true comics fan could answer | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Venom: The Last Dance may be one of those \u201cYou just had to be there\u201d experiences. 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