Venom: The Last Dance omitted Knull’s Thor cameo from Marvel Comics

Very early in the runtime of Venom: The Last Dance, the villainous Knull (Andy Serkis) monologues about his origin for the audience, explaining that an ancient encounter with a god of light caused him to lose his iron grip on the symbiote species he’d created. The reference gave me a sensible chuckle: If not for the arbitrary divisions of studio licensing, that line absolutely would have involved a cameo from the MCU version of Thor — and also a flash to the epic of Beowulf.

In conceiving the movie’s shadowy villain, director and co-writer Kelly Marcel pulled from the heavy-metal stylings of Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman’s 2018 run on Marvel Comics’ Venom, which introduced Knull, the ancient and overthrown god of the symbiotes, as a slow-burn antagonist. We’ve already talked about Knull’s comic book origin story and his signature weapon, All-Black the Necrosword, in all its “airbrushed on the side of a van” glory. But one of the ways Cates and Stegman really gave Knull a dose of comic book magic was by skillfully knitting him into some equally heavy-metal Thor moments.

Take All-Black, for example. Created by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribić in 2013, the sword began its existence as the signature weapon of Thor villain Gorr the God Butcher. It was a mutable blade that served as both weapon and armor. In Aaron and Ribić’s story (later echoed in the early going of Thor: Love and Thunder), Gorr wrested All-Black from the hands of an unconscious, unnamed god. Cates and Stegman’s story revealed that said ancient, unknown god had been Knull.

But we’re here to talk about Thor, specifically, and his pivotal role in both the history of the Venom-series symbiotes and the history of epic poetry. As related in the very first arc of Cates and Stegman’s Venom, Knull’s downfall began when he brought two massive, monster-shaped symbiote forms to a 6th-century mead hall in what is now Denmark, to prey on the humans there. Fortunately for those humans (and Knull’s symbiotes) that’s where he met a protector god who dealt him a blow so great that it severed the symbiote species from his mind control.

That’s what Knull is talking about in Venom: The Last Dance when he says that he met a god of light. But Sony Pictures lacks the rights to most properties used in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the Venom films (minus some credits scenes) don’t take place in that setting. So what Knull can’t mention, and Last Dance can’t show, is that the god of light was a young Thor.

It was Thor’s divine lightning that smacked those two symbiote monsters so hard that it forced Knull to release the symbiote hivemind from his control, allowing them to freely bond with other sentient creatures and develop the will to overthrow their creator. And according to Cates and Stegman’s Venom, Thor’s resounding defeat of those two symbiote dragons — which the Danes had named Grendel and Grendel’s Mother — was turned, by retelling, into the epic of Beowulf.

This might not seem particularly material to Venom: The Last Dance, which uses Knull rather sparingly, as if saving him for a future movie that might or might not ever happen. But on the other hand: What’s not to like? It’s the best kind of deep-cut character intertwining that interconnected comics settings can provide. It’s a brief and epic moment of confluence — Thor, the young God of Thunder, laying the smackdown on a eons-old god of the void, and inadvertently creating a free symbiote species and a pillar of ancient human literature at the same time.

Venom: The Last Dance couldn’t have a Thor cameo, but now you know there’s one hiding in Knull’s comics lore, and it’s silly. It’s operatic. It’s metal as hell. It’s exactly the kind of comic book “fun fact” that will make your eyes cross if you think about it too long. And it deserves to be airbrushed on the side of a van.