We all know how Peter Parker became the Black Spiderman, Eddie Broke became Venom, and Cletus Kasady became Carnage—thanks to symbiotes, the amorphous inorganic entities that take over human or extraterrestrial hosts and drive them to do mad things. Is it true that all symbiotes, commonly known as the Klyntar, are terrible guys? In a nutshell, the answer is yes and no. What caused them to exist in the first place? The hive mind of symbiotes is well known, but who is at the nexus? Knull, the ancient God who created them, is the one answer to all of these problems. Knull was not only the God of Symbiotes but also the God of the Abyss.
The immense empty vacuum that existed before the cosmos came into being when there was no light when there was no life. The Celestials, on the other hand, created light, and with it, the universe as we know it was born. But this irritated Knull, who believed that the Celestials were infringing on his sovereignty. As a result, he waged war on them, annihilating all life, including Celestials and other species.
To carry out his scheme, he developed the All Black, a powerful Necrosword formed of his own form that could only be used by him. He went on to build the symbiotes after losing the Necrosword in order to carry out his God-slaying intentions. The symbiotes were then infected with concepts of nobility and justice, which Knull referred to as their poison or venom. But, being Knull, the God of the Endless Abyss, he remained undeterred.
He found other ways to get out of Klyntar, which was not only his jail but also his throneworld. Knull arrived on Earth in the most recent story arc and wreaked havoc on the inhabitants and superhero teams, including the Avengers and the X-Men. In this video, we will go over everything there is to know about this Avenger-level threat, as well as how he could be the new Thanos-like supervillain Marvel is teasing.
Knull creator of the symbiotes – Origin Explored
Knull was as ancient as time itself and existed in the darkness when darkness was all there was. Himself a malevolent god, he was an avatar of Oblivian, who was the embodiment of death and predated the multiverse. He ruled a place called the Abyss, which was nothing but eternal and infinite emptiness that existed between the destruction of the sixth iteration of the universe and the creation of the seventh. He was destined to remain in deep slumber for an eternity, but then came the Celestials, gods who created universes.
The Celestials started creating life out of nothingness by virtue of the Light of the Creation. The light not only awoke Knull from his slumber but enraged him because the Celestials were impeding and infiltrating Knull’s eternal Void, his kingdom of darkness and emptiness. With the light came shadow. And from his very shadow, Knull created a sword called the sword of living darkness which he called the All Black. With All Black, he decapitated one of the Celestials. We implore you to understand the gravity here; Knull was so powerful that he killed one of the ancient beings who created the universe. After this point, the Celestials punished him and cast him back into the Void, but they didn’t realize what they had done.
They had practically sent him to where he belonged; darkness was his ally. In the Void, Knull used the head of the Celestial he had slain as his home. Here he created the first symbiotes in the shape of a sword and converted the Celestial’s severed head into a forge, which allowed Knull to use the head’s divine energy to refine the powers of the blade. Although extremely powerful, these proto-symbiotes were far from perfect and feared intense heat and sound. This fear was something that got passed down through genetic memory. This reveals exactly why symbiotes feared sound and how Spiderman had been able to defeat a symbiote using sound.
Wielding the All Black, Knull would go on to kill all beings of light, and the sword would gain several names like the Necrosword, the God Slayer. Furthermore, he had created a suit of armor from the same darkness as his sword. While massacring a group of gods who wore golden armor, a god stabbed Knull into his face, but Knull managed to stab through the last God’s heart. The following chaos sent Knull to a desolate planet that was home to Gorr, who would later become the God Butcher. Knull had crash-landed on this planet, and after waking up, he realized that his Necrosword was gone.
In reality, Gorr had taken the sword and unwittingly continued Knull’s quest of slaying the beings of light. Knull was now stuck on this harsh and desolate planet, with nothing to do and his sword gone, the Lord of the Abyss started to ponder over his next course of action. For about a century Knull convalesced his new home. He soon realized that if he could form a symbiotic relationship with the denizens of the planet by bestowing his essence on the hosts, he could learn from them and manage to control them remotely through galaxies.
He turned the lesser creatures into predatory monsters and drew strength from them. He amassed an army of symbiotes and conquered the planet. Furthermore, he created a fleet of symbiote dragons that helped him conquer innumerable worlds and destroy the civilizations on these worlds. It was now that he became aware of the might of his powers and started to build a hive mind of symbiotes. Knull had now become an intergalactic despot and overlord.
Knull hated the cosmic light, and Earth had an abundance of it. Naturally, Knull was attracted to Earth, and he took control of one of his symbiote dragons that arrived on Earth in 6th century Scandinavia. The terrorized residents called the monster a Grendel. Knull’s brutal rampage also drew the attention of a powerful young Thor, who struck the Grendel with his divine lightning. Knull had never earlier witnessed such a unique form of power of light and was taken aback because Thor’s blow severed Knull’s connection with his symbiote minions, rendering the hive mind useless.
They became free of his control, and the Grendel unraveled into several offshoot symbiotes. These symbiotes then ventured out to find newer hosts because their lives had no existence or context without a host. They bonded with noble and benevolent hosts and became enamored with ideas like justice and peace. With the knowledge of new concepts like justice, nobility, and peace, the symbiotes rebelled against their creator. They assembled together to trap him on Klyntar, which meant a cage in the language of the symbiotes. We learn that Klyntar was not an actual planet but a planet-sized assembly of symbiotes for the purpose of caging Knull at the heart of this planet.
Many centuries later, in 1966, the Grendel symbiote was found by SHIELD. They used it to create super soldiers under the Sym Soldier Program. Interestingly, despite a severed connection with other symbiotes, he could still communicate with Grendel itself. With the help of Grendel, Knull started to assert his control over the offshoots, making them spread terror and driving their hosts violently crazy. Decades later, Knull managed to make the symbiote dragon break free of containment and absorb all but one of its offshoots. The dragon then reached Manhattan to wreak its havoc, but Venom and Spiderman effectively stopped it. Furthermore, by now, Knull’s connection with the Grendel symbiote dragon had also been severed.
Klyntar- The Race and Planet of the Symbiotes – Explored
The Klyntar are amorphous, inorganic, symbiotic extraterrestrials that Knull created billions of years ago from the living abyss. As a race of aliens, Klyntars are better known as symbiotes and are known to have infected several hosts, including Iron Man, Spiderman, Captain Marvel, Wolverine, etc. Knull established himself as the center of the hive mind for a massive army of Klyntar or symbiotes. With their help, he devoured civilizations across the universe for billions of years. When Knull’s symbiote dragons arrived in Scandinavia in the 6th century, Thor Odinson severed the hive mind connection through his divine lightning.
Few of the offshoots of Grendel started to bond with noble hosts and learned that their creator was evil. They rebelled against Knull and imprisoned him at the heart of the artificial planet that they created with their huge numbers. They called this planet and themselves Klyntar, which was the term for ‘cage’ in their language. Having trapped Knull and with the newfound knowledge of his evil nature and the evil deeds they performed under him, the Klyntar symbiotes invented and spread a lie that their species was intrinsically benevolent and kind.
Furthermore, they endeavored to spread peace across the universe, and for this purpose, they created an intergalactic society of peacekeepers called the Agents of the Cosmos and also a hive mind that could sense the voice of the Cosmos. The Agents of Cosmos were nothing but worthy alien hosts. In their desperate quest to expunging their violent past, the Klyntar hive-mind started to cut off the evil or corrupt symbiotes and also executed their own kind, who relapsed and resorted to becoming violent again.
However, several of the exiled symbiotes started to infect others and overtake entire planets. Naturally, despite the efforts of the Agents of Cosmos to paint a better picture of their species, the Klyntar were considered as a predatory race across the universe. The corrupt symbiotes would feed on the emotions and bodies of their hosts and forced them to perform spectacularly terrifying tasks to feed on the host’s adrenaline, phenethylamine, and other hormones. Eventually, the hosts would lose their essential bodily fluids and collapse while performing a failed stunt, and the symbiote would go on to search for another host so that the same process could be repeated.
Over a period of time, the artificial planet of Klyntar gained a rocky crust and an atmosphere. These geographical changes helped it to further disguise its true nature and masquerade as a planet because it also developed Klyntar based flora and fauna.
Knull and the Void Left by Thanos in MCU
After Venom and Spiderman defeated Knull’s Grendel symbiote dragon, a cult of humans called the Chuch of New Darkness recovered a piece of Grendel’s symbiote and attempted to resurrect Cletus Kasady to transform him into Knull’s avatar. When the symbiote bonded with Kasady, Knull himself communicated with the serial killer. Now back as Carnage, he began killing and soon learned that he could gain more power by assembling several Codex, which was nothing but a part of symbiote DNA that was left when a symbiote bonded with a host.
Furthermore, Knull employed a number of maniacs under him, including the likes of Norman Osborn. However, Eddie Brock soon learned about Carnage’s return. With the help of Reed Richards or Mister Fantastic or the Maker, Brock assembled several codices. During his battle with Carnage, however, Brock was faced with choosing an option between freeing Knull from Klyntar and saving his son Dylan.
Brock chose the latter and unleashed Knull while killing Carnage in the process. Knull’s ultimate destination was Earth, the place because of which he was forced to remain imprisoned for centuries and the place that stripped him of his control over his creation. However, it took him a bit of time to reach Earth. On Earth, Dylan had kept the Codex that was left behind when a symbiote had bonded with Norman Osborn.
Because this symbiote was a part of the Grendel, Knull could communicate with Dylan. Meanwhile, a part of the Carnage symbiote had remained, and it bonded with Brock, who tried his best to remove the symbiote. After much trouble, Brock went to the Avengers and informed them about the impending doom that was Carnage—much like Bruce Banner had come to Earth to inform the Avengers about Thanos. Since Thor had already experienced what one of Knull’s minions could do, he knew that Knull himself would be one of the biggest challenges that Earth’s mightiest heroes will ever face.
On Earth, Knull, his hordes, and his dragons quickly overpowered Earth’s mightiest heroes and Knull revealed his intention of destroying the little blue planet. Knull warned that the carnage and rampage would be slow and brutal if humans didn’t present Brock to him. Soon, his minions took control of the X Men, the Avengers, and other heroes who had come to fight him and stop him from turning Earth into a living abyss. Venom arrived and offered to serve Knull, but Knull was looking for the other Brock, he was looking for Dylan.
Knull ripped Venom out of Eddie and threw him off the Empire State Building. Knull was assured that Eddie would no longer pose a threat to his grand plans. But then Dylan entered the battlefield. Interestingly enough, Dylan had a mysterious ability to destroy symbiotes.
He quickly freed many heroes who were enslaved by symbiotes, but then he caught the attention of Knull, who attempted to capture him, only to be attacked by Thor. As Dylan and Thor battled Knull, Eddie had risen with a new Codex, and Eddie had now transformed into a super-powerful cosmic version of Venom or the King in Black. He had become the new God of symbiotes as well as the new hive mind. Witnessing this, Knull attempted to flee, but Eddie stripped Knull off his symbiote armor and flew him to the Sun, hence destroying his body. The dark God had been seemingly destroyed once and for all.
So, this was the gist of what happened in various comics up until today. We earlier mentioned that Knull communicated with Cletus Kasady in the comics, so it is quite a possibility that Marvel might be teasing a Thanos-level villain in the upcoming film Venom Let There Be Carnage. Carnage was the reason why Knull got free from Klyntar, and his presence as the primary antagonist in the film reflects the fact that Knull may be introduced in the films. Well, if you are thinking that Knull is an alien to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we implore you to discard that notion.
Do you remember the sword that Hela Odindottir used in Thor Ragnarok? And how she could kill almost anyone with a single blow of her weapons? Well, that’s because the weapons were made of the Necrosword or the sentient sword created by Knull, which was the first-ever symbiote. So, although the symbiotes have not appeared in the Marvel Studio’s movies, a weapon that only answered to and inherently belonged to the very God of symbiotes has made its presence. And that, my friends, is big.