For months, fans have known that Venom being unleashed in Marvel’s new Ultimate Universe was inevitable. Rumors started to swirl way back when Peter chose to make the AI that runs his Stark-given picotech suit a copy of himself, and especially when it started acting just a little too uncanny valley, referring to Peter’s family as his own. Things picked up even more when Peter’s son Richard started wearing the suit and changed it to resemble the Venom symbiote, and officially took the codename Venom after running into a dimension-hopping Miles Morales. And now, after over a year of waiting, we’ve finally gotten our first look at the Ultimate Venom design, and it’s as terrifying as we could have hoped for.
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Ultimate Venom Unleashed
Everything went wrong for Richard Parker when he stowed away on his father’s trip back to New York City, having gotten a text from his girlfriend the Black Cat that she needed his help. Richard swung his way to the place she asked him to meet, only to find out much too late that it was a trap. Instead of just Felicia, he found her father and Wilson Fisk waiting with a small battalion of armed Bullseye guards. Felicia revealed that the entire time they’d been talking, she’d been trying to gain his trust and get information out of him, and now Kingpin wants to use him to get at the real Spider-Man. Fisk gave Richard an ultimatum; either he tells him everything he knows about Spider-Man now, or he does it after they’ve tortured the information out of him.
Richard is still a teenager who’s never been in a situation anywhere near this terrifying, so he’s shocked stiff. Seeing that he’s in danger, the AI Peter offers to take over and protect him, to which the young man agrees. The AI told Richard to close his eyes, and not open them until he said. So the Venom suit took over, and unleashed all of its insane powers on the unsuspecting villains. He took on a form very reminiscent of his main universe counterpart, with massive teeth and a monstrous build. Even worse, giant tendrils shot out of him at all angles, whipping through the air and literally tearing the Bullseyes apart, stabbing one in his eyes. Fisk and his men realized they stood no chance against this new beast and fled, while Venom completely encased Felicia’s dad in his nanotech sludge. He roared at Black Cat as she begged him to stop, and it can only be assumed that Venom stopped because Richard forcibly took back control. Even a month later, Fisk and his ilk were terrified of getting into a direct fight with Venom, and knew they had to find a way around him.
A Monster in the Making
Ever since the introduction of the picotech suit, fans knew that Venom was an eventuality, but this new version of the alien symbiote is still super scary to see in action. He’s the very definition of a lethal protector, crossing lines that the normal Peter never would in order to fulfill his primary mission of protecting Richard. We all know that the suit will one day go full supervillain and Spider-Man will be forced to fight him, but the way we get there is set up to be incredibly interesting to watch. Richard is at a very impressionable age where he’s looking for what it means to be a man, and now he has a slightly creepy and obviously inhuman version of his dad in his ear practically 24/7. Richard is already taking the responsibility for the AI’s actions onto himself, shown when he talked to Felicia after the monster-bash, and specifically said “I’m sorry that we scared you.” He’s referring to him and Venom as ‘we,’ which is always the first sign that things with Venom are about to get very bad, very fast.
This version of Venom is a highly advanced super suit that can mimic Spider-Man’s physical capabilities and expand to unknown lengths with tendrils that can rip flesh like paper. He has all of Peter’s drive to protect his family, but is more than willing to look past the morality that holds our Friendly Neighborhood Wall-Crawler in check. A Spider-Man without limits is very, very scary, and super interesting to see develop. We’ll have to wait and see what route Venom takes in the near future, but before that, the Spider-Man family has a war to win.
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