Marvel’s Venom Gets a Golden Upgrade and New Powers (But Who Will Be the New Host?)

Marvel’s Venom War has come to an epic conclusion, with the aftermath completely changing the Lethal Protector. Not only has Venom gained new powers to go with an upgraded color scheme, but there’s also a mystery of who will be the new host for the alien symbiote. While the final issue of Venom War wraps up the event series, there’s the matter of a new Venom ongoing series launching directly after it. All-New Venom features a mystery host inside the symbiote, and Venom War‘s finale helps to set the stage for that transition while making even more changes to the antihero. WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Venom War #5. Continue reading at your own risk!

Venom War #5 comes from the creative team of Al Ewing, Iban Coello, Frank D’Armata, and VC’s Ariana Maher. The threat of Meridius — a fallen Eddie Brock from an alternate timeline — is taken care of thanks to Old Man Dylan Brock and his weapon called “Eganrac,” aka Carnage spelled backwards. Eganrac is the Anti-Carnage, similar to Anti-Venom. It burns the red out of a symbiote, allowing Dylan/Venom to turn All-Blood, the Necrospear, into a golden weapon, as well as changing Venom’s black suit to gold all over.

[RELATED: Marvel’s New Venom Host Swings Onto a Set of All-New Venom Variant Covers]

Venom gets a new look for the conclusion of Venom War

Meridius tried to kill Dylan/Venom by hurling the Necrospear at him. However, Old Man Dylan shot his younger self with a golden bullet charged with Anti-Carnage, turning Venom into a golden warrior capable of defeating Meridius. While Meridius is busy impaling Eddie Brock, Dylan/Venom imbues the Necrospear with Anti-Carnage and drives it through Meridius’ chest from behind.

With Meridius dead, all of the zombiotes under his control begin to die with him. That should put an end to things, but with everything concerning Venom and symbiotes, it’s not that simple. It seems Old Man Dylan lied to himself about Eddie causing the terrible future he comes from. The truth is once Dylan defeats Meridius tonight, it starts him down the dark path that creates his horrible future. Old Man Dylan traveled back through time and made deals with devils from the past, present, and future to stop himself, and his secret weapon is Anti-Carnage.

Who is Marvel’s new Venom host?

The golden upgrade that Venom just got starts to betray him. The mixing of Carnage and Anti-Carnage begins to behave like matter and anti-matter meeting, which means they destroy themselves. Gold turns to black, but instead of it being the sleek, slippery onyx that of a healthy symbiote, it’s now black like a gangrenous wound. Since Dylan, Flash Thompson/Anti-Venom and Toxin are nearby, the Venom symbiote sacrifices itself so no others will die with it.

The Venom symbiote flees the wrestling arena to die out in the New York City streets, even taking some K-chemical bullets from armored troopers on the way out. We’re led to believe Venom is dying, but we already know it lives and will return in All-New Venom with a mystery host. The host is neither Eddie or Dylan Brock, especially since the former is bonding with Carnage for the first time in Eddie Brock: Carnage.

Marvel has said the host in All-New Venom is among these candidates: Rick Jones, Madame Masque, Robbie Robertson and Luke Cage. Assuming we’re not being lied to, we can expect that mystery to unfold once All-New Venom goes on sale in December.