Now that you’ve seen Venom: Let There Be Carnage, you may have a few questions about some of the crazier stuff that went down in this symbiote sequel. We’re here to point out everything that left us scratching our heads and then attempt to use the comics to find some answers.
Warning: full spoilers for Venom: Let There Be Carnage!
How Did Shriek Get Her Powers?
The film starts with young lovers Cletus Kasady and Frances Louise Barrison, the latter of whom was being taken away from St. Estes Home for Unwanted Children to the Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane so she could be imprisoned in a facility meant to hold people with special powers. But this is the first mention of metahumans in the Venom franchise, so how did Frances aka Shriek get her powers in the first place? The movie never tells us, but in the comics she’s a mutant.
That’s right! Venom featured a character tied to the world of the X-Men. But remember, Sony only controls the rights to use Spider-Man characters, so don’t expect Wolverine to show up in the next Venom movie or anything like that.
Shriek’s comics origin saw her grow up in an abusive household, and then two traumatic events caused her to fully lose her sanity: getting shot in the head by a police officer (like in the movie), and being trapped in the Darkforce Dimension by the hero Cloak, which is what caused her sound-controlling mutant powers to emerge for the first time. She could do even more with her powers than what we saw in the movie, including making shields, taking flight, shooting energy blasts from her hands, and the rather creepy ability to tap into a person’s psyche to bring out their darkest qualities.
Spider-Man’s rogues gallery is chock full of superpowered criminals, so the introduction of Shriek (Naomi Harris) seemingly opens the door for more metahumans to appear in Sony’s Marvel movies.
What Is the Ravencroft Institute?
The Ravencroft Institute is a major setting in the movie, but we don’t learn much about what goes on there or the people who run it. What is the Ravencroft Institute and who is the doctor who runs it? And was that bearded prisoner someone important? Let’s break it down.
The Ravencroft Institute is essentially Spider-Man’s version of Arkham Asylum — a maximum security facility designed to hold deranged villains with dangerous powers. (We visited this location in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, as well!)
The doctor in charge is Dr. Pazzo (Sian Webber), who in the comics was Carnage’s psychiatrist from the 1995 mini-series Venom: Carnage Unleashed. She wasn’t as mean-spirited in the comics and was more focused on helping her patients than mocking them like we saw her do to Shriek.
Dr. Pazzo speaks to a bearded prisoner and says his name, Siegfried, but unfortunately that’s not the name of any particular character from the world of Spider-Man, so it’s not an Easter egg for a villain or anything. Still, now that Ravencroft has been established, it’s possible that we’ll start seeing more familiar villain faces there, should the facility be used in a future Sony Marvel movie.
Why Is It So Easy for Venom to Make More Symbiotes?
One bite into Eddie Brock’s (Tom Hardy) arm was all it took for Cletus (Woody Harrelson) to consume some symbiote-infused blood and become Carnage, but wasn’t that a little too easy? In the comics, the Venom symbiote essentially reproduced and spawned the new symbiote that bonded to Cletus and became Carnage, but in the movie Carnage is created by a twist of fate–a twist of fate that could easily be repeated if Eddie’s not careful. If he were to get a paper cut while mailing a letter, then would the mailman who collected it get a symbiote too? If he got a bloody nose and threw away the tissues, would the garbage collector get a symbiote? Seems like Eddie could accidentally create a new symbiote at any moment if he gets any sort of minor injury!
Did Venom’s Temporary Hosts All Die?
When Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote have their breakup, Venom latches onto various other people to explore the city on his own. Unfortunately for them, they all drop to the ground and lay unmoving after Venom is done with them. So did all of Venom’s temporary hosts die? Yeah, it looks like they did.
As you may recall from the first Venom movie, the symbiote was unable to bond with numerous people and left each of its test hosts dead. It wasn’t until Venom formed a special bond with Eddie that both the host and symbiote were able to survive.
That means Venom essentially went on an unintentional killing spree around the city–and no one seemed to notice or care! Even Mrs. Chen seemed more concerned with Venom than the poor fellow he just killed laying dead in her store. And what happened to Mrs. Chen? We assumed she wasn’t bonded long enough to kill her, but still, her scene as Venom is played for laughs while her life force was being drained away.
For a bulk of the movie, Eddie is trying to curb Venom’s murderous habits, so it feels bizarre for these numerous deaths caused by Venom to get swept under the rug.
How Did Carnage Lose to Venom?
Carnage seemed the superior symbiote to Venom in nearly every regard, so how did he lose to Venom?
The main reason was because the Carnage symbiote was not a perfect match with Cletus like Venom was with Eddie. In the middle of the climactic battle, we see Carnage and Cletus arguing with each other over Cletus’ one true love Shriek, who Carnage hates because of her symbiote-killing sonic scream. Their stark opposite feelings about Shriek ultimately prove to be their downfall.
This is a big departure from the comics where Cletus’ defining trait is his perfect compatibility with his symbiote. Whereas Venom refers to himself as “we” (“We are Venom”), Carnage refers to himself as “I” because both Cletus and the symbiote are intimately connected thanks to their shared lust for death and destruction.
But given that the main arc of Venom: Let There Be Carnage is the relationship between Eddie and the symbiote, it follows that their bond would be the key difference between hero and villain that ends up saving the day.
What Happened to Detective Patrick Mulligan?
Detective Patrick Mulligan was seemingly left for dead by Shriek during the final battle, but a brief shot of Mulligan shows him gasping awake with glowing blue eyes. But what exactly happened to Mulligan? Does he have powers now?
In the comics, Mulligan gets a symbiote of his own and operates as the anti-hero known as Toxin. So it seems that movie-Mulligan got powers, just different ones than we were expecting. But how did that even happen? There didn’t seem to be any transfer of power from Shriek to Mulligan as she was beating him up, at least that we could tell.
Regardless, our best guess is that Mulligan’s eyes glowed the same blue as Shriek’s discolored eye because he somehow absorbed Shriek’s super-sonic powers. This twist does make a certain amount of sense because it means Mulligan would now have the power to fight symbiotes and take them down using one of their greatest weaknesses. Not a bad tool for a symbiote-hunting detective to have in a potential third Venom movie!
There’s plenty more to be said about where Mulligan could go next along with Eddie and Venom, so check out our theories on where the Venom franchise may go from here.