Earth is caught in between a deadly conflict as Hela, the new Queen in Black and Knull (who has light-based powers now) fight to claim it. Earth’s heroes are spread thin as they fight to defend the planet on multiple fronts. In the final issue Queen in Black #5, the world’s only hope lies in a combination of Iron Man’s Defenders executing Plan B and Mary Jane Watson connecting the entire world through the Venom symbiote she’s bonded to. And no, nothing goes according to plan.
The Clash of Gods
So, how do you save Earth when two terrifying cosmic entities are trying to tear each other apart? If you are Tony Stark, you go with Plan B. Let your worst enemies beat each other up until the winner wears themselves out. Then you drop in to wipe them both out. That was the idea, anyway.
At the start of the issue, Hela in her black-and-red symbiote form is giving her all against Knull, the King in Bright. She reminds him that long before she was Queen in Black, she was Goddess of Death. Beta Ray Bill calls the attack while Hela is distracted. The Defenders hit her with everything they have in one massive combined blast. Tony Stark, wearing a retro-spiked suit of armor, jokes about why they took so long to pull out Plan B, much to Cable’s annoyance.
It almost works! But the Defenders miscalculated one little detail. They assumed the winner of the fight would be left weak and beaten. Instead, Knull effortlessly impales Hela with his spear and emerges in a new set of white-and-red armor.
He declares himself “everything… all the better to end everything.” Before the heroes can even react, something catches Knull’s eye across space signaling he has a new target.
Entering Venomworld
That target is Earth, or rather, what Earth has become. Right now, every single human being is connected to a planet-sized symbiote hive mind known as Venomworld. When Knull teleports right into Venom’s face to check it out, Venom just smirks and asks how his day is going. Knull admits he is curious about his rebel child, wondering out loud if Venom is actually interesting enough to keep alive. Venom tells Knull “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Venom lashes out with a glowing orange tongue. Knull recognizes the attack as the power of the Chainbreaker, a unique force that can sever symbiotes from a hive and recruit them into a new one. The attack actually severs Knull’s arm! A bit rattled, Knull starts wondering how much of his own body is made of symbiote matter now, though he doubles down and insists that everything belongs to him.
Inside the Mindscape
Dylan Brock, a human-symbiote hybrid, is furious. He feels like the Chainbreaker power should be his and he can feel someone else using it right now. Wolverine (Logan) tells Dylan to chill out and take the win since a good guy is using the power to help them after all.
Meanwhile, Emma Frost and Beast wonder how long eight billion human minds, many of them belonging to lifelong enemies, can stay combined in one brain. How long can their host keep the strain from tearing the physical form apart? Wolverine admits those are great questions and he hopes Knull isn’t asking them too.
Unfortunately, Knull figures it out. As a living planet Venomworld is strong, but inside there are eight billion cracks barely papered over. It’s a house divided with every room open. So Knull converts himself to a glowing stream of pure essence, force-feeding himself straight down Venom’s throat.
Knull projects his giant, towering form inside the heroes’ mental landscape. He mocks the eight billion “crawling, mewling, puking little animals” with no common language. But he is a “pure and perfect void” that’s meant to swallow everything. The heroes try to fight back physically as Wolverine asks Emma Frost for an Astralball Special to throw him straight at Knull. Reed Richards and Dylan Brock volunteer, and Beast suggests tossing Reed right after Logan. Emma agrees to throw them, though she doubts it’s going to do much.
She’s right because Knull easily brushes them aside like bugs. He keeps preaching about how nothing matters because he is an immortal god while humans are ordinary. That’s when Mary Jane, who’s been acting as Venom’s host, smirks while she says that is how they win. Instead of fighting Knull with super-strength, Mary Jane traps him inside the mindscape and floods his head with the everyday thoughts of all eight billion people on Earth.
Suddenly, Knull’s mind is spammed with billions of completely normal, chaotic human thoughts. Tiny speech bubbles fill the air with people thinking about cat treats, bowls of cereal, wanting to see their babies born, birthday candles, dental appointments, love, and war.
Knull loses it, screaming at everyone to shut up and raging that a god shouldn’t be bothered by tiny things yammering about tiny things. Mary Jane tells him he is stuck because the heroes couldn’t beat him with brute force, but eight billion ordinary people doing ordinary things just did. Knull’s head literally breaks apart into a river of words as he screams in defeat.
The Aftermath
With Knull’s death, the mindscape starts collapsing like a bomb. Wolverine warns everyone to brace for impact. Emma broadcasts a global telepathic emergency call, warning all telepaths to quickly guide everyone’s minds back into their physical bodies before the whole structure blows. Outside in space, the giant Venom face covering Earth disintegrates into a massive cloud of black dust.
“What about MJ?” Dylan asks. Mary Jane clutches her head in pain as they all shout her name.
When the dust clears, Earth is safe and back to normal. Reed Richards explains that Hela and Tyr are dead, and their symbiotes abandoned their hosts. Without their influence, the symbiote-infected aliens were more confused than combative.
A short time later, Mary Jane, now sporting a new haircut with bangs, gets a full physical checkup from Reed Richards. Strangely, her body is completely healthy and stable. MJ wonders why she didn’t vanish with Venomworld, since Venom was the only thing holding her atoms together. Reed guesses that Venom used his massive, planet-wide power in his final moments to heal her as a parting gift. In his view, “Venom was looking out for you right to the end.”
She asks whether those tests could track Venom down or show if he’s alive. Then she apologizes and asks, “Is that weird?” For a moment they were really friends, or at least roommates. “Now he’s gone… maybe forever.” Reed tries to comfort her by admitting he feels the same way about Doctor Doom following his death. But they have to face reality.
He does say it’s possible that Venom is still out there somewhere among Earth’s eight billion people, bonded with a new host. A brief cutaway shows a mysterious man in a trench coat and fedora walking down a city street with a hint of symbiote in his coat. Maybe Venom found a new host or somebody reached out and chose the symbiote.
The Real Winner Takes the Throne
So, Knull is dead, Earth is saved, but things aren’t quite finished. In a dark realm known as the Un-Beyond, a shadowy figure of Knull stands before the empty throne, whispering “Still here… I’m still king.” He insists the throne will always need a king, and its emptiness is him.
“But if it isn’t empty?” a mysterious voice asks him. Knull screams as he is torn apart, seemingly for good.
The voice belongs to Sleeper, the cat-like symbiote who stole the Chainbreaker power earlier. It didn’t rescue Dylan out of sentiment. It needed his ability, and the chance Venomworld offered to broadcast it allowed it to build its own army. With almost every symbiote now under its control, it is now “the true King in Black.”
Its red eyes glow in the dark as it asks, “Any objection to that, Knull? No…?”
Victorious, Sleeper says that it’s “time for my nap, then. Purr.” Symbiotes surround the throne, including what look like Scream, Carnage and Toxin, with a crowd of Venom-like heads rising below. “Sleeper, the King in Black. Long may he reign.”
