Before the stars. Before the planets. Before anything that could breathe or dream or die… there was darkness. And in that darkness, there was Knull.
It’s the story of a god who wanted to be left alone, and the universe that refused to let him rest.
Who is Knull?
Knull (pronounced like “null,” as in nothingness) is one of the oldest beings in Marvel’s universe. He’s not a villain who started out good and turned bad. He’s a god of the void, a deity of darkness, a being who existed before creation itself.
He’s the original creator of the symbiotes. Yes, that includes Venom and Carnage. Every alien creature that bonds with a host and gives them incredible power? They all trace back to Knull. He made them and they’re all extensions of his own living darkness.
Symbiote: A symbiote is a living alien organism that bonds with a host, a person or creature, sharing their body. The bond gives both the host and the symbiote new abilities: strength, speed, shapeshifting. Venom is the most famous one. Carnage is another. There are thousands of them across the universe.
The Void: Knull’s Infinite Home
The darkness Knull controls isn’t a room or a cave or even a galaxy. It’s the primordial void: the infinite emptiness that existed before the Marvel Universe was created.
Imagine the entire Marvel Universe, every planet, dimension, and strange corner of space, as an island. Knull’s darkness is the ocean surrounding it. The Marvel Universe doesn’t sit beside Knull’s domain. It sits inside it.
When people talk about Marvel’s “Omniverse” the grand idea that all realities, timelines, and universes exist together, Knull is part of what makes that terrifying. He ruled the space between everything. He was there before any of those universes existed. He’ll be there if they all end.
The Moment Everything Changed
Knull was peaceful, in his own way. He slept. He existed in his quiet darkness. He didn’t want war. He wanted to be left alone.
Then the Celestials arrived.
The Celestials are Marvel’s cosmic giants. Ancient, impossibly powerful beings who build and shape the universe. They brought the Light of Creation to the void. They started constructing stars, planets. Life. Suddenly Knull’s quiet kingdom of darkness was being filled with light, noise and living things.
He was furious! He reached into his own shadow and pulled out a blade of pure darkness. In a single blow, he decapitated a Celestial. A being that makes a god look small.
The other Celestials drove him back. But… before they did, Knull took the severed Celestial’s head. He used its leftover cosmic energy as a forge. He hammered and shaped his shadow-blade into something permanent.
He called it All-Black the Necrosword. It was the very first symbiote ever created.
Billions of Years of Conquest
Knull put on a suit of symbiote armor and began one of the longest, most brutal campaigns in Marvel history. He moved across the cosmos, killing gods, slaughtering entire civilizations, wiping out pantheons of divine beings. For billions of years.
He was a hive mind. He learned he could spread his “living abyss”, the same dark, symbiote energy, to other creatures. Bonding it to them, controlling them like puppets. He built a galaxy-wide army of symbiote dragons and monsters, all connected to him. All operating as extensions of his will.
Gorr the God Butcher… and the Blade That Slipped Away
During his long crusade, Knull fought a group of gods and took a serious blow. He crashed on a planet, unconscious, temporarily helpless.
While he lay there, a desperate alien wandered by. His name was Gorr. He’d lost everything: his family, his faith, his hope. And when he found Knull’s fallen body, the Necrosword slipped away from its master and bonded with Gorr instead.
Gorr became Gorr the God Butcher, using Knull’s own weapon to wage his own war against gods. (If you’ve seen Thor: Love and Thunder, you know him. Christian Bale played him.) The sword eventually made its way to Thor, and later to Jane Foster. It’s been around.
Knull woke up without his blade. But he wasn’t finished.
How Thor Trapped Him
Around the 6th century, one of Knull’s massive symbiote dragons (Grendel, the monster from the legend of Beowulf), attacked Earth. A young Thor Odinson stepped in. He struck the beast with lightning so powerful, and electrically devastating that it shattered Knull’s mental connection to the entire symbiote hive mind.
Every symbiote in the universe suddenly had free will.
Once freed from Knull’s control, the symbiotes across the cosmos started bonding with good hosts. They learned about honor and compassion. When they realized just how evil their creator was, they turned on him. Billions of symbiotes swarmed Knull at once, wrapping around him, crushing together, forming a living planet around his body.
They named this prison planet Klyntar, the symbiote word for “Cage.” A prison they built around a god they were terrified of.
How Knull Woke Up. Again. The S.H.I.E.L.D. Connection
Centuries passed. Knull sat at the center of Klyntar, imprisoned, dormant. Then humans made a HUGE mistake.
The dragon Thor shot down in the 6th century? It crashed into Earth and got buried in a glacier. S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel’s fictional intelligence agency, found it in the mid-20th century. They thought they’d discovered a weapon. During the Vietnam War era, they launched a secret program called the Sym-Soldier Program, cutting pieces from the frozen dragon and bonding them to soldiers to create super-warriors.
But this dragon wasn’t a regular, independent symbiote. It was part of Knull’s original hive. Poking at it was like pressing a button directly connected to a sleeping god’s brain.
Knull woke up. He couldn’t break out yet, not physically. But he was conscious. And he started planning.
The Codex Plan. Carnage Does the Dirty Work
Knull had a problem. Billions of symbiotes were still holding his prison together. He needed to break it from the inside. He found a way.
Every time a symbiote bonds with a human host, it leaves a tiny genetic trace in that person’s DNA. This trace is called a Codex. Knull realized that if enough Codices were gathered and fused together, the resulting surge of genetic energy would overload the hive mind network and blow apart his prison.
He psychically manipulated a resurrected Cletus Kasady, the murderer who becomes the symbiote villain Carnage, to hunt down and kill every person on Earth who’d ever worn a symbiote. Carnage collected those genetic traces. When enough were gathered, the energy surged back into the network.
Klyntar shattered. Knull was free.
The King in Black Is Back. Earth Falls
He came to Earth because that’s where the symbiotes had taken root most deeply. He arrived with an army of symbiote dragons. He wrapped the entire planet in a shell of living darkness, the “living abyss”, cutting Earth off from the rest of the galaxy.
Knull fought the Avengers. He won. He tore the Sentry, one of Marvel’s most powerful heroes, completely in half. He took control of several Celestials, using those ancient giants as puppets. The heroes were overwhelmed. Totally outmatched.
The only one who stopped him was Eddie Brock, Venom’s host. He bonded with something called the Enigma Force, the God of Light. Knull’s cosmic opposite. Eddie was transformed into a being powerful enough to fight back, wielding a weapon forged from Thor’s hammer and the Silver Surfer’s board. He flew Knull directly into the heart of the sun.
Knull was vaporized. For a while.
He’s Back. Again. Sort Of.
His death created a cosmic imbalance in the void. The darkness needed its god. He was resurrected, but weakened, diminished, nothing like the all-powerful King in Black who’d wrapped a planet in shadow.
Hela, the Asgardian Goddess of Death, captured him immediately and stole his dark powers for herself, declaring herself the Queen in Black.
Knull, stripped of his darkness, had to reinvent himself. He realized that being nothing, pure void, pure emptiness, is itself a kind of power. He invaded the Lightforce Dimension, conquered it, absorbed its power, and emerged completely transformed: white armor, a blade of solid light, a god of light rather than darkness.
A war is coming. The Queen in Black versus the reborn King. It’s not resolved yet.
Knull and the MCU: Why He’s Locked Out
Here’s the painful truth for MCU fans: Knull is not coming to the main Marvel Cinematic Universe anytime soon. Why? Legal rights.
Knull’s story is built entirely around the symbiotes, and specifically around Venom. Because of that, his cinematic rights belong to Sony Pictures, not Disney or Marvel Studios. Sony owns the Spider-Man character package for film, which includes Venom and every character tied to that corner of the universe.
Marvel Studios simply can’t use Knull without cutting a specific deal with Sony. Similar to the agreement they made to bring Tom Holland’s Spider-Man into the MCU. A deal hasn’t been announced for Knull.
What has happened: Knull made his live-action debut in Sony’s own universe, Venom: The Last Dance (2024). He appeared on his throne in Klyntar, sending his monsters (called Xenophages) after Venom. He was heavily teased but not yet fully unleashed.
As of right now, Knull remains firmly in Sony’s hands. His destiny on screen is Sony’s to write, not Marvel Studios’.
Where to Start Reading
Recommended Reading Order
1. Thor: God of Thunder #1–11 (2012): Introduces All-Black the Necrosword and Gorr. Knull isn’t named yet, but his shadow is everywhere.
2. Venom #1–6 (2018): Knull’s official introduction by writer Donny Cates. Essential. The S.H.I.E.L.D. program, the Klyntar backstory. It’s all here.
3. Silver Surfer: Black #1–5 (2019): The Silver Surfer fights a prime-era Knull in the ancient past. A great entry point for visual readers.
4. Absolute Carnage #1–5 (2019): Carnage hunts Codex bearers to free Knull. Tense, violent, and a direct buildup to the main event.
5. King in Black #1–5 (2020): Knull invades Earth. The Avengers fall. The final confrontation with Eddie Brock.
6. Knull #1–5 (2026): His resurrection, Hela’s betrayal, and his transformation into the God of Light. The current, ongoing chapter.
