Eddie Brock’s most powerful enemy has nothing but disdain for his fellow Kings in Black, and that could kick off Marvel’s next War of Kings.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Venom #5, available now from Marvel.
Eddie Brock has never been short on enemies, though the number of malevolent forces out to take his life in one way or another has only ramped up in recent months. The living god of the symbiotes has not only been besieged by human assailants, but even his own kind within the symbiote hive seems to have their sights set on him. It is in that very same hive where the greatest threats to Eddie’s reign have emerged from in the form of the ominous Meridius. Thankfully, there are others who share that very same connection, and Marvel’s other Kings in Black might be just the allies Eddie needs to defeat his latest nemesis.
After what seemed to be a fatal attack by the Life Foundation, Eddie Brock has ended up on some faraway alien world in Venom #5 by Al Ewing, Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie, Alex Sinclair, and VC’s Clayton Cowles. There in the Garden of Time, he is greeted by Meridius, a mysterious figure who resided alongside other lost symbiotes, all of whom are eventual successors to Eddie’s own throne. These new Kings in Black include the cowardly Tyro, the antagonistic Wilde, the bestial Bedlam, and the seemingly disturbed Finnegan. Unfortunately, the fact that these symbiotes are all Kings in Black does not mean they are friendly, and soon enough violence erupted between them. As Eddie threw himself into the middle of the fray, Meridius merely sat back and watched the beings he considered children tear into one another. Of course, none of them could actually come to harm in the Garden, though that doesn’t mean they can’t try.
While all of the Kings in Black seen in the Garden of Time appear trapped within it after plummeting the depths of their own powers, Meridius has managed to escape its bonds to the past. He was the one who took Eddie’s form and gave the vague, false warnings that led Dylan Brock to bond with the Venom symbiote after his father’s apparent demise. From the looks of things, Meridius has no concern for any being but himself, regarding every other as inferior to his own more perfect form. Despite his ego, Meridius is still on a mostly even playing field with the others in the Garden, and now that Eddie has arrived he may be in for a painful reminder of that fact.
As Kings in Black, Eddie and the others are all able to delve into the symbiote hive and emerge in another place or time, even if they haven’t been able to do so to escape the Garden or the past as Meridius has. Then again, the other Kings in Black have never had anyone like Eddie Brock to help guide them. There is no doubt that Eddie won’t be sitting idly by in the Garden while Meridius schemes on his own. Assuming Eddie can bring Wilde, Tyro, or even the generally unstable Finnegan around to helping him, their combined efforts could prove to be enough to get them all back to their respecting eras. That would obviously be anathema to everything Meridius has been working towards, yet his obsession with molding the past would likely leave him blind to anyone else’s efforts in his relative present.
Should the other Kings in Black choose to take action against Meridius, it may not matter whether his plot comes to fruition. Even with the hulking Bedlam on his side, Meridius is a single symbiote up against thousands of years of Kings in Black. If Meridius had ever really considered Wilde, Tyro, or Finnegan to be threats, he surely would have taken action against them already. On the other hand, the extent to which he can actually harm them seems to be negligible, meaning a war between the Kings in Black might be one that never really comes to an end.
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