Day 3 of my Venom week and today I’m answering the question: Just what is a Symbiote? We know that Venom is one, but where do they come from? And what are they, exactly?

What Is A Symbiote?

In the Marvel Comic Universe, a Symbiote is a symbiotic alien, capable of living inside another living, humanoid, thing. Mostly, Symbiotes seem to bond with humans, giving them a certain level of extra strength, and other such powers (listed in my Venom post yesterday)

Where Do Symbiotes Come From?

Symbiotes originally came from the ‘living abyss’, an eldritch substance sometimes known as anti-life, possibly created as an opposite reaction to the creation of life by the Eternals.

Put simply, they’re aliens in the shape of black goo.

As for when they were created, Knull, a primordial deity, some time ago, while stranded on a desolate planet. He created enough to amass an army, using them to take over planets and destroy civilisations over billions of years, until the army rebelled and imprisoned Knull.

What Do Symbiotes Want?

Originally, as said above, the Symbiotes wanted to destroy civilisations and civilians, but have now taken on a more passive lifestyle. They rewrote their history to say that they were benevolent by nature, and wanted to spread peace throughout the galaxy.

To do this, they wanted to bond with ‘worthy hosts’ to create natural warriors. Those warriors needed to have the perfect blend of moral and physical ideas, if this was not the case, the symbiosis would be corrupted, which turn would corrupt the host and the Symbiote itself. Any corrupted pairing would be exiled, and generally, those exiles went back to the hold ways of the Symbiote.

And, as you may have guessed, one of these corrupted, exiles Symbiotes was Venom.

How Many Symbiotes Are There?

There are billions of Symbiotes around! But currently, Marvel has only introduced a few of them: Venom, Carnage, Knull, Scream, Phage, Riot, Raze, Sleeper, Zzzxx, Hybrid, Scorn, Lasher, Mania, Agony and Toxin.

To read more about these characters, you’ll have to read the King In Black event, where Knull and the Symbiotes take centre-stage!

As for any others, we’ll have to see what Marvel comes out with in the future, and whether they’re of the peacekeeping, or the corrupted, type!

And that’s everything for my explanation of Symbiotes! If you have any questions, please leave them down below!