The third and final installment in Tom Hardy’s Venom saga promises a lot of things – Eddie Brock’s final journey with his symbiotic, violent companion, the arrival of some major Marvel cosmic villains, and the introduction of new intriguing cast members. But most importantly, it is promising and delivers one thing in particular: Venom Horse.
The Symbiote-clad horse was a big hit online when the first teaser for Venom: The Last Dance was released last summer, and luckily Sony has shown that Venom Horse will live up to fans’ expectations when it made its full scene debut at New York Comic Con last night. Initially escaping with Eddie and Venom, the duo finds a horse in the desert tied up without an owner. After proclaiming “Four legs are better than two,” Venom happily narrates Eddie’s attempts to approach the animal before announcing loudly his presence as he takes over the creature, transforming into the majestic Venom Horse we saw in the teaser.
As Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” kicks in on the soundtrack, Venom Horse gallops through the desert, dragging the unfortunate Eddie along, screaming throughout the journey as they speed over hills and through winding passages before finally coming to a stop by the river, giving Venom Horse a moment to refresh and Eddie apologizing for not being able to feel his shin after the rough ride. However, their rest period is short-lived: a military plane flies behind them, striking the poor Venom Horse with a sonic attack that paralyzes the symbiotic creature. Eddie is thrown off the horse into the river as the masked soldiers begin to descend from the plane to try and capture Venom and dispose of Eddie completely.
The latter starts to grapple with one of the soldiers as they are dragged by the currents, while the former is almost entangled in a web by the rest of the team. Eddie grabs a gun being aimed at him during the fight, almost shooting a soldier in the chest, only for Eddie to manage to turn the gun and pull the trigger himself – shocked for a moment by his actions as the soldier’s lifeless body floats away from him. Meanwhile, Venom escapes captivity, jumping from a nearby fish to a frog before returning to Eddie just in time to fly them both over the waterfall. As the remaining soldiers surround Venom/Eddie and begin to shock them with electric batons, we cut to a black and white echo-location shot of an invisible predator: a giant four-legged insect-like alien creature, neither Venom nor the soldiers want to pursue. Conflict ensues.
While Venom and Eddie escape thanks to the distraction, the soldiers desperately engage in combat with the giant creature as it lunges, grabs them, and kills them in a strange manner. From above the plane, the new villain Shiwatal Egiofor, Rex Strickland (a familiar name from the comics, especially Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman’s Venom run), watches in horror as his men are killed. Strickland pulls out a tablet and contacts research scientist Dr. Bain (Juno Temple). Bain conveys that his team failed to capture Venom due to the arrival of a dangerous new alien creature, and Strickland asks Bain seriously if he can retrieve samples from the creature that slaughtered his team, prompting him to toss the tablet on the ground in disgust.
While the scene does a lot to build up the tensions ahead in The Last Dance – Eddie and Venom’s escape, the antagonistic relationship between Strickland and Bain, and of course the arrival of alien enemies from Venom’s homeworld, the Klyntar – the highlight was definitely seeing Venom Horse in all its glory. It’s a fun reminder that these Venom films always have a lot of fun and silly humor at their core, regardless of the risks, and we can’t wait to see what Eddie and Venom’s final journey has in store on this front when it hits theaters later this month on October 25.
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