And here we are, the finale of series three!
I present to you: Venom!
Back in U.A., Peter, Ochako, Felicia, and All Might would finally awaken and pull themselves up, horrified at the damage that has been done to both the school and the streets outside, where they see the headless corpse of the Green Goblin being taken away.
In the time that they have been unconscious and buried under the rubble of the damaged academy, the Symbiote-possessed Izuku had injured and maimed several students, pro heroes, and civilians, and had killed the Green Goblin out in the middle of the open, their battle causing untold amounts of destruction and endangering many lives. Now he was gone, out into the wild, and with no way to find him. And to make the situation even worse, there were reports of several people being attacked by strange creatures, forcing every hero in surrounding area to go on full alert.
Grabbing their confiscated hero costumes (Peter's suit and gear had been taken from him when he was expelled as it was his supposed hero costume, despite him having made and used them before getting into U.A.), Peter and Ochako would take to the streets alongside All Might and Felicia in trying to track Izuku down, not caring as to how they were now breaking the law once more by acting as vigilantes.
Then, they would come across someone that they think to be Izuku, but is revealed to be a woman by the name of Ippan Josei, who is taken over by a Symbiote calling itself Misery and attacks them. It would take everything they have to subdue the Symbiote and free Ippan from its control, having to use one of All Might's thunderclap-like attacks to create a large enough sound to disorientate and destroy the weaker Symbiote, but they would eventually succeed in their task, and realise that Izuku, or the Symbiote that is controlling him, is trying to infect people with Symbiotes as well.
Soon enough, All Might would be called away to deal with more Symbiotes that were popping up whilst Felicia broke away to start rounding up everyone in their circle of friends and allies, and Peter and Ochako would continue their search, eventually making their way back to Inko's home, everyone inside save for Inko and Aunt May having left to search for Izuku when he went missing…
Only to find him sitting at the table in the middle of the house, with a frightened May and Inko sitting with him.
Ochako and Peter would be just as frightened and unnerved as May and Inko as Izuku began to speak in an calm, eerily monotone expression, talking about how he was now beginning to help people finally stand up for themselves, how he was doing what no one would do for him in the past, and give them the strength that they needed to truly save themselves, and save the people around them. And then, he would ask Peter and Ochako to join him in helping to save the world.
Peter and Ochako would, as calm as they could, refuse, and ask Izuku to let them take the Symbiote off of them-
Izuku would refuse, realising where his friends stood, and allowing the Symbiote to completely cover him, growing to his full size.
The monster grew, and declared itself to be Venom.
And then, it attacked, throwing shards of Symbiote at the four. Peter and Ochako would successfully throw Inko out of the way, but they would not be able to save Aunt May, and she is hit and infected by the shard of Symbiote.
It would cover her in a white and red form, and declare itself to be Silence.
The new Symbiote known as Silence would go on the offensive, attacking Inko, Ochako, and Peter and forcing the former to duck down in fear whilst the latter two tried to subdue the possessed Aunt May whilst Venom left the scene.
Peter tries to break through to Aunt May, trying to remind her of who she is and how it was the Symbiote controlling her, not herself. However, Aunt May would rail against Peter, letting out her own anger how Peter had hid the fact that he was Spider-Man from her for so long, how he didn't care how she felt when he went out on his own to fight, and how she was always so scared that he might never return one night, and how she didn't want to lose another member of their family, not again.
Realising this, and how he had been indirectly hurting Aunt May all this time, Peter would apologise to her, and this would cause the Symbiote itself to pause momentarily, allowing not Ochako, but Inko to use her quirk to restrain the long hair trailing down from Silence's head, and Ochako triggering the car alarm near them, weakening the Symbiote and giving Peter and Ochako the chance to rip Aunt May out of the Symbiote and destroy the weaker creature, saving her.
Assuring Aunt May that he would come back, safe and sound, Ochako and Peter would leave her in Inko's care, and tell them to retreat to a nearby shelter. Then, they would track and follow Venom as he sped back to the damaged U.A., then to a shelter nearby, where Kirishima, Tetsutetsu, and Kendo, were helping their former classmates get inside alongside the heroes.
Peter and Ochako would be too late to stop Venom from getting to them, but they would be able to stop him from infecting any more students before they engaged him. It was a fight that they would lose, and Venom would flee once more.
But then, they would see Tetsutetsu and Kirishima pull themselves upward from the ground, then Ibara, then Mina, and then finally, much to Peter's own horror, Momo as well.
The five students and ex-students were infected by Symbiotes, Tetsutetsu a Symbiote that called itself Phage, Kirishima Riot, Mina Agony, Ibara Lasher, and Momo scream.
The five Symbiotes would attack, Scream taking on Peter personally whilst the other Symbiotes attacked Ochako, Kendo, and the other students and teachers, turning the bunker into a chaotic scrum as they tried to free their friends from the Symbiotes' control.
However, Ochako would grab Jirou and Present Mic, and tell them to use their quirks on the four Symbiotes, which they would comply with. The Symbiotes, still young, would be weakened by the high-pitched noises that their quirks produced, and this would grant the students and teachers the chance they needed to free their friends from the Symbiotes' control.
Meanwhile, Peter would continue to battle against the Symbiote-possessed Momo, not wanting to hurt his friend, and forced to dodge all of her attacks, as the Scream Symbiote isn't just using its natural abilities that it had gained from Venom, but also Momo's quirk and the Iron Spider suit, making her an incredibly difficult foe to battle against. As such, he is forced to stay on the defensive against her, dodging all her creations and enhanced attacks thanks to the robotic limbs on her back.
Here, we see deeper into Momo's character as well, as we see how much work she had to put in to keep the Future Foundation together, how much she resented her parents and others for trying to get it shut down, how angry she was at Peter for leaving U.A., and how much she hated herself for all her self-doubts and hesitations, which only serves to fuel the Symbiote, Scream, even further.
However, eventually, Peter is able to get through to her, and with the help of Jirou and the other classmates, they are able to calm her down and get the Symbiote off of her.
And then, both Peter and Momo take off their masks, and then look into each other's eyes…
And then they kiss.
The two of them would break it off, startled by the sudden action and left feeling confused as to why they did it, though somewhat satisfied as well, but would be forced to turn their attention elsewhere as the Symbiote's had merged themselves together into one massive amalgamation…
And then bonded itself to Bakugo.
The Symbiote-possessed Bakugo, now calling itself Hybrid, would run rampant over the bunker and outside of it, attacking anyone and everyone who got too close to it, before setting his sights on Peter, Ochako, and Momo. He attacks the two, screaming at them about how they were supposed to be bugs underneath his heel, about how he was supposed to be number one, the best in the school, and yet, even when they weren't there, Izuku and Peter were always getting the better of him, always beating him, always looking down on him.
And here, we get the culmination of Bakugo's character arc throughout this story, as his continuous series of losses throughout this fic have only continued to wear on his psyche and image of himself, as well as destroy the image of importance and invincibility that had been built into him since he was very young, and this event in particular plays out less like a dangerous battle and more like a group of people trying to calm someone finally reaching their breaking point and suffering from a mental breakdown. Bakugo's ego and self-identity have completely fractured, forcing him into a panic attack, and Hybrid is simply slinking in to fill in the cracks and give his directionless rage and self-hatred on an outside target.
However, Bakugo's quirk would prove to be a detriment to Hybrid, as the loud explosions that it made would prove to be damaging to the Symbiote. Exploiting this, Peter, Ochako, and Momo are able to use the distortion that Hybrid feels after each explosion to disrupt the bond between it and its host, allowing Bakugo to free himself and blast the Symbiote, destroying it.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Peter and Momo reconcile, but they would be left confused by the kiss that they shared, and unable to figure out their emotions around it. However, they wouldn't be given time to try and understand how they feel about each other, as the present situation demands their full attention.
Then, Peter gets a call on his mask's HUD, that being from Adriana Soria, who is currently leading the pro hero forces in the city to try and fight back against the surge of rampaging Symbiotes. When Peter asks as to how she was able to get on his channel, she simply replies that she had engineers under her employ look over his tech while it was confiscated from him, and asks as to what the hell is going on.
Peter explains to her that the Black Suit that he had been bonded with was corruptive, and it had only been thanks to his friends that he had been able to get free of it. But now, that same Black Suit, the Symbiote, One for All, Venom, had bonded itself to one of his friends, Izuku, who had given him the suit to begin with, and had turned him into a monstrous creature that was infecting others with Symbiotes, all so it could 'Save the world' as it told them. He then counters that loud and high-pitched noises are the biggest weakness that the Symbiotes have, but they didn't have anything in their disposal that could create a loud enough noise to destroy all of them in one-
He then gets an idea, and tells Adriana to meet them at the FeatherHATS' building. Adriana agrees, and he and his friends speed off to the FeatherHATS' main building, with Jirou and Present Mic in tow.
Once there, they encounter Adriana singlehandedly taking down two advanced Symbiotes before making their way inside, finding the remaining members of the FeatherHATS hiding away from the Symbiotes that had tried to break in to get them and a bunch of other idols. The FeatherHATS are angered at Peter's appearance, and Miu especially makes it clear that she blames Peter for Kazuho's death.
Peter, much to their surprise, takes the blame that they are throwing at him and accepts it, believing it to be true. He simply tells them that they need their, and the other idols' help, in saving the city, Japan, and possibly the whole world.
The FeatherHATS, and all the other idols, reluctantly agree.
And so, Peter lays out his plan to everyone present: the Symbiotes are virtually unstoppable on their own, but become weakened to high frequency sounds. However, they had no hero that could produce such a frequency big enough to destroy the Symbiotes and free the people that they were possessing before they inevitably spread out beyond the city limits and become a world-wide threat, even with All Might trying to stop them.
However, if they were able to combine both Jirou and Present Mic's quirks, as well as the technical equipment of the FeatherHATS and other idols groups, then they could possibly lure all the Symbiotes into one place and blast them with enough high-frequency sounds that it would destroy all the Symbiotes in one go, or at least disorientate them enough for the heroes to swarm them and free the people that they were holding captive.
Adriana admits that she has no better plan, and asks who they will be using as bait. Peter volunteers himself, as it is him that Izuku and the Venom Symbiote possessing him that they are furious at. However, Ochako instead cuts in, disagreeing, and says that she will be the bait, as Izuku is angry at her as well. The two of them argue for a moment about it, but that is when Adriana cuts in with a solution:
They will both be the bait.
Peter and Ochako sigh and agree, and the plan is put into motion.
When the night comes, Peter stood with Ochako in the middle of the city's biggest park, as behind them, Hatsume and Momo worked with Jirou, Present Mic, and the FeatherHATS to set up the Sound Bomb, as they called it, just when Venom and his Symbiotes took the bait, and invaded the grounds.
However, there were a lot more Symbiotes than had been expected, and they still needed time to set up the Sound Bomb. Worse yet, Venom proved to be smart enough to realise that it was a trap and fled the scene, forcing Peter and Ochako to chase after him. The rest of the heroes would have to protect the FeatherHATS as they finished setting up their weapon.
As such, the War of the Symbiotes would begin, with the vast horde of Symbiotes on one side, and Peter's friends from F.E.A.S.T. and elsewhere, such as Panda-Mania, Jessica Drew and Ben Reilly, Kendo, Kirishima, and so on, Adriana's gathered forces, and the rest of the pro heroes, vigilantes such as Kaine's Enforcers and Felicia, and other armed forces that they could muster, like All Might, the recently recovered David Shield, still trapped in his Lizard form, and even Melissa Shield, piloting the Villainbuster armour. The battle that would follow would be chaotic and devastating, with All Might squaring off against Endeavor, who had been corrupted by a Symbiote that called itself Raze, and Melissa and David going up against a monstrous Symbiote known as Bedlam.
Meanwhile, Peter and Ochako would chase after Venom, fighting him in the air before they all eventually landed in somewhere important to all of them: the ruins of F.E.A.S.T..
Venom would launch himself at Peter and Ochako, the latter two doing their best to try and keep up with the monstrous Symbiote, trying to reach out and free their friend from the creature's control. However, the corrupted quirk, the mutated remains of One for All, would rage against their attempts to try and rescue his host, and they would continue on and on against him for as long as they could.
Meanwhile, the heroes' battle against the Symbiotes would begin to turn against them. As strong as the heroes were, the Symbiotes seemed to be stronger still, overpowering them and beginning the process of infecting them as well.
But then, just when the heroes are about to be overwhelmed, just when Raze looks like it's about to finish off All Might and the Void Knight is about to rip Melissa out of the Villainbuster armour, the Sound Bomb is finally complete…
And it goes off.
The loud bang of noise does its work. Many heroes equip the noise cancelling headphones that had been handed out, whilst many others simply covered their ears.
The Symbiotes, however, are left in agony from the attack, and in mass, they are all driven off their hosts by the high-frequencies, and left as piles of goo on the ground.
The heroes celebrate what they assume to be their victory over the monsters, only to look on in horror as, much like Venom's children had done to make Hybrid, the thousands of Symbiotes writhing on the ground begin to coalesce and merge together, forming a massive creature in the shape of a dragon known as the Grendel.
And Venom sense all of this, and decides to return to his children's side. He mutates into an even larger form, grows wings upon his back, and flies away, forcing a battered Peter and Ochako to chase after him once more.
The Grendel Symbiote dragon, meanwhile, attacks the heroes gathered to defeat it, spewing black fire at them and somehow managing to battle and defeat every single hero that tried to destroy it.
Then, Venom would arrive, settling himself atop the beast as if it were a steed, and giving it a direction and a master.
The Grendel would attack savagely, and it is only when Peter and Ochako arrive that the heroes are able to put up a fight against the monster. The two wounded heroes land atop the monster and begin their battle with the enhanced Venom once more, only to find that they are seriously outgunned by the monstrous Symbiote.
But then, All Might joins in on the fray, allowing Spider-Man and Ochako the chance to catch their breath as the number one hero begins his own battle with Venom, continuously trying to reach out to his beloved successor, only to find that, thanks to the power of the mutated One for All, Venom is more than a match for him. In fact, the only reason that Peter and Ochako were able to put up a fight against the beast was because it was still a young creation and hadn't learnt how to counter them properly yet.
Peter and Ochako retreat for a moment, meeting up with Momo, Felicia, the clones, Adriana, and the assembled FeatherHATS in order to figure out how to defeat Venom and the Grendel dragon. Eventually, they come up with the plan to amp up the Sonic Bomb with Jirou and Present Mic's quirks, throw it right at the two Symbiotes, and pray to whatever god is listening that it works.
Meanwhile, All Might is giving his all against Venom, but it is still not enough, as the Symbiote is able to keep up with him and battle him as an equal. All Might is losing this fight, and he does not know how long he can keep it up for.
But then, he spots the FeatherHATS and the assembled Spiders and allies swinging up into the sky, the Sonic Bomb in tow, and he realises their plan. Breaking away from the battle, he grabs the Sonic Boom from the group, and jumps straight at the Grendel dragon, throwing it at the beast.
The Sonic Bomb, now amplified by Jirou and Present Mic's quirks, completely destroys the Grendel and leaving Venom to tumble to the ground below. All Might would prove to be too wounded to continue the fight, but Peter, his clones, and his friends and allies would be there to step up to the challenge.
And now, with all of them together, they battle against the enhanced, winged Venom…
And as one force, after a long and brutal fight against the monster, all of them would eventually win against the monster, with both Peter and Ochako landing the final blow against the beast, and ripping Izuku, their friend, out of the Symbiote's grasp, Momo using her quirk create a properly sealed containment unit to seal the raging Symbiote within.
In the grasp of both Peter and Ochako, Izuku would warily ask where he is, dazed and confused, revealing that he been listless and suppressed while under the Symbiote's influence, assuming that it was all a dream. Then, he sees his friends around him, smiles… and then slips into a coma, much to the anguish of those who care about him.
In the aftermath of the War of the Symbiotes, the city would begin to rebuild, and the knowledge of All Might's quirk would be suppressed once more, his connection to Izuku buried by the government and the media, much to his same. U.A. would be forced to relocate from their damaged campus as the land is brought out by Adriana as a base for her new organisation, which would proceed to swallow the JDSF whole, as well as other, smaller intelligence agencies, and bringing the hero schools under her control further into the fold. At this point, only U.A. was completely independent from Adriana, with the rest of the hero schools either operating as de facto client states or completely under her. It is now expected that many of the hero students that graduate from these schools will end up joining Adriana's organisation, completing her ascension as one of the most powerful people in Japan, if only tempered and halted by the Japanese government, who are eager to keep the power of this young, yet ambitious woman in check.
Meanwhile, the War of the Symbiotes would have a knock-on effect on the people of Japan themselves, with many, whether they be hero or villain or something else entirely, now trying to find their own Symbiotes after the battle to try and use as weapons for their own ends. To this date, only five (well, four and a half, really) Symbiotes survived the battle, one of them sealed away in containment, three lying dormant within three separate people, and one, shaded in a deep, angry red, slipping away into the darkness, searching for its latest host.
Meanwhile, the mood in U.A. is both hopeful and dour. Momo, Todoroki, Sero, and Hatsume are eager to see the world that they will bring about thanks to their newfound fame in the eyes of the public and their roles in the Future Foundation, but Momo is only gaining more and more pressure from the likes of her parents, as well as representatives from Detnerat, to shut down the Foundation, on top of her confused feelings about Peter and the uncertainty of their relationship.
At the same time, Bakugo is left in a place of confusion and turmoil. At this point, his confidence and self-image has been destroyed, as has his ego. Not only that, but even though the media tried to play them both down, he knows that All Might lost two battles, one against Kraven and the other against Venom (that last one was technically a draw, but since that means that there was no winner, he considers it to be a loss). All Might was supposed to be the hero who never lost, and yet, since arriving in U.A., Bakugo has seen his idol lose not just once, but twice, meaning that All Might is not as invincible as he had imagined, and that Bakugo's dreams of being just like him, being an invincible hero who never loses, was impossible to begin with. As such, Bakugo is lost in a place of uncertainty, not helped at all by Peter and his friends taking the spotlight and overshadowing them, even when they are not in U.A., on top of his needing saving from the Hybrid Symbiote by them as well.
Bakugo begins to slip into feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing, and even the words of his classmates are unable to stop them. In fact, their reassuring him that everyone needs help once in a while only serves to make him feel worse.
The fragment of the Symbiote inside of him would begin to feed on those emotions.
Elsewhere, Izuku is placed under arrest, despite the fact that he wasn't acting as himself and was under the control of the Venom Symbiote, the mutated One for All quirk. However, he is still in a coma, now a vegetative state, and has yet to wake up. Inko remains at his hospital bedside for as long as she can, and plans to stay there until he wakes up. But when Peter, Ochako, and the others try to comfort her and stay with Izuku as well, in her anger and sorrow, she tells them to simply get out, blaming both them and herself for Izuku's condition.
The Symbiote inside of Izuku would remain lifeless, braindead, rooting itself to his white blood cells.
And Peter? Well, he would be wracked with guilt over what has happened, both how he acted while he had the Black Suit on, how he treated everyone around him, attacking Overhaul's agency without a care for Eri being in there, allowing Miles Morales to be kidnapped, Kazuho's death, and now corrupting Izuku's quirk, turning him into Venom, and leading him to murder the Green Goblin and land himself in a coma.
So, in order to make amends, he tells his friends the truth, about how he was from another universe, how he had been brought here by the Green Goblin and his villains, about how the Infinity Stones had been the means in which Osborn had wanted to alter reality and achieve his goals, and about how he had been searching for the stones to make sure that no one could use them for evil…
And then, wanting to take responsibility for his actions, he hands himself into the police, and allows himself to be arrested.
And here we are, the finale of series three! Wow, this arc definitely plays out like an extended therapy session, doesn't it?
(I mean, fuck if these people don't all need one. They're all traumatised, I tell ya. Traumatised with a capital T.)
So yeah, this arc, and the entirety of the Venom storyline, has taken a lot of inspiration from the recently released Spider-Man 2, which had Venom trying to turn the entire world into a Symbiote colony and turning everyone into a Symbiote themselves. However, in contrast to that storyline, since Venom isn't an alien from outer space drawing all its power from a meteorite, we need a new way of taking him down, hence the Sound Bomb.
(I was actually tempted to have the FeatherHATS, alongside Jirou and Present Mic, combat the Symbiotes by singing a song at them, amplified massively by all the speakers that they'd been able to grab. An army of psycho-zombies defeated with the power of idols and music. Now if that isn't anime, then I don't know what is.)
Honestly, before I got to writing this arc, I was planning on having Venom identify more closely with his comic motivations, that being his overriding need to get revenge on Spider-Man and ruin his life, hence tying him in more closely with series three's themes of resentment and revenge. However, I encountered a slight problem with this concept:
Venom would've been carrying out this revenge quest completely on his own, and surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of heroes that could've taken him down, not to mention All Might himself (again, I am going to point out that All Might has the unfortunate habit of being a living deus ex machina when it comes to problems like this), meaning that this revenge plot of his would fall flat rather quickly, and I had no interest in trying to write as many loopholes and plot contrivances as I could to try and make Venom not get his ass handed to him immediately. which is very difficult when a lot of the problems that Spider-Man himself faces can usually be solved simply throwing All Might at the problem and being done with it.
So then, I got to thinking about Venom's character, and then I thought back to his changed origins in this story, and who he was bonded with:
Venom, and the Symbiotes themselves, are One for All, a quirk that was made to be wielded by heroes, and made to fight All for One and all the evils in the world. And Izuku, its current wielder, is one of the most genuinely heroic people out there, and feels a desperate need to make sure that no one else can ever feel as weak as he did in the past. As such, I feel like Venom's motivations would shift ever so much in this context.
So, in this instance, Venom's motivations are a lot more sympathetic, in a way, and actually, in my opinion, tie him back to his more anti-villain style of characterisation. Sure, he still wants to get revenge on Peter and possibly rebond with him as well, but he also genuinely thinks that he is helping people and making sure that no one will ever know what it feels like to be weak and helpless. He genuinely thinks he's being a hero in this case, albeit in a twisted fashion in the form of forcing Symbiotes onto others against their will, which certainly has its own set of implications and subjects to mirror it with.
But getting back on track, with Izuku as his host, Venom's motivations would certainly shift, or at least be influenced enough to change, to meet Izuku's, meaning that he wouldn't want anyone to be as helpless as he was. As such, I decided to borrow from Spider-Man 2 once more and have the Symbiote invasion arc play out once more, albeit with some differences in execution and resolution.
The first one is with the Symbiotes themselves, as instead of just being a bunch of generic zombies and monsters to fight against, many of them are instead Symbiotes that were pulled straight from the comics. Sure, in Spider-Man 2 we had Scream make an appearance, but here it's not just her, but also the rest of the Life Foundation Symbiotes, including their gestalt combo-Symbiote Hybrid, as well as other, more obscure Symbiotes such as Raze, Silence, Misery, and Bedlam.
(Honestly, I probably wasn't going to be using any of these Symbiotes in the future anyway. I have plans for certain Symbiotes to make appearances in the future, don't worry. I just figured that I'd feature and knock off the ones that I had no real plans for.)
Also, the Grendel Symbiote. The Grendel Symbiote dragon. Because dragons are awesome.
And that ties into the second part of this AN: what did I change from the Spider-Man 2 plotline? Well, aside from the inclusion of having various named Symbiotes in it, there's also how it ends. Since Venom doesn't come from a space rock macguffin, and since we don't have access to any Anti-Venom (not yet at least), we'll need a new way of taking the Symbiotes down, to which the Sound Bomb comes into play.
However, I didn't want it to be easy for the heroes, as just having it go off once and the Symbiotes all dying from it would be a bit of a let-down. So, I then thought back to the different Symbiotes out there, and that's when I learnt that Hybrid was itself made out of the five different Life Foundation Symbiotes when they had combined together, so I thought, "Wouldn't it be call if, when the Sound Bomb goes off, all the Symbiotes instead merge together to form one big Plus Ultra Symbiote?" and that's where I got the idea of putting the Grendel dragon in the story.
So Hybrid was placed into the story to serve as foreshadowing for the Grendel, which I thought was pretty neat. However, getting back on track, the lack of Anti-Venom in this part of the story means that they'd have to take down Venom the old fashioned way, and for this, I really wanted Venom to come across as this unstoppable juggernaut, this absolute beast that could go toe-to-toe with the likes of All Might himself without breaking a sweat, and even come out on top. It helps that Venom is this universe's version of One for All, as that gives me the handy excuse that Venom's power is essentially all the stockpiled power that All Might and his predecessors have built up, itself now built up even more thanks to Izuku and Peter both wielding it.
So, Venom is supposed to be this nigh-invincible monster in this story, and that means that Peter and Ochako can't take him on alone. This allows me to bring in all the main characters within Spider-Man's inner circle, like Momo, Jessica, Ben, and so on, and give them a real moment to shine against Venom, which I thought was really cool.
It's also a great metaphor. All Might tries to take on Venom alone, and can't beat him. However, Peter, together with all his friends, is able to take down the Symbiote by working together and relying on each other, something that I don't think Peter himself is used to. It's kind of a reverse of the situation between Peter's ideology and hero society's ideology, which has been favouring Peter's for a long while. Here, Peter's method of doing things, on his own, can't defeat Venom, but hero society's promotion of multiple heroes all working together (apart from everything to do with All Might) is able to bring down the monster, which is a nice bit of symbolism, and helps to even out the pros and cons between both sides.
Moving on from that, this arc also serves as a culmination of the themes of resentment and revenge that have held up series three, in that the characters that are infected by Symbiotes are able to express their frustrations and anger whilst they're possessed by them, in turn empowering the Symbiotes and only making those problems worse, and it is only when they get rid of the Symbiotes, I.E. let go of their resentment, that they can finally move on with their lives. Huh, nice metaphor I've got there. Originally, I wanted to lean more into the idea that the Symbiotes are a metaphor themselves for drug addiction, ala Spider-Man 2 once more, but I think this actually works a lot better.
(Oh, and some of you may have noticed that I didn't destroy Venom like in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (thanks for pointing out the proper title for me, MadTitan9). Don't worry, I've got big plans for him in the future...)
But let's close this section off for now, as we move onto the epilogue arc for series three: The Trial of Peter Parker!