Entertainment
Surprise Return of Hated Spider-Man Character Lays Groundwork For a Supervillain Surprise
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
There are already more characters confirmed for Spider-Man: Brand New Day than you can shake a web shooter at, with more being added practically every week. Now, scooper @DanielRPK is claiming that Tony Revolori will be returning for this film, reprising his role as Peter Parker’s bully, Flash Thompson. While it’s admittedly a long shot, my biggest hope for this character is that Marvel follows his comic storyline and transforms this character into the host for the Venom symbiote.
In the original Marvel comics, Flash Thompson was originally just Peter Parker’s bully, much like we see in movies such as Spider-Man: Homecoming (although comics Flash was admittedly far likelier to solve problems with violence rather than insults). Revolori has done a great job bringing this character to life in the MCU, but the writers have rarely given him much to work with. He’s effectively had less and less to do since Homecoming, eventually becoming nothing more than a background character cranking out the occasional overbaked punchline.
A Waste Of A Great Actor
This is, frankly, a waste of the actor’s talents… Tony Revolori is absolutely captivating when given a meaty role, as evidenced by his affecting performance in The Grand Budapest Hotel. That’s why I was a tad surprised at @DanielRPK’s claim that the actor would be returning for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a movie already bursting at the seams with characters like Punisher, Hulk, Scorpion, and Tombstone. Rather than just bringing Revolori back for another brief and meaningless cameo, I’m crossing my fingers that Marvel adopts the comic storyline where Flash Thompson ends up becoming Venom.
In the comics, Flash Thompson joined the military but had his legs blown off in combat; later, the government bonded him with the captured Venom symbiote, hoping to create a super soldier more powerful even than Captain America. The symbiote gave Flash his legs back and helped him become a genuine superhero, one who fought alongside both the Secret Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy. While the idea sounded crazy at the time, this storyline breathed fresh life into both Flash Thompson and Venom, two characters that were too often written as disappointingly one-dimensional.
Laying The Groundwork For Agent Venom
If Marvel were to give Tony Revolori the Agent Venom storyline, it would finally give Flash Thompson’s story some (ahem) legs to stand on. After several movies of him being nothing more than a petty jerk to Peter Parker, he could get a heroic redemption arc that would surprise the entire MCU fandom. Furthermore, Spider-Man: Brand New Day would be the perfect place to lay the groundwork for such a story by having Flash lose his legs to a villain like Scorpion, ideally while saving someone affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D. (or other shadowy organization) who might later recruit him.
We already know that part of the Venom symbiote is loose in this universe. It would make plenty of sense for whatever is left of S.H.I.E.L.D. (or just the Department of Damage Control) to contain, study, and weaponize the suit, giving them a government agent with the power of a superhero (a bit like War Machine, but with actual superpowers). Plus, merging Flash Thompson with the symbiote would allow writers to introduce the Venom character into the MCU in an entirely new way that would avoid comparisons with Sony’s successful trilogy of Venom movies centered around Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock.
It’s obviously a long shot that Marvel adapts such a bonkers comic storyline for the big screen, but heading into the Avengers: Secret Wars reset, anything is possible. The Agent Venom arc would finally give superstar Tony Revolori a genuine acting challenge while giving us a cool new character intimately connected to Spider-Man, Marvel’s most popular hero. Such big creative swings may ultimately be necessary if Marvel is to survive the one thing scarier than Venom himself: superhero fatigue.
