WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Venom #32 by Donny Cates, Iban Coello, Jesus Aburtov, & VC's Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
Eddie Brock and his symbiote Venom have had their ups and downs through the years. They have fought separated and gotten back together. However, the worst turn in their relationship may be Knull's arrival on Earth. The symbiote god tore Venom from Eddie's body in a forced separation that neither entity wanted. Venom begged not to be taken away from Eddie but the pleas fell on deaf ears. No longer in need of Eddie, Knull tossed him away to the street below.
Falling from 1,454 in the air, Eddie had a frightening amount of time to think about his impending doom. He tried to reach out to Venom but their long-time link had been closed off. There was nothing he could do, only accept his fate and let gravity do the rest. When his body smashed into a car on the ground, his mind didn't stop falling -- it kept going into Marvel's answer to the Sunken Place in Venom #32.
In King in Black #2, Spider-Man recovered a barely alive Eddie and brought him to the base of the Fantastic Four. After valiant efforts from Mr. Fantastic, and Tony Stark trying to bond Eddie to a symbiote dragon, Eddie's body couldn't take the strain any longer. The heart monitor screeched as he flatlined and Eddie was pronounced dead with his son Dylan by his side.
Venom #32 told the story of what happened to Eddie's consciousness during this time. As his broken body was left on the street, his mind splashed into an abyss of nothingness where he kept falling. He couldn't move, only able to scream silently, worse than his situation when he was falling through the sky. Eddie remembered being in the abyss before but even in those times he could feel his other still, now Venom was beyond his mental reach.
In the 2017 film Get Out, another endless void swallows a man's consciousness. The movie, directed by Jordan Peele, is a horror film about a Black man named Chris Washington who was supposed to be the victim of his white girlfriend and her family. In one disturbing scene, Chris was hypnotized by his girlfriend's mother. When he was paralyzed from her words, she pushed him into what she called the Sunken Place. Chris's body swam in nothing, his vision of reality narrowed until it looked far away, and he had no control of his physical body. Watching helplessly when his eyes were closed without his consent, Chris screamed silently.
Both Eddie and Chris had their minds locked in an abyss where they could not move or be heard. They were completely at the mercy of those around them. That is until they decided to fight back. When Chris's mind was supposed to be locked away forever in the Sunken Place so an old white man could inhabit his body, he broke out of the hypnosis and was able to free himself.
The Sunken Place in Get Out was a metaphor for the oppression and silence experienced by marginalized people in America while the Marvel version is something more literal. Eddie broke out of his fall when he concentrated, braced for impact and landedinto the symbiote Hive. All of the other people's minds, civilians and heroes, hang lifeless and plugged into Knull's network of beings while their bodies parade around with new symbiote counterparts.
After this realization, Eddie was then told that his body had died, his fight was over. Eddie wasn't taking no for an answer and decided that if he could get to Venom, they could still fight Knull if they were together. If Eddie can pull himself out of the Sunken Place, maybe not everything is lost.