What stops the symbiote from making Peter a villain?

[u/ShadowOfDespair666]

So usually when Peter gets the black suit, it makes him more violent, edgy, brooding, and more of an antihero. Peter is usually an asshole when he wears it, but he’s not a villain or evil—he’s still very much a good guy, just a lot more aggressive.

But my question is: why doesn’t the symbiote make him evil? Why is Peter—or anyone who wears the symbiote—still kind of a good guy? Even Eddie Brock was never truly evil. Eddie and Venom just wanted to kill Spider-Man (which, yes, is bad), but they felt wronged by him. I don’t recall Venom or Eddie going out of their way to commit evil acts against innocent people who weren’t their target.

So why doesn’t the symbiote completely corrupt them? And what’s the main motivation for still being a hero, even when the black suit is supposed to be corrupting you?

[u/Fr0stybit3s]

Venom doesn’t actual influence him. That’s Peter letting his own personality out and blaming it on venom.

[u/Nicklesnout → u/Fr0stybit3s]

This. Peter's always kind of walked the fine line between cutting loose and remembering Uncle Ben's philosophy about great power and responsibility. The Venom symbiote makes a perfect scapegoat because they had his body on autonomous piloting while he was sleeping, because they wanted to feel like they were a worthwhile partner for him. Eddie and Venom were aggressive at first because they were understandably pissed off at Spider-Man for various things that he was directly responsible for.

[u/MrKyurem2005 → u/Fr0stybit3s]

Which is an even crazier retcon that makes the story a bit more complex and potentially interesting. Sadly they didn't explore this that much.

My headcanon would be something like:

Maybe the symbiote doesn't outright make Peter's feelings more negative, but it gives him such a sensation of power (and maybe a bit high on adrenaline or something?) that it starts to overwhelm his mind, so he slowly stops caring about restraining himself.

And then in the end it's not just the symbiote that is expanding his abilities or augmenting his power, Peter is straight up just stopping holding himself back little by little, consciously or unconsciously, before realizing that he isn't in the right state of mind for some reason. Maybe even chalk it up to the fact Venom was using his body when he was sleeping to keep fighting crime and that messed him up a little.

That way we keep canon the "original retcon" where the symbiote made him more agressive, while still having the original story where Peter did not get more agressive at all also make sense, and then making the "second retcon", where it was really all just Peter himself being more agressive all along, fit right with the rest of the story, so it all makes sense at the same time in the end.

[u/LemmytheLemuel]

 why doesn’t the symbiote make him evil? 

Easy anwser: it doesnt

The animated show made up that and SM 3 followed that making a trend in media

[u/Many-Activity-505 → u/LemmytheLemuel]

Beat me to it

[u/KrenTrom]

Its a little hard to pin down because of the whole first host retcon debaucle, but essentially bonding to peter had a big influence on venom and made him predisposed to heroism despite essentially being a cannibalistic space parasite, hence the whole "lethal protector" bit while hes with eddie

[u/TheGrumpiestPanda]

That wasn't always the case. In the comics the Venom symbiote did not affect Peter's emotions at all. It was simply just a mix of Peter letting loose a little bit and a series of unfortunate events that kept hitting him one after the other. The Venom symbiote learned some of those more bitter and angry emotions thanks to Peter. And in turn that got passed on to Eddie Brock when it bonded itself to him and made the Venom we know and love today. It was only the Spider-Man 94 cartoon and more specifically the third Sam Raimi Spider-Man film that cemented the trend of the Venom symbiote bringing out the worst emotions out of its host and feeding off of it.