Sony has released Morbius in theaters, and we, as a society, have to live with it. Taking place in the same universe as the two Venom movies, Morbius is about Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) searching for a cure for his blood disease and accidentally turning himself into a “living” vampire. He’s a vampire in the sense that he thirsts for blood and has fangs, but sunlight and other weaknesses don’t appear to be part of his lore. Things start to pick up when his best friend Milo (Matt Smith), who also suffers from the same disease, undergoes the same treatment and embraces being a quasi-vampire with tons of camp. This gives Morbius something to do other than mope, and the film rushes us through its finale. While the final 10 minutes seem to go through the usual motions, one cliffhanger comes completely out of left field. Morbius’ love interest Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona) goes from fridged to unfridged, rising from the dead, and adding more questions to how this whole man-made vampire logic even works.
How Morbius Kills Milo
By slaying both his father figure Emil Nikols (Jared Harris) and Martine Bancroft, Milo goads Morbius into a final battle. He would rather they go around enjoying their newfound power and munch on whoever gets in their way, but since he harbors some jealousy of his lifelong friend and nobody seems to be taking his side on the whole, “Let’s just go around, casually killing people for the sake of being gods,” idea, they might as well just have a big fight with Street Fighter 4 CGI brush stroke effects thrown in. With Morbius seemingly outmatched, he called upon countless bats from the sewers to aid him. This is actually foreshadowed a bit throughout the movie. Morbius was shown to be accepted by all the vampire bats in his lab, and Milo’s presence always drove them away, even after his transformation. Using his sonar ability to pick out Milo mid-attack, Morbius did a double-palm strike that knocked Milo into a wall and had the swarming bats hold him still. Morbius then administered a serum poisonous to both vampire bats and humans into Milo’s chest. Milo seemed betrayed and saddened by this, but ultimately accepted his death. As for Milo’s goons…they just stopped existing. It’s the strangest thing. They established that he had a bunch of ominous henchmen that he won in a poker bet. They were there when he was watching the news, but then they vanished from the movie completely. Maybe he ate them when we weren’t looking.
What Does Morbius Do Now?
While planning on his big fight with Milo, Morbius created a second batch of the poisonous serum for the sake of committing suicide. Even though Morbius is world famous for creating artificial blood, that has only been a temporary solution from the very beginning and its effectiveness has been gradually whittling down. Afraid that he will soon be left with no option but to either feed on the living or painfully die from thirst, Morbius saw the vampire-killing serum as a better way out. Some kind of bat…mobil– no, never mind.
What Martine Bancroft Becoming a Vampire Means
Outside of the post-credits stuff, the big cliffhanger is the fate of Martine Bancroft. While Morbius was busy watching Dr. Emil Nicholas die, Milo tracked down Bancroft, kidnapped her, and mortally wounded her as a way of getting Morbius’ attention. Morbius has a final moment with Bancroft, kissing her (with Bancroft biting his lip and ingesting some of his blood), and seemingly fed on her to give him that extra boost for the big final fight. In the final seconds of the movie, however, Bancroft wakes up, revealing that she too is now a vampire. Perhaps Morbius’ bite had the usual vampire/zombie logic where if you don’t fully devour somebody, you instead infect them to become the same. Maybe it was her tasting his blood in her final moments that did it. A vampire baptism, as it is called in Bram Stoker’s Dracula after the Mina Harker character also tastes of a vampire’s blood. Either way, Martine Bancroft is another creature of the night, which is fantastic, because somebody needs to watch her cat. In the comics, where Bancroft was Morbius’ long-suffering love interest, she had a similar fate. Early on, she was briefly transformed into a vampire, but Morbius was able to reverse the effects before they were permanent. Years later, Bancroft was murdered and Morbius, broken over her death, used the Darkhold (the same cursed book from WandaVision) to resurrect her. It backfired and Bancroft was possessed by a demon. Even though Bancroft was exorcized, she was still never the same. Emotionally, she was cold and bitter that Morbius’ existence would not let her experience any peace, even in death. Eventually, she went mad and had herself turned into a true vampire, figuring that at least that way, she and Morbius could be together forever. She was unable to control her thirst for blood though, and in the end Morbius had to stake her in the heart in order to prevent her from feeding on Spider-Man.
