After a long wait, Carnage‘s original host finally returns to bond back with Marvel’s most bloodthirsty symbiote. First and early hosts play a key role in shaping a symbiote’s identity and skills, as they imprint permanent personality traits onto the alien organism, whether they like it or not. The Venom symbiote famously inherited its wall-crawling and organic webbing directly from its brief bond with Peter Parker, and his union with Eddie Brock filled him with resentment and a twisted sense of honor. The Carnage symbiote’s sadistic bloodlust and penchant for forming jagged bladed weapons are direct reflections of its first host, Cletus Kasady.
Currently, Jessica Drew is Carnage’s permanent host. After the original Cletus Kasady burned up during atmospheric reentry and was briefly reanimated by a cult of Knull, Eddie Brock killed him during Absolute Carnage, leaving Kasady’s consciousness trapped inside the symbiote hive-mind while Carnage pursued godhood. Carnage later sculpted a clone of Cletus Kasady out of biomass at Ryker’s Island and infused it with the original killer’s memories and mind. However, following Venom War, Carnage chose to search for different hosts, starting with Eddie Brock and then hopping across other characters like Spider-Girl, Norman Osborn, and Spider-Woman.
But similarly to Venom’s reunion with Eddie Brock in 2026’s Venom , Cletus Kasady’s return was all but inevitable.
Cletus Kasady Returns To Reclaim Carnage
Spider-Woman ; Written By Dan Watters; Art By Andrea Boccardo And Mattia Iacono
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Jessica Drew’s new series, Spider-Woman , sees the titular Avenger harness Carnage’s strength and bloodthirst to intimidate villains like Tombstone and pursue a mysterious murderer. Despite her own strength and her impressive willpower, Spider-Woman needs to make a conscious effort to keep Carnage at bay, with methods like lighting up candles in order to remind the symbiote of his biggest weakness. As Jessica investigates the Hangman, Cletus Kasady walks through the city’s alleys, sporting a hoodie and a twisted smile, and swearing to reunite with his symbiote sooner rather than later.
Eddie Brock struggled to control Carnage in his own solo series Eddie Brock: Carnage, as well as in The New Avengers‘ titular team and in Spider-Man’s war against Torment, during which he lost the symbiote. However, Eddie had enough time to focus on reining in Carnage’s hunger all along. After claiming Carnage in order to protect the Spider-Versity and prevent Norman Osborn’s Red Goblin form from wreaking havoc, Jessica Drew is now the unlucky Carnage host that will have to deal with Cletus Kasady himself on top of taking responsibility for the symbiote.
Cletus Kasady’s Contrived Returns Are Begging His Live-Action Counterpart To Follow Suit
Cletus Kasady Is Among The Easiest Marvel Movie Villains To Bring Back
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Even though Woody Harrelson’s live-action portrayal of Cletus Kasady met an apparently definitive end when Venom bit his head off in Venom: Let There Be Carnage, the comics have established quite clearly that physical death is barely an inconvenience for Kasady. Throughout the years, Cletus has survived being ripped in half in deep space by the Sentry, burning up entirely, and being torn to bits. And yet, since Carnage is bonded with Kasady’s bloodstream on a molecular level and has achieved godhood, there’s simply no definitive way to get rid of the red symbiote and its cruel human host for good.
A single microscopic drop of the Carnage symbiote left behind in the cathedral, or a lingering genetic imprint inside Eddie Brock’s own system, is more than enough to retain a complete copy of Cletus Kasady’s twisted mind and rebuild his physical form from scratch in the Sony Spider-Man Universe or in the MCU. Both Spider-Man: No Way Home and Venom: The Last Dance‘s post-credits scenes left the door open for the symbiotes’ eventual return. Hence, Marvel Studios and Sony have countless possible ways they could bring back Venom and Carnage as many times as their comic book counterparts.
What do you think about Cletus Kasady’s latest return?
Spider-Woman is now available from Marvel Comics
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