Marvel has tons of iconic and memorable villains, but few are as sadistic as Cletus Kasady aka Carnage, an absolutely deranged serial killer who doesn’t care who he kills. All he wants is mass death, and to achieve this he’s tried to end the world several times. With a villain this wickedly evil, it wouldn’t be absurd to assume there was no redemption for him, but one of Marvel’s darkest possible futures showed that Cletus Kasady could be saved.
The dark timeline where Cletus finds his unlikely redemption is first seen in Venom #28 by Donny Cates, Juan Gedeon, Jesus Aburtov, and Clayton Cowles. This story finds Eddie Brock and Dylan Brock ending up stranded in a possible future where a mysterious villain named Codex has taken over the world, infecting everyone with symbiotes.
There’s a resistance fighting against Codex’s rule, and it’s made up of a bunch of unlikely members. The group includes Peter Parker, Wade Wilson, Andi Benton, and most concerningly, Cletus Kasady. While Eddie is apprehensive of Cletus being on the team, the team leader assures Eddie that Cletus is cured and one of her best agents.
Carnage Is Completely Cured In This Dark Future
There are few villains in Marvel that match the pure horror of Carnage. He’s managed to come back from the grave several times and has a body count that officially numbers somewhere between the tens of thousands and the hundreds of thousands. Because of this, most people in the Marvel Universe have completely given up on Cletus, viewing him as little more than a rabid animal that’s only out to hurt people. But Marvel’s darkest timeline proved this doesn’t have to be the case. When the world is taken over by symbiotes, Cletus is able to rise up as a hero, and it takes surprisingly little to do it.
All it takes for Carnage to become an unlikely hero is an expert on symbiotes and some time with a few scientists. The fact Annie doesn’t bring up any doctors implies that Cletus’ issue isn’t entirely mental, but more due to his relationship with the symbiote he uses. While Cletus was a serial killer before he got the symbiote, there’s no denying he became much worse after he got it. One of the characters Annie points out as having helped is Rex Strickland, who is a symbiote himself. It’s likely with Rex training and mentoring Cletus, he would finally be able to get into a more healthy mindset and control himself and his darker urges.
Venom and Carnage Team Up As Heroes
The symbiotes are shown to be capable of healing and erasing memories. Instead of Carnage’s symbiote feeding his worst impulses, with Rex’s help, it might very well have healed Cletus’ mind. This shows that no matter what awful things Cletus has done, he’s not entirely without hope. This is especially important, since it seems killing Cletus doesn’t work. Cletus has been killed several times and always comes back, even worse than before. It took Marvel’s darkest timeline to prove that it isn’t violence that’ll fix Carnage, it’s compassion.
