Warning: Spoilers for The Amazing Spider-Man #38!The identity of Spider-Man’s latest villain has finally been revealed, and he’s been hiding in plain sight from the very beginning of this new The Amazing Spider-Man run from Zeb Wells. The Re-Possessor (or Re-Po for short) was first introduced a few issues ago as Madelyne Pyror’s right-hand man whom she summoned to retrieve Rek-Rap back to Limbo. During his tenure thus far, he’s held an air of mystery, knowing Spider-Man’s secret identity for unknown reasons.
Now, those reasons are finally revealed in The Amazing Spider-Man #38 by Zeb Wells, Ed McGuinness, Mark Farmer, Wade Von Grawbadger, and Marcio Menyz. The origin story for the menacing and ever-elusive Re-Po is finally revealed during the issue, and to just about everyone’s surprise, he turns out to be a character from Peter Parker’s past, previously seen at the beginning of Wells’ run with the series.
As it turns out, Re-Po is actually a collections agent who appears in the first issue of this latest run of The Amazing Spider-Man. For several issues, the collections agent is seen sitting on Peter Parker’s front stoop and hounding Peter’s friends and relatives in an effort to get Peter to pay his hospital bill debt from his encounter with the U-Foes in Amazing Spider-Man #876. The villain’s identity was almost so obvious, that it was easy for readers to overlook until this point, but it makes perfect sense once all the pieces fall into play.
Re-Po is the Collections Agent
After swallowing Peter whole and sending him to Limbo, Re-Po kidnaps Randy Robertson with the intent of killing him as a part of Peter’s unpaid interest. It’s unclear exactly yet as to where this interest stems from. Even while talking to himself, Re-Po struggles trying to remember his past life. All he knows for sure is that he did this sort of thing many times in his past life and that his memory seems fractured because someone may have taken his soul. “I am an echo of myself, but I remember the violence,” he tells Randy. Before he has a chance to inflict violence, Spider-Man arrives to the rescue in the nick of time.
While trying to make sense of Re-Po’s rambles, Peter finally puts the pieces together: this is the former Gus, the collections agent. The last time readers saw Gus was in The Amazing Spider-Man #14, during the Dark Web arc. He attempts to hound Peter for money again but instead finds his clone, Ben Reilly, who beats him mercilessly before sending him to Madelyne Pryor. She promises Gus that if he eats a piece of fruit from the Tree of Exquisite Liberation, he can go free. He eats it, but then she elaborates that it’s his soul that will be free seconds before his body collapses, and she inhales his soul. What’s left of him has become Re-Po.
Spider-Man’s New Villain Adds New Context to Dark Web
There have been other hints that Re-Po is actually Gus. Right before Gus eats the fruit in The Amazing Spider-Man #14, Madelyne mentions that Gus has been “a naughty boy” and that he keeps “special tools” in his attic. Not only does this hint at Gus’ dark and violent nature, but the attic later comes into play in this most recent storyline. It’s in this attic that Rek-Rap finds clues that lead him to Peter Parker.
More than anything, this revelation adds new context to the ramifications hinted at during that Dark Web arc. During the arc, after New York is sucked into Limbo, Ben Reilly tries to tempt Peter to bite a piece of the tree’s fruit if he wants to bring everything back to normal. After seeing what happened to Gus at the time, readers may have assumed that the fruit was a means for Peter to sacrifice himself so that everyone could go home, but now it is apparent that eating the fruit does more than just kill the eater. As it does with Spider-Man’s new villain, it turns them into a monster and a servant of Limbo.
