Who are the villains of Venom?

In 2018, Venom received his own solo movie. Tom Hardy took on the role of Eddie Brock/Venom to usher in a new era for the character.

While the critical response to the movie was mixed, Venom was a financial hit and introduced audiences to a (sort of) Spider-Man spin-off movie, without Spider-Man. And because Spider-Man was not featured in the film, Venom was not depicted as the bad guy of the picture, but rather as an anti-hero trying to find his place in the world.

But you can’t have a Venom movie without villains, and as such a number of adversaries were included in the film. But who are they? Who are the villains of Venom?

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Carlton Drake

The first villain in Venom is Carlton Drake, the head of a bio-engineering company known as The Life Foundation. When Drake is first introduced in the movie it is established that he is working on illegal and immoral human trails in his research.

Eddie Brock confronts Drake about his work, but is unable to expose the procedures that take place at The Life Foundation. Undeterred, Drake continues his work, exposing humans to symbiotes – extra-terrestrial organisms that are parasitic by nature.

Drake only cares about his work and demonstrates a complete disregard for human life.

In Venom, Carlton Drake is played by Riz Ahmed.

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Riot

The second villain of the film is Riot – a symbiote with an agenda. Riot comes from a planet of symbiotes and he wants nothing more than to bring more of his race to Earth, to feed off human hosts.

To achieve his goals, Riot bonds with Carlton Drake. Drake has the resources to help Riot, as well as the complete disinterest in humanity.

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Cletus Kasady

The final villain in Venom is Cletus Kasady. The character appears during a post credit sequence.

Kasady is an inmate at San Quentin Prison. He is a serial killer who requests to speak to Eddie Brock, in order to tell his story.

Contained within a small cage, which is housed behind bars, and within a locked room, Kasady speaks to Eddie. Highlighting the threat he poses to anyone he comes into contact with, Kasady says: “When I get out of here, and I will, there’s gonna be carnage.”

In Spider-Man comics, Kasady bonds with a symbiote to become the villainous, Carnage. Kasady’s appearance in Venom is to foreshadow his transformation into the character.

In Venom, Cassidy is played by Woody Harrelson.

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Recap

The villains featured in Venom are:

• Carlton Drake
• Riot
• Kletus Cassidy

In addition to the above villains, Venom also introduces two unnamed symbiotes. The Life Foundation is responsible for bringing four symbiotes to Earth – Venom, Riot and these two unnamed symbiotes.

One of the symbiotes is credited as ‘blue’. In the comics, the blue symbiote is called Mayhem.

Another symbiote that appears in Venom is yellow in colour. In the comics, the yellow symbiote is Phage.

Regardless of their similarity to symbiotes from the comics, for the purposes of Venom, these are simply two additional symbiotes that are part of the story.

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I hope the information in this post has proved useful. For further details about the Spider-Man movie series, please take a look around Don’t Tell Harry – The Spider-Man movies blog, or click on one of the recommended reads below.

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• Is Venom a sequel to Spider-Man 3?
• Who is Venom in the Spider-Man movies?
• What happened to The Amazing Spider-Man 3?