Woody Harrelson has officially hung up his wig and fake goatee, telling interviewers he's closing the book on his Marvel era after "Venom: The Last Dance." The man played Cletus Kasady, aka Carnage, for roughly eleven minutes of screen time across two movies, and he's decided that's plenty.
In fairness, Harrelson has been doing the "confused famous guy in a comic book movie" bit since 2018, and the character never got to do much beyond look menacing in a prison jumpsuit.
Sony spent two films building toward Carnage and then remembered they had to wrap everything up before the license expired.
Here's the thing nobody wants to admit: Harrelson is 63 years old and has quietly assembled one of the strangest careers in Hollywood.
He went from bartender on "Cheers" to Oscar-nominated dramatic actor to the guy who shows up in a mid-budget comedy for three scenes and steals the whole thing.
He also lives in Hawaii and grows his own vegetables, which is either admirable or deeply suspicious depending on your mood.
Half of Twitter acted like he personally insulted their grandmother.
The other half pointed out that Tom Hardy's Venom movies made roughly a billion dollars each while being objectively unhinged, which is the most American sentence ever written.
What's funny is that Harrelson isn't even being dramatic about it.
He just said he's done, which is what any reasonable person would say after filming a movie where the climactic battle involves fighting an alien symbiote god in the desert.
At some point you look at your call sheet and ask yourself what you're doing with your life.
This is the part where Reddit will tell you he's "based" for walking away, and honestly, the comment section might be right for once.
The superhero industrial complex keeps casting beloved character actors as villains, giving them four lines and a CGI monster suit, then acting surprised when they don't want to come back for the sequel.
It's a business model built on disrespect, and everyone keeps signing up anyway.
Meanwhile, Harrelson will probably go do another season of "True Detective" or show up in some A24 film about a depressed beekeeper and get nominated for something.
That's the Harrelson guarantee—not that he'll deliver a franchise, but that he'll be interesting in whatever random thing he chooses next.
The man also once tried to choke a reporter, so maybe let's not canonize him just yet.
The real loser here is Sony, which now has to figure out what to do with a Spider-Man villain universe that keeps losing its marquee names.
Morbius got memed so hard the studio re-released it and it flopped twice.
At this point they should just let Woody Harrelson direct one and see what happens.
It couldn't be worse, and it would definitely be weirder.
So yeah, the guy who played a red alien murderer in a movie about a journalist who becomes a black alien murderer is moving on.
Go water your kale. **The Take:** Harrelson walking away from a franchise that never knew what to do with him is less a betrayal and more a public service announcement.
Hollywood keeps treating character actors like props, and eventually the props get tired.
Final Thoughts
If more actors said "no thanks" to four-line villain roles, we'd get better movies and fewer post-credits scenes teasing things that never happen.