Tom Rothman revealed in June 2017 that Carnage would make his first big-screen appearance in Venom. This move might appear to be a bit rushed, since it’s the first Venom movie, and first movies are traditionally used to establish a character rather than have him immediately face a highly dangerous foe. Of course, Rothman didn't mention the scope of Carnage's role.

Following Rothman’s reveal, the studio announced that Riz Ahmed would have an unspecified role in the Ruben Fleischer film. At that point, everyone assumed Ahmed would play Carnage. That is, until we learned that he was cast as Dr. Carlton Drake (leader of the Life Foundation).

Since that time, we’ve had no official confirmation that Cletus Kasady would appear in Venom. Fans naturally assumed that Carnage was dropped from the film. This would have surprised no one, since with the involvement of the Life Foundation, Venom is likely to face other Symbiotes.

It was also revealed that Venom is based on the Planet of Symbiotes stories, so the loss of Carnage wouldn't have been a major hardship.

Most recently, Tom Hardy took to Instagram to tease the supervillain, although he almost instantly deleted his post. Fortunately, a very quick individual was able to capture a screenshot:

Based on the post, it appears that Carnage may have a more important role in Venom than Rothman first intimated. But why did Hardy delete his post? Was the studio saving the reveal for later? Or did the studio want to avoid having fans read too much into something that had nothing to do with the movie?

What do you think?

Venom will be released on October 5, 2018.