A second trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day has landed online, giving us an even better look at Tom Holland’s fourth solo adventure in the MCU. For one thing, we get confirmation of what pretty much everyone was expecting – Holland’s Spidey is fighting Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk this time around. But perhaps even more crucially, the trailer provides more evidence to support the biggest rumor surrounding the film. It sure looks as though Sadie Sink is playing Jean Grey.
But what role is Jean playing in Brand New Day? Is she a major villain, as the trailer would have us believe, or is this footage being intentionally misleading? Let’s break down what we know and the most important details revealed in the trailer.
Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey Revealed?
From the moment she was first announced to be joining the Brand New Day cast, Marvel fans have been furiously speculating about the identity of Sadie Sink’s mystery character. Who is this Stranger Things veteran playing? Is she a new love interest for Peter Parker? A major new MCU hero or villain? Some combination of the two?
The various theories and rumors have pointed to Sink playing everyone from Gwen Stacy to Shathra to a different version of Mary Jane Watson. However, over the months, one rumor has grown to supplant all the others. The Internet is utterly convinced at this point that Sink is playing iconic X-Man Jean Grey. And based on this trailer, it’s really starting to look as though this rumor is correct.
Granted, we still haven’t gotten a great look at Sink in either trailer. Here, she does most of her talking through other people, and what little we see of her is mostly Sink wearing a hoodie and opting for the stealthy approach. But it’s becoming pretty clear that Spidey is butting heads with a telepath who can hijack the minds of everyone around her. Sink’s character even says to Spidey (through one of her proxies), “You’re the only person I can’t jump into.” Something about his unique and rapidly evolving biology makes Peter impervious to Jean’s psychic powers.
If this is Jean, it’s obviously a much different take on her than we’ve seen in previous incarnations of the Marvel Universe. She doesn’t seem to be involved with the X-Men. As far as we know, Earth-616 still has no X-Men to speak of, and likely won’t until director Jake Schreier’s X-Men reboot hits after Avengers: Secret Wars.
Instead, this character is a fugitive on the run and a new, antagonistic figure in Peter’s life. Her strong moral code doesn’t seem to be in place yet, as she thinks nothing of taking over the bodies of civilians around her and even forcing Banner to transform into the Hulk. But assuming this is Jean, is she an outright villain in Brand New Day?
Is Jean the Main Villain of Brand New Day?
The trailer certainly wants us to think so. It downplays the many villains confirmed to be appearing in the film (Michael Mando’s Scorpion, Marvin Jones III’s Tombstone, Boomerang) in favor of focusing on Peter, Banner, and… OK, let’s just call her Jean for now. At one point, we see Jean take control of an entire city block of people. We also see her seemingly break into Banner’s mind and force him to transform, cuing up the epic throwdown between Hulk and Spider-Man. That all seems like supervillain behavior to us.
That being said, we get the distinct impression that the trailer is intentionally misdirecting us where Jean is concerned. It’s odd enough that Marvel is opting to introduce one of the core X-Men characters in a Spider-Man sequel of all things. Why would they then proceed to position Jean as a villain and rob the future MCU X-Men of one of their most valuable members? Something else is going on here.
We doubt Sink’s Jean is a villain so much as misunderstood. This is a version of the character who seemingly has no relationship with Charles Xavier or the X-Men. She’s dealing with her burgeoning new psychic powers and probably struggling to understand what’s happening to her.
Jean may even be a fugitive from the law. We briefly see Tramell Tillman’s character in the trailer, a man heavily rumored to be working for the Department of Damage Control. As we saw in the recent Wonder Man series, Damage Control has been tasked with rounding up and imprisoning rogue superhumans. If the MCU is beginning to deal with the advent of mutants, then Damage Control is likely the agency charged with rounding up these walking, ticking time bombs.
Jean could very likely be on the run from Damage Control, forcing her to resort to desperate measures and ethical compromises to stay one step ahead of her pursuers. Another rumor suggests that Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle is actively protecting her in the film. We don’t see any evidence of that in the trailers, but it would make sense. As Punisher: One Last Kill recently reminded us, the otherwise stony-hearted Frank has a soft spot for troubled girls who remind him of his late daughter.
Yes, Sink’s Jean looks to be an antagonistic force in Peter’s life. He’s surely not going to appreciate having to fight Hulk all by his lonesome. But, ultimately, we doubt Jean is a true villain in Brand New Day. She’s just someone trying her best to survive in a world that hates and fears her. And with any luck, some of Peter’s influence will rub off on her, paving the way for the more heroic Jean Grey we know and love.
Besides, Brand New Day has plenty of overt villains to play with without needing Jean Grey to fill that role. Once Spidey finishes chasing after a body-hopping psychic and trading blows with the Strongest Avenger, he’s going to have to unravel a conspiracy that involves the Hand, Scorpion, Tombstone, and other, more traditional Spider-Man villains.
Spider-Man’s Organic Webshooters
One other major detail confirmed in the second trailer is the fact that Peter will gain organic webshooters in the film. No more will he need to rely on his mechanical contraptions to swing around New York City. Though, as we see in the trailer, that mutation comes at a heavy price.
The concept of Spider-Man having organic webshooters dates back to the classic Sam Raimi movies, which gave Tobey Maguire’s Peter built-in webs rather than taking the time to explain how he invented this signature Spidey tool. Marvel quickly adapted that idea for its comic book universe, replacing Peter’s mechanical webshooters for organic ones for several years in the mid-’00s.
As we can clearly see, the advent of the organic webshooters is a symptom of a larger problem for Holland’s Peter. His body is mutating uncontrollably. We still don’t know much about Spidey’s actual origin story in the MCU, but presumably he was still bitten by a radioactive spider like most versions of the character. The same incident that gave him enhanced strength and agility is now further transforming him into a human/spider hybrid.
It’s probably no coincidence that this physical transformation is happening at the same time that Peter’s mind is in great turmoil. He’s basically alone in the world, having lost Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May and sacrificed his friendships with Jacob Batalon’s Ned and Zendaya’s MJ. Peter Parker is an entity who barely exists any longer, and now he seems to be becoming more spider than man.
This is what brings Ruffalo’s Banner into the picture. Banner is currently a professor at Empire State University (Peter’s alma mater in the comics), and Peter turns to him for his expertise in uncontrollable mutation. This probably also ties into the debut of Sink’s Jean, who knows a thing or two about mutation herself.
This may hint that Jean is ultimately meant to be a positive force in Peter’s life. Her psychic powers could be the key to unifying Peter’s mind and body and helping him regain control of his malfunctioning powers. In the process, the film may foreshadow Jean’s own internal struggles and her ultimate destiny as Phoenix.
How Jacob Batalon’s Ned and Zendaya’s MJ Fit In
2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home ends on a very bittersweet note. Peter is coming to terms with the effects of Doctor Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) spell, which has just wiped the knowledge of Spider-Man’s secret identity from every brain in the world. Peter briefly reunites with Ned and MJ as they prepare to go off to college, but he opts to leave rather than attempt to remind his old friends of the bond they used to share.
Years later, Peter is still struggling to move on. We see him living vicariously through Ned’s YouTube videos, clinging from afar to two friends who no longer remember he exists. Ned and MJ, meanwhile, are preparing to leave college behind and embrace a Brand New Day of their own.
As we saw in the first trailer, Peter is finally going to work up the courage to confront his old friends by crashing one of their parties. There, he’ll encounter MJ’s new boyfriend (Eman Esfandi), a character rumored to be either Paul Rabin from the comics or potentially Boomerang.
But in the second trailer, we learn that Ned seems to cling to some echo of his friendship with Peter. We see that he’s deeply obsessed with Spider-Man and seems to be trying his best to work out the wallcrawler’s true identity. There’s a fun little Easter egg where Ned’s collage board references a character named Carlos Rodriguez, a minor villain from Marvel’s Young X-Men comic.
As for MJ, it appears that she’s going to be unwittingly dragged into Spider-Man’s orbit again. For some reason, MJ winds up in the crosshairs of whatever enemy Spidey is facing (Damage Control? The Hand?), and he’s desperate to protect her. That, in turn, forces him to turn to the Punisher for help. Good thing Frank has that aforementioned protective streak.
The question here is whether Ned and MJ will have their memories restored by the end of the film. In the comics, after Peter restored his secret identity in the wake of 2006’s Civil War, the rule was that anyone to whom he unmasked would remember what happened. Is there a similar rule in place in the MCU? Or could Jean Grey be the key to unlocking their suppressed memories? We’ll find out when Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters on July 31.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
