This article contains major spoilers for *Spider-Man: Brand New Day*. Proceed at your own risk.
Let's start with the suit. In previous Tom Holland Spider-Man films, Peter Parker rocked a nanotech, almost armor-like costume. This time around, director Destin Daniel Cretton has him swap back to a minimalist, fabric-based suit—one that feels a lot closer to the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield eras. This wasn't just a wardrobe department whim; it's a snapshot of the whole film's tone. In this week's Tap In, GQ columnist Frazier Tharpe describes it as the first time Holland's Peter Parker actually feels like "the Peter we know"—broke, heartbroken, stuck in a rut, and still grieving a father figure. Great power, great responsibility, and absolutely zero luck with women.
The film puts Peter and MJ's relationship front and center, and the chemistry between Holland and Zendaya carries the weight of it. Jon Bernthal's Punisher is a surprisingly fun addition to the mix. As for the romance arc that audiences already saw coming, the film does deliver exactly what you'd expect—but it's the mystery character thread that turns out to be where the real depth is buried.
Sadie Sink Is Jean Grey
Before Steve Lacy accidentally spilled the beans on the red carpet, Sink's role was already Hollywood's worst-kept secret. Midway through the film, it's confirmed: she's playing Jean Grey, marking the character's third big-screen incarnation, following Famke Janssen and Sophie Turner's turns in Fox's X-Men films.
This version of Jean Grey's powers center on mind control—as teased in the trailer, she can mentally jump into other people's bodies and control them, with the film establishing a range limit of 33 feet. In the comics, Jean Grey is classified as an Omega-level mutant, the highest tier on the scale, so this 33-foot cap feels more like the movie holding back for now rather than a hard limit. She's also the protagonist of the classic comic arc "Phoenix Saga," in which she becomes host to a near-omnipotent, cosmic-level entity that ultimately consumes her—a storyline already adapted twice, in 2006's *X-Men: The Last Stand* and 2019's *Dark Phoenix*. Whether Marvel goes back to that well a third time remains to be seen.
In the film, Jean is initially set up as a villain, thanks to a lie fabricated by Department of Damage Control (DODC) director Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman), who manipulates Spider-Man into taking his side. The real story: Metzger has kidnapped Jean's sister Sara, planning to exploit her mind-control powers for nefarious ends. Once Spider-Man rescues Sara, Jean drops her hostility. Her last appearance in the film has her boarding a bus headed upstate New York—home to Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, aka X-Men headquarters. The film reveals that the sisters' parents abandoned them because of their powers, leaving Jean to fend for herself until she forms a bond with Spider-Man.
Worth noting: even though *Avengers: Doomsday* will feature X-Men mainstays like Deadpool and Wolverine, Sink's Jean Grey is the first classic X-Men character to be officially recast within the MCU proper. That said, she's not the universe's first canonical mutant—that title belongs to Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), who discovers her mutant powers in the finale of her own series. The film even sneaks in a guitar riff from *X-Men '97*, a not-so-subtle nod to Marvel's long-term plans for the character.
Now that Jean Grey's casting is confirmed, expect the rest of the new X-Men lineup to start rolling out soon. The reboot, directed by *The Thunderbolts** filmmaker Jake Schreier and written by Lee Sung Jin (*Beef*) and Joanna Calo (*The Bear*), was conspicuously absent from Marvel's big Comic-Con announcements last week. With Sink's role now out in the open, the full cast could be revealed at Disney's D23 event, running August 14–16. So far, the only confirmed detail is that Cooper Hoffman, previously rumored for Cyclops, is not playing the role. Other rumored casting includes Cailee Spaeny as a possible Rogue, Charles Melton as a possible Beast, and Adam Driver as a possible Mister Sinister. Sink herself is also rumored to appear in *Avengers: Secret Wars*.
The Post-Credits Scene: Where Did Spider-Man Go?
One of the best running gags in *Brand New Day* is the tracking app Ned (Jacob Batalon) built specifically to keep tabs on Spider-Man's whereabouts. After the credits roll, we cut back to this 16-bit-style interface—and it shows Spider-Man's coordinates have jumped from Earth to somewhere out in deep space.
This isn't the first time Spider-Man has left the planet—he already caught a ride to space with Doctor Strange and Iron Man back in *Avengers: Infinity War*. The difference here is that this time he's just drifting in space with no clear destination in sight. Given that Holland hasn't been confirmed as part of the sprawling *Doomsday* cast (unless there's a surprise reveal waiting), this stinger feels more like setup for *Doomsday*'s sequel, *Secret Wars*. In the source comic event by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić, Marvel's heroes find themselves stranded on a patchwork world stitched together after an "incursion"—a collision between parallel universes. Why Earth still exists, and why Spider-Man specifically got zapped into space, remains unexplained for now. The stinger closes with a title card reading "Spider-Man will return," so we shouldn't have to wait long for answers.
