The 5 Main Takeaways After Watching Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Superhero movie doubters might need to brush up on their Mark Twain, as reports of this genre’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

It’s slightly mind-boggling to even type this, but Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the fourth standalone outing for Tom Holland’s affable web-slinger, is one of the best movies in the history of the MCU. 

Over the next few days and weeks, we’ll be digging deep into Brand New Day’s various plotlines, Easter eggs and darker corners to find all the little things we might have missed at first glance—and to ponder what it all means for Peter, Jean Grey, the X-Men and the MCU going forward. For now, these are my five key takeaways, and if you've yet to get your tickets, please be aware there will be major spoilers ahead.

1. Spider-Man: Brand New Day Is Surprisingly Great

Not to be all “reports are saying it’s one of the best MCU movies ever made”, but Brand New Day really is—and easily the best and freshest MCU entry since Avengers: Endgame.

Shang-Chi director Dustin Daniel Cretton’s first entry into the Spidey franchise manages to mix the humour, emotion and charm of the first Tom Holland-led trilogy with the heft, muscle and forward momentum we usually associate with Batman-era Nolan. As a result, Brand New Day feels earthbound, intimate and gritty, and with emotional stakes that feel somehow much higher than the “fate of the world” stuff we’ve gotten used to. 

Given the background of Brand New Day (in case you also forgot, none of Peter’s loved ones remembers who he is) and Cretton’s own background in indie movies (like Short Term 12), the most affecting emotional scenes probably shouldn’t come as such a surprise, but the phenomenal action sequences genuinely do. 

The tank chase at the start could easily be passed off as a sequence from The Dark Knight Rises, and Cretton has nailed the weightless excitement of the fight scenes. Crucially, he’s also not forgotten to make the web-slinging feel fast, vertigo-inducing, and dangerous. I saw the movie in the wraparound Screen X format, and I’m already searching for an even bigger cinema for my second viewing. 

2. Sadie Sink is Both Jean Grey and the Villain (Sort Of)

As basically everybody had already guessed, the hooded villain played by Sadie Sink in the trailer is none other than Jean Grey (collective gasp!). The powerful and potentially dangerous telepath is now officially the first member of the X-Men (although that term is never mentioned—nor, unless I’m mistaken, is “mutant”) to appear in the MCU proper. 

The character is revealed in the second act and only through the people she is using as vessels up until that point. During that early period, the character is positioned as Brand New Day’s central villain, but after Sink/Jean finally comes on screen, she’s re-revealed as a kind of antihero.  

As we quickly learn, the Jean Grey of Brand New Day is out to avenge her sister Sara, another telepath who was captured by an organisation called Damage Control, who you may remember most recently from Wonder Man. As it turns out, Jean has only been using her powers and causing havoc to save her. 

3. The Big Bad Is Actually Damage Control

As you quickly start to notice, Damage Control is a much shadier operation than Peter seems to realise: when he visits their offices early on, he learns that they’ve been using some kind of genetic suppressant to turn enemies like The Hand into useful assets—which kind of seems like a red flag, Peter, no?

Either way, Peter eventually discovers that the organisation, which is led by Bill Metzker (Tramell Tillman), has been trying to map Jean’s sister’s telekinetic powers using a huge, Cerebro-like machine—likely to recreate them as a tool or weapon. 

As keen-eyed X-Men fans will spot, Metzker is also the name of an anti-mutant activist in the comics, so don’t be surprised if Tillman returns in the upcoming X-Men reboot to fill that classic rabid anti-mutant role—the one that Brian Cox’s William Stryker used to do so well. 

4. The Mutants Are Here

At long last, the shiny, techy, Stark-powered era of the MCU is over, and a new, gnarly, and slightly creepy mutant era has begun. 

This goes for Grey’s introduction, of course—not least the occasionally off-putting and horror-coded way that she turns people into human poppets—but also in how Peter’s body and his relationship with the arachnid DNA start to change, too. At first, this means getting rid of his tech and getting back to training, as if from day one (hence the title), but it also means that he has to try to suppress the transformations, which are too volatile for him to control at the beginning. 

This all effectively raises the movie’s central question about whether it is right to suppress natural or primal things, however dangerous they might be. This has always been a key tenet of the X-Men comics. The same goes for Bruce Banner, who has his Hulk suppressor removed by Grey, turning him fully into the O.G. Hulk after she loses her hold on him.

The overall vibe that you’re left with is that these forces are not going to be contained by human interventions or inventions any longer. Bring it on.  

5. Spider-Man Will Return

There is a heart-in-the-mouth moment at the very end of Brand New Day when Peter takes a bullet in the back (shot by Frank “Punisher” Castle) that was meant for Jean Grey. He immediately crashes to the floor, only for her to save him by using her telekinesis—long enough for his body to recover.

Thankfully, Peter survives and has a heartfelt, friendship-sealing conversation with Frank; just as Jean is shown taking a bus toward an autumnal and very leafy area that is surely the famous upstate location of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters—although it isn’t shown on screen (as far as I could see) or mentioned by name. 

For Peter, the movie ends with him deciding to approach Ned in a bodega, where he reintroduces himself from the party (the one we saw in the trailer) before going in for their old secret handshake—which Ned somehow remembers. It ends with him looking up and saying, “Peter?” 

The credits play out over some nice New York street scenes, but no mid-credits scene follows. Only at the very, very end does the screen cut to an image of Ned’s Spidey-Finder app—which starts to beep as it zooms so far out from Queens that we’re looking at the Earth from space. It then starts to move away from our planet to a spot in the stars where a new Spidey icon appears. Whether this is 616 Peter returning from somewhere else (as he might have to do in Secret Wars) or a different variant (perhaps Venom) arriving is anyone’s guess. 

All we can say for certain is that Peter Parker will return.