From Tech Tactics to Mutant Magic: The MCU's Shift After Brand New Day, Explained

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a lot of things—a superhero movie, a New York movie, a box office juggernaut, a romantic tragedy—but in terms of the MCU big picture, it’s nothing if not a vibe shift.

Here is a movie that brings together both new and familiar faces while shifting some previously indispensable chess pieces to the side. This goes for characters like Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk and potentially even Zendaya’s M.J., at least for the time being, but it also goes for much of the shiny tech that has defined the MCU for pretty much as long as the MCU has been around. 

The question is, are the days of those gizmos over, and has a gnarlier age of mutations already begun? Let's take a closer look, and be warned if you've not swung into your nearest multiplex yet: there will be some spoilers for the latest Spider-Man film ahead.

Is Stark Industries Gone For Good?

With Tony Stark is no longer with us after Endgame, and Peter Parker now anonymous to most people after the end of No Way Home, there's a growing sense that we might not be seeing too much of people like Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) or Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) again in the MCU—not least after the collective yawn that greeted the release of Captain America: Brave New World at the beginning of last year.

Now, as Avengers: Doomsday approaches, most Marvel prognosticators are expecting there to be a cleaning of house which could well see the likes of Sam Wilson’s Captain America, Ant-Man and Bucky Barnes taken off the board entirely, with some of the last remaining ties to Stark technology perhaps going along with them.

This is also a central component of Brand New Day—in which Peter Parker has to make his own slightly more lo-fi suit and web-slingers for the first time since Tony arrived unannounced to his apartment in Civil War. With the increased power of his Arachnid genes and the slightly icky introduction of his organically produced webs, the only Stark-like tech that Peter hangs onto by the end is his A.I. helper, E.V. (voiced by Naomi Watts).

Along with Bruce Banner losing his inhibitor and then losing control over the Hulk, everything about Brand New Day seemed to be pointing towards a future where manmade tech will be increasingly redundant against the forces of natural mutations. 

The Age of Mutants Has Begun in the MCU

As Patrick Stewart intoned so memorably at the beginning of the very first X-Men movie 25 years ago, “every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.“ 

Now, with the arrival of Jean Gray (Sadie Sink) in Brand New Day and a generational passing of the X-Men torch likely to happen in either Avengers: Doomsday or Secret Wars, the core of the Avengers and the MCU in general is about to feel a whole lot different. Similar to Peter, the Fantastic 4 can’t claim to have been born with their abilities either, but we have clearly moved into a world where manmade weapons (along with aliens and time gods) are going out of fashion and humans with hyper-specific abilities are going to be very much in.

Thematically, this is a far cry from the early years of the MCU, when Kevin Feige would use humour to try to keep the franchise’s wilder elements as grounded as possible. This new phase will probably be less about putting humans in supernatural situations than the other way around—a change of POV that is very much in keeping with the X-Men vibe.

What makes the mutant stories so rich is that they've always been thinly veiled and surprisingly earnest allegories about prejudice and xenophobia—usually centring on Charles Xavier’s dogged struggle to find a way for humans and mutants to co-exist while having to fight extremist elements from both sides.

What This Means For Doomsday & Dr Doom

Like most X-Men movies, the main antagonist of Brand New Day turned out not to be a mutant but a rabidly anti-mutant government agency called Damage Control. For Doomsday, I'd be surprised to see the next generation of X-Men appear just yet—although with cast announcements currently coming thick and fast, it’s not out of the question that we will get at least a post-credits scene, if only in Secret Wars. Doomsday will instead allow Feige to create a spiritual link to the Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellen era before going full steam ahead with Sadie Sink and Co.

For Dr Doom—who, of course, is being played by Mr Stark Industries himself—tech has never really been his thing: the character draws his power from dark sorcery, much like Dr Strange, so if the movie turns out to be the end of the multiverse (or at least the multiverse storytelling that's dominated and diluted the franchise in the last five years), is it possible that that puts a pin in the magical or godlike characters of the MCU, too?

Brave New World, First Steps, Brand New Day? The old MCU is dying, but a new one has just begun.