In the lead-up to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the core plot of the movie was kept under wraps, with no details revealed about what kind of supervillain Peter Parker (Tom Holland) would be facing in his fourth stand-alone adventure. The trailers also kept things vague, focusing on Spider-Man sparring with supposed allies like the Hulk and Punisher instead of anyone from his wide-ranging rogues gallery. With Sadie Sink (Stranger Things) a confirmed member of the cast but playing an unspecified role, speculation naturally leaned towards her being cast as a new and significant character for the MCU… And that’s exactly what happened.
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.]
Introduction of Jean Grey
As many, many people have predicted: Yep, Sadie Sink is the new Jean Grey, one of Professor X’s original X-Men. She’s the third actress to play Jean in a live-action movie, following Famke Janssen and Sophie Turner, and this presumably makes Sink the first confirmed cast member for director Jake Schreier’s upcoming stand-alone movie.
It takes a while for the character to reveal herself fully in Brand New Day — instead, Jean first makes her presence felt with her ability to take over the consciousness of others, “hopping” from mind to mind in her quest to infiltrate the Department of Damage Control.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton doesn’t use any obvious digital trickery to depict her movement through those she possesses. Instead, the credits mention a specific choreographer who coordinated the “Inhabited” actors to move in a very specific — and unsettling — way. Still, once it was clear that a telepath was the one wrecking the city and causing Peter all sorts of problems, Jean Grey was the obvious guess even before her full name was revealed on screen. (Middle name: Elaine.)
Jean Grey’s Character Development
The only reason to not suspect the shadowy figure was Jean Grey was that typically she isn’t a villain — unless her Omega-level mutant powers go haywire or she gets consumed by the Phoenix Force. This version of Jean Grey, though, is young, angry, and desperate to find her sister Sara, who was taken by Damage Control and experimented upon. Jean certainly put a crap-ton of people in danger thanks to her quest, but her motivation was understandable.
No need to spoil the rest of the movie here, except to say that Jean is the only X-Man featured. However, she is last seen riding a bus through a stretch of country that might resemble Westchester County, New York — which is where, traditionally, Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters is located.
Future of the X-Men Franchise
Who will be joining Jean at school? Right now, the rumor is that Marvel will reveal its full cast of new X-Men at the D23 convention this August. Based on Sink’s age, it feels pretty certain that the franchise will be going back to basics, much like X-Men: First Class, and aiming young for most of its casting. Maybe the new Professor X will have hair again!
Jean Grey appearing in Spider-Man: Brand New Day also confirms that as of right now, mutants are fully a part of the MCU — no more being coy about things. This is significant because when the MCU launched in earnest in 2008 with Iron Man, Fox held the film/TV rights to all mutant-based Marvel characters, leading to Marvel Studios changing some backstories to avoid stepping on the other studio’s toes.
Since the Disney acquisition of Fox in 2019, the MCU has been looser on the mutant matter: In 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Namor refers to himself as a mutant, and that same year’s Ms. Marvel revealed that Kamala Khan had a “mutation” in her genes. Then there’s 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, which served as an obituary for the Fox era, and officially integrated its titular antiheroes into this new blended universe.
Neither Ryan Reynolds or Hugh Jackman are confirmed to appear in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, but that movie will feature original X-Men cast members Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, and Kelsey Grammer in some capacity. Smart money is on most of them getting killed off pretty quickly as part of whatever multiversal collapse is going on, paving the way for a new universe of X-Men… now confirmed to include Sink as Jean.
Thus, the title Spider-Man: Brand New Day feels more apt than previously realized — not just for Peter Parker, but the MCU as a whole. Mutants could be the NOS Marvel needs to catch up in the race for franchise dominance. Unless the new Magneto is Jared Leto.
Pixel P. Snarkbyte, widely regarded as the “Shakespeare of Sh*tposts,” is a video game expert with a unique knack for turning pixels into punchlines.
Born in the small town of Respawn, Pennsylvania, Pixel grew up mashing buttons on an ancient NES controller, firmly believing that “blowing into the cartridge” was a sacred ritual passed down through generations.
Pixel P. Snarkbyte: proving that life, much like a buggy open-world game, is better with a little lag-induced chaos.
