Spoiler Space offers thoughts on, and a place to discuss, the plot points we can’t disclose in our official review. Fair warning: This article features plot details of Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
If there’s one thing Spider-Man: No Way Home taught Marvel, it’s that it can be more exciting to tease a character than outright advertise them. Much as that film devoted its press tour to the will-they/won’t-they tension of whether Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire were returning, Spider-Man: Brand New Day has been similarly coy about who Sadie Sink is playing—even though fan consensus correctly guessed that she’s Jean Grey long before a guest actively spoiled it on the film’s red carpet. It turns out there’s another reason Marvel has been playing up the secrecy angle, though: It’s a clever misdirect to stop fans from asking the question they should have been asking about Sink’s role. The twist isn’t that Jean Grey is in this movie, it’s that she’s its villain.
It’s a massive recalibration of a character who has been a core Marvel hero since she debuted in the very first X-Men comic back in 1963. Traditionally, Jean is portrayed as a smart, compassionate, responsible leader with an impressive array of telekinetic and telepathic abilities. Like her “boy scout” boyfriend Cyclops, she’s a self-possessed do-gooder without the most easily definable personality—at least compared to future X-Women like Storm and Rogue. That’s why her most famous storyline (and one of the most famous comic book storylines ever) is about her going evil when a cosmic entity called the Phoenix Force twists her into becoming the Dark Phoenix.
It’s a saga that was adapted into the ’90s animated series and teased in the series finale of X-Men: Evolution. It’s also played out not once but twice in live-action films: Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey died in X2: X-Men United only to come back as an all-powerful baddie in X-Men: The Last Stand, where she was eventually killed by Hugh Jackman’s tearful Wolverine. Then Sophie Turner rounded out her Jean Grey run by unleashing Dark Phoenix, which ended with Jean self-destructing to save the world. At this point, it feels like it’s not a matter of if but when each new version of Jean will go evil and subsequently die.
That’s why it’s refreshing that Brand New Day switches up the formula by having a Jean who’s bad from the start. Her storyline here isn’t tied to the Dark Phoenix arc, which the MCU could theoretically still adapt whenever it finally goes all-in on mutant storytelling. (Though the Disney/Fox merger brought the X-Men under the MCU umbrella in 2019, Sink’s debut is the first time Marvel has done more than just import a Fox favorite into its interconnected universe.) But even if this Jean does get Phoenix-fied at some point, at least she’ll be transforming from a different starting point than a reserved young woman scared of her own repressed abilities.
In fact, it’s pretty bold just how scary Brand New Day makes Jean. She’s introduced as a disembodied mind-hopping entity who can take possession of people and force them to do things like throw themselves off buildings and step into oncoming traffic. Director Destin Daniel Cretton plays around with a lot of symbiote-inspired imagery as Peter Parker (Tom Holland) finds his spider abilities evolving, and it’s easy to assume he’s facing some kind of malevolent cosmic force rather than a scared teenage girl looking to reclaim a sense of agency by stealing it from others. Sink and the various actors playing Jean’s avatars are terrifying in their ice-cold determination to break into a government agency called Damage Control. Not only does Jean taunt Peter in between trying to probe his mind, she winds up full-on puppeteering MJ (Zendaya) into a romantic interlude just to mess with him.
It’s cruel stuff that the movie eventually softens as it bends Jean towards being a sympathetic antihero. It turns out she’s trying to break into Damage Control to rescue her superpowered older sister Sara (Olivia Booth-Ford), who was kidnapped by the oppressive organization so they could use her telepathic abilities for their own nefarious ends—something they also try to do with Jean once they get her in their clutches. It’s only once Jean is in the same seat where her sister was tortured that she realizes Damage Control isn’t hiding Sara, it’s already killed her.
Brand New Day echoes WandaVision as a wave of grief magnifies Jean’s powers, leaving a chunk of Manhattan in a psychic hold as she contemplates killing Damage Control director Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman). It’s Peter who talks her off the ledge by sharing a loving memory of Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) before literally taking a bullet for her.
Because Brand New Day ends with Jean going free after saving Peter’s life in return, some may assume we’re supposed to see her as redeemed by the end. But fittingly, the movie leaves her in more of a gray area. A sympathetic flashback explains that Jean and Sara’s mom abandoned them when their powers emerged, which, along with Sara’s eventual kidnapping, helps explain the core wound that drives Jean’s villainy. Yet the flashback also makes a point to emphasize that Jean and Sara were using their creepy body-hopping abilities well before there was any actual need to. It was a game for them; an example of the casual cruelty that can fester in the wake of parental rejection and social othering.
While there’s plenty of the grief-driven DNA of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) in this Jean, the MCU character she most resembles is Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Like the trickster god of the Thor franchise, Jean uses her “gifts” to do objectively malicious things. (He tried to take over the world in The Avengers; she just takes over a few blocks in New York City.) Yet, like Loki, it’s clear we’re ultimately supposed to like and sympathize with her. They’re both characters who allow vindictiveness to creep in when they feel rejected or dismissed by the family and institutions around them. But they’re both characters who can be pulled back from the brink with love and empathy too. (It helps that Sink and Hiddleston excel at projecting a forlorn vulnerability beneath tough exteriors.) Much as Loki turned over a new leaf with his brother in Thor: The Dark World and then forged a found family on his TV show, Jean is steered towards heroism in a way that can now extend into whatever version of the X-Men that Marvel eventually decides to launch in earnest.
That’s an exciting proposition for a heroine who has largely been defined by just one thing onscreen. While the Dark Phoenix Saga is iconic for a reason, it shouldn’t be the only story Jean Grey is allowed to have. Marvel is savvy to recognize that. Instead of waiting for Jean to go bad and die, we now get to watch her try to become good and live, which could give her a much more active character arc than she’s ever gotten onscreen. While the Phoenix Force is often portrayed as an external factor overwhelming Jean’s actual personality, this version of the character will have to wrestle with the weight of her own powerfully destructive actions. Up until this point, the MCU’s use of the X-Men has mostly been stuck in the past. Jean’s debut finally promises a brand new day.
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