“The mask stays on. Removing it defeats the anonymous hero thing.”
“You know, you’re not completely anonymous anymore. I can see your belly button.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is Spider-Man’s first MCU adventure that feels like a story published in a comic book set in the 616 universe. Funny, action-packed, and yet also pensive, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a complicated and highly emotional film. It is doing a lot of work pouring the concrete for the foundations to set up future MCU adventures and bringing together disparate characters that will work together in later pictures. At the same time, Brand New Day continues the tale of Peter Parker, suddenly a sullen and saturnine masked adventurer, fated to forever be a friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man while sad and separated from his loved ones who have forgotten his very existence. In a new suit and gracefully swinging overhead, Spider-Man has never looked or moved better.
“Woah, this guy has ISSUES.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a 2026 feature film, the latest collaboration between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton from a story by Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers, it is the sequel to 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Star Tom Holland returns from No Way Home along with Zendaya and Jacob Batalon. Joining them in Brand New Day are Florence Pugh, Jon Bernthal, Mark Ruffalo, Sadie Sink, Eman Esfandi, Tramell Tillman, and Liza Colón-Zayas. Michael Mando reprises his role as Mac Gargan from 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming and Marisa Tomei has a brief cameo as Aunt May.“That sounds super-illegal, Spider-Man. I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
It is four years after the events ofSpider-Man: No Way Home. Due to Dr. Strange’ssuccessful amnesia-bomb, the world has forgotten that Peter Parker (Holland) is Spider-Man. Unfortunately, that meant that his best friend Ned Leeds (Batalon) and his love, MJ (Zendaya) don’t remember him either. Cut off from his friends and with his Aunt May (Tomei) murdered by the Green Goblin, he has nowhere to go and must start fresh. His heart bursting, he keeps tabs on his former friends as they make their way through their coursework at MIT and continues a never-ending battle against crime, spending all of his time as Spider-Man. He is able to attract fresh allies, working with NYPD Detective Jean DeWolff (Colón-Zayas) and mining Yelena Belova (Pough), the new Avenger, for information as his investigations demand. Through repeated run-ins, he has also developed a love/hate relationship with the damaged Frank Castle, the moody and murderous vigilante known as the Punisher (Bernthal).
The midtown offices of the Department of Damage Control, the federal entity tasked with monitoring superhuman activities, cleaning up after encounters, and managing the world’s supers, is under attack. DoDC Director Metzger (Tillman) alerts the authorities about the fourth attack in a month as an armed, six-wheeled Infantry Fighting Vehicle barrels through the streets of Manhattan, heading for DoDC’s walled compound. The IFV brushes off any attempt by the NYPD to slow it down. It is only brought to heel by Parker after bickering with the Punisher. Frank seems to have a soft spot in his heart for Spider-Man but still hits him with his van and tries to run him over while they both are responding to the rogue IFV. In the chaos of the IFV strike, inmate Mac Gargan, the criminal known as the Scorpion (Mando), is able to make his escape.
Purchasing flowers for Aunt May’s grave, Peter runs into Ned, who is hosting a graduation party at the apartment he shares with MJ. He follows Ned to the party and discovers that Ned appears to be engrossed with determining Spider-Man’s secret identity. Strange’s spell made them all forget Peter and that he was secretly Spider-Man, but they didn’t forget the hero Spider-Man, who saved Ned, MJ, and several of their classmates repeatedly during the Home trilogy. Ned has obsessively created a Spider-Tracker App that uses social media posts to triangulate Spider-Man’s approximate location.
Peter watches sourly as MJ greets her new boyfriend Harry (Esfandi) with a kiss and leaves the party, his emotions churning. Returning to his apartment, swathed in sweat, he stumbles and faceplants into unconsciousness. He wakes haltingly to find himself naked and blanketed in a cloudy, white web hanging underneath the eaves of a building, several stories up. He doesn’t have his web-shooters. He doesn’t have pants on. What’s happened to him? He panics as he begins to fall.
Is he sick? Is he possessed? Can Peter figure out what’s going on with his body? Will Ned or MJ properly remember their past? Who set the Scorpion free and what do they want with DoDC? Is Metzker on the level or is he a bent bureaucrat with shady motives? How does the Hulk fit into this almost-overstuffed circus? Please see Spider-Man: Brand New Day to find out.
“The people who love you, they love you. Not because you’re special, but because you’re you.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a colorful, crisp, well-made movie. Though dealing with topics of the utmost seriousness, it is peppered with enough humor to avoid getting bogged down. However, that humor is spaced, giving the more dramatic moments room to breathe.
It is odd that this is supposed to be the most “grounded” Peter Parker is in his MCU appearances, bereft of Tony Stark’s financial and technological backing. However, on his own, Peter just creates new web shooters, web-grenades, goggles with a heads-up display, codes his own AI assistant, EV, using an elaborate, multi-monitor home computing system along with a milling machine to craft a new Spider-suit. There is nothing to indicate any means of income for Parker in this film; there is no Daily Bugle for him to sell his photos to. How Peter makes the money to pay his rent or establish his hero-lair in his apartment with all of his hand-crafted accoutrements and equipment feels like needed information that is left out.
During the runtime of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Holland and Bernthal are in their own movie-within-a-movie, which basically becomes a Buddy-Cop Comedy starring Peter Parker and Frank Castle. Peter, as a lonely soldier on a seemingly endless patrol, bonds with Frank, another lost and broken soul. Bernthal’s Frank also seems somewhat afraid of Zendaya’s MJ, adding a little comedic electricity to the scenes they share.
Except for MJ and Ned, all of the main characters have the means to become monsters bottled up inside. Both Banner and Parker chose to technologically suppress their darker halves with disastrous results. Peter develops an inhibitor chip to restrain his newfound and out-of-control arachnid abilities based on the work he did with and for Otto Octavius in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Then the tech is pushed and evolves from individual, targeted applications to a standardized dampening chip. The ramifications of the universal super-power-suppressor are vast. Especially in light of the introduction and implications of the character played by Sadie Sink. The consequences must rattle and roar downhill, smashing into the MCU’s future continuity and should change it forever. Peter Parker designed it, built it, and is responsible.
There are many Easter eggs embedded in the picture. One of the nicer references are the direct homages to classic Spider-Man covers peppered throughout. There have been rampant predictions about the contents of this film, with many anticipating the presence of the Venom symbiote as explanations for Peter’s new abilities and behavior instead of a more mundane and simpler reason; a spooky-scary Spider Bar-Mitzvah. Brand New Day takes place several years after No Way Home. No longer a teen, Parker is a grown-up, a true Spider-Man now.
There are a whole lot of built-up feelings spilling over in the last reel. When the Empire State Building lights up in Spider-colors, and the gathered crowds cheer the news, Peter realizes his efforts have made an impact, that “When you help someone, you help everyone.” Tissues might be in order. There is a post-credit sequence that is extraordinarily vague; wait for it as you like. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is one of the better Spider-films and could be one of the more important MCU films if the repercussions of Peter’s new device are handled properly going forward. If MCU movies are your thing, it should not be missed. Even if they’re not, go see it. It will not disappoint.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens everywhere Friday, July 31st
Spider-Man was created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee.
Jean DeWolff was created by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema.
Scorpion was created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee.
The Incredible Hulk was created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.
The Hand was created by Frank Miller.
The Punisher was created by Gerry Conway, John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru.
Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher