From comic-book recreations and Daredevil connections to hints about the X-Men, here are 15 details you may have missed in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Key Points
- Spider-Man: Brand New Day packs in numerous comic-book callbacks, including recreated covers, The Punisher carrying an injured Spider-Man and parallels with Spider-Man 3.
- Cindy Moon’s appearance, Bill Metzger’s disappearance and Jean Grey’s possible journey to Westchester offer intriguing hints about Silk, mutants and the MCU’s upcoming X-Men storyline.
- Subtle details involving MJ and Ned Leeds raise the biggest question after the finale: are Peter Parker’s old friends beginning to remember him, or are they simply piecing together his secret again?
Hey, remember when we used to talk about superhero fatigue, about how people were tired of superhero movies and shows and they were no longer working? Well, Spider-Man: Brand New Day just smashed that argument to bits by becoming the highest non-Indian opener ever, overtaking 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.
Or maybe the webbed crawler is just an exception, for people simply cannot get enough of Peter Parker and his city-saving heroics.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day marks Tom Holland’s fourth solo outing as Spider-Man and his seventh overall appearance as the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movie marks the beginning of a new chapter for Peter Parker after the Homecoming trilogy ended with Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), albeit picking up right where the previous trilogy left off.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has received positive reviews while taking off to a record-breaking start at the box office.
Praise has been showered on Destin Daniel Cretton’s direction, the action choreography and visual style, and the performances of the cast, particularly Tom Holland, Zendaya (MJ), Sadie Sink (Jean Grey) and Jon Bernthal (Frank Castle aka The Punisher).
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has enough surprises, a big Marvel cameo and implications for where the franchise is heading next. And there are possibly some interesting hidden details and mysteries that you may have missed the first time you watched the movie.
Sreeju Sudhakaran unlocks 15 hidden details and Easter eggs that may possibly coax you into revisiting Spider-Man: Brand New Day for another round.
There will be SPOILERS ahead, so read with caution if you haven’t watched the Marvel movie yet.
Parker-Less Marvel Intro
The Marvel intro gets a special Brand New Day update as it features scenes from the previous MCU Spider-Man movies, but with an interesting change.
You can see Peter Parker disappearing from the montage, hinting at how his identity has been erased by Doctor Strange’s spell.
Recreating Covers of Spider-Man Comics
The introduction to Spider-Man in this new chapter sees him fighting various villains, as also featured in the trailer. These aren’t just random shots. They are all recreations of Spider-Man comic covers over the years.
We have listed them for your reference: Spider-Man carrying an unknown goon (Amazing Fantasy No 15), Scorpion (Spider-Man Adventures No 2), Tombstone (The Spectacular Spider-Man No 142), Tarantula (The Spectacular Spider-Man No 1), Ramrod (The Amazing Spider-Man No 221) and Boomerang (The Amazing Spider-Man No 345).
The only non-Spider-Man cover recreation is his fight at the beginning with The Hand, which was inspired by the cover of New Avengers No 27.
Cindy Moon
IMAGE Cindy Moon. Photograph: Kind courtesy Inhyuk Lee (Marvel Comics)
One of the students in Bruce Banner’s class who asks him a question about Thanos is named Cindy Moon. Spider-Man comic fans would easily recognise her as the real name of Marvel superhero Silk, who has powers similar to Spider-Man and was even his love interest in the comics.
She was also teased in the post-credit scene of the video game Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (2023).
Interestingly, Cindy Moon appeared as one of Peter Parker’s classmates in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018), played by a different actress, though.
A ‘Motherly’ Reunion
After dealing with Karen (Jennifer Connelly) and EDITH (Dawn Michelle King) in the previous movies, Peter Parker now has a new AI assistant called E.V. And if you found her voice familiar, it’s because it belongs to actress Naomi Watts.
What’s interesting about her casting is that she played the lead in the survival drama The Impossible (2012), based on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster, where a 14-year-old Tom Holland, in his breakout role, played her son.
Damage Control Scanning
In the final fight, when Spider-Man battles The Hand, he discovers that Damage Control has created weapons capable of neutralising his powers, something Jean Grey tauntingly points out.
As for how they got all the details about him to make those weapons, it is possible that Spider-Man himself provided them, albeit unknowingly, when he first visited the department and found himself inside their scanner cubicle.
The Hulk Plot Hole
The Hulk remembering Peter Parker’s identity during that famous fight is actually a recreation of a moment from the comic Immortal Hulk: Great Power.
The only issue here is that Banner knew Parker only when he used to be Smart Hulk. The real Hulk has never met Peter because he refused to come out after getting beaten up by Thanos at the start ofAvengers: Infinity War.
Also, for Peter to tell Bruce that he is his friend, alas, we never really got to see them bonding before in the franchise.
Spider-Man Being English
Spider-Man’s tracking board features some fun details, including one note where he questions whether Spider-Man is English, as in, whether he is from England.
His reasoning is possibly that Spider-Man saved them when they were on their European tour during the events of Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). It is also a fun nod to Tom Holland being a British actor, even if he is playing an American character.
He is not the only Spider-Man actor to do so. Andrew Garfield, who plays the character in The Amazing Spider-Man duology and also appeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home, is British-American.
Spider-Man 3 Parallels
If you really think hard about it, Spider-Man: Brand New Day does draw strong parallels with Sam Raimi’s much-reviled Spider-Man 3 (2007).
Both films have Peter dealing with physiological changes that heighten his powers but, at the same time, make him more aggressive. Both movies also have him consult a professor.
In Spider-Man 3, it was Dr Curt Connors, who would have eventually become The Lizard in the planned but dropped Spider-Man 4. The character instead became the main antagonist in the reboot The Amazing Spider-Man and later one of the villains in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, it is Bruce Banner who helps him out. Both movies also have a plotline involving his girlfriend having feelings for someone else. And both feature scenes where Spider-Man is celebrated by the city.
The Daredevil Connection
Spider-Man and Daredevil operate in the same city and universe, which is why Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) came on board as Parker’s lawyer in Spider-Man: No Way Home. The Punisher, who previously appeared in Daredevil series (as well as headlining his own), is also a crucial character in the new film.
Brand New Day has other Daredevil connections too. The city’s mayor, who hands over the ‘key to the city’ to Spider-Man, is Sheila Rivera, who used to be Wilson Fisk’s mayoral aide. Fisk’s photograph also appears on a flyer stuck to a dumpster in the alley scene. This confirms that Spider-Man: Brand New Day was set after Daredevil: Born Again season 2
Which really makes us wonder where Spider-Man had gone off to when the Kingpin held the city hostage during his stint as mayor with his anti-vigilante laws.
The Lord of the Rings
The sequence where Spider-Man and Ned Leeds bond at the latter’s house has them quoting dialogues in forced English accent from a movie to show their shared nerd-culture influences.
The scene they quote comes from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), from an exchange between Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) and Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen). It is ironic when Parker quotes Frodo saying, ‘All right then, keep your secrets,’ considering he is still keeping the biggest secret from his best friend.
Interestingly, Ian McKellen could possibly be sharing the screen with Tom Holland in Avengers: Doomsday (2026), where the former reprises his role as Magneto from the X-Men franchise.
Punisher Carrying Spider-Man
The scene where The Punisher carries an injured and unconscious Spider-Man to the hospital is actually a recreation of a comic panel from Civil War No 5.
In the comics, though, he was bringing Spider-Man’s badly injured body to Captain America after the web-slinger was beaten up by Iron Man’s legion.
The Nod to Insomniac’s Spider-Man Games
It is quite obvious that Insomniac’s Spider-Man games have had a strong influence on the action scenes and web-swinging in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The short rooftop fights played during the montage are one such nod to those games.
Even the scene where a pigeon gets stuck to Spider-Man while he is trying to swing using his organic webs feels like a nod to those pigeon-catching mini-missions in Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) and its sequel.
MJ’s Picture
During the hospital room scene, among all the gifts Spider-Man receives from his fans while lying there, one that stands out is the artwork MJ drew while watching him and Ned Leeds bond at their flat.
That means she did visit him in the hospital before heading off to the terrace where they used to rendezvous during Spider-Man: No Way Home, cradling the locket he gave her in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
Is it because she has started remembering Peter, or is she trying to recreate those forgotten moments based on what Peter told her?
The X-Men Movie Setup?
During Peter’s last conversation with Detective Jean DeWolff, she mentions that Bill Metzger has gone missing after the events of the climax.
It is presumed that the character could appear again later, with the possibility that he may even turn up in the planned X-Men film. Bill Metzger is a minor X-Men villain from the comics who leads an anti-mutant campaign, and the film also establishes his hostility towards mutants through his treatment of Jean Grey and her sister.
Jean Grey is also seen heading to a place with plenty of vegetation that fans are assuming to be Westchester, where the famed Xavier school for mutants is located.
Muscle Memory Or Actual Memory?
The finale cliffhanger (not the post-credit scene) is going to draw the same furious arguments from fans as the ending of Inception (2010): Has Ned Leeds started remembering Peter Parker as his friend when the latter reintroduces himself at the cafe?
There is a logical way of looking at it. He doesn’t remember Peter’s name at first because the latter had initially given him a false name, Maynard. He unconsciously replicates his secret handshake with Peter, possibly because of muscle memory.
His slow realisation of who Peter is could come from remembering MJ calling Spider-Man ‘Peter’ when the superhero leaves to rescue Jean Grey. Spider-Man was perhaps the one person who understood his nerd culture really well during their previous scene, so that realisation eventually dawns on him.
So, in my opinion, it is not that Ned has started remembering Peter through his lost memories. He is simply figuring things out based on their current interactions.
Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff
