Key Points
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Spider-Man: Brand New Dayhas one post-credits scene at the very end.
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The tag confirms Spider-Man will return and offers some imagery to tease what’s next.
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Avengers: Doomsday is the next Marvel movie on the docket, followed by Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027.
This article contains spoilers fromSpider-Man: Brand New Day.
Unlike the vast majority of MCU movies, including all of the Tom Holland-led Peter Parker titles, Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s post-credits scene doesn’t give us the goods we might’ve been expecting.
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) introduced Michael Mando as Scorpion — a character who becomes more prominent with this weekend’s release — and featured a comedic Captain America PSA with Chris Evans. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) delivered the return of J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson to out the hero’s secret identity, paired with another end tag with the Skrulls. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) then showed more Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Venom content alongside the first footage of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day, in theaters now, comes with one post-credits scene all the way at the end — and it’s both very straightforward and cryptic as hell.
The film, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), follows Spider-Man (Holland) in a world that has forgotten Peter Parker’s existence. Peter attempts to move on without loved ones like MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) by his side, but he can’t. And all this repressed depression and anxiety triggers an evolution in his arachnid DNA.
While he’s dealing with “Spider-Puberty” (the emergence of organic webbing, even more dialed-up senses, aggression, etc.), a mysterious figure, later revealed to be X-Men character Jean Grey (Sadie Sink), wreaks havoc through New York City. She uses mind control to attack facilities operated by Damage Control, a government agency responsible for dealing with conflicts involving enhanced individuals. She’s in search of her sister, Sara (Olivia Booth-Ford), a fellow telepath captured by Damage Control head William Metzger (Tramell Tillman).
Upon learning Sara was killed by Metzger’s ongoing experiments to map her psychic abilities, the emotional reaction vastly evolves Jean’s powers, granting her telekinesis and allowing her to put everyone within miles in a telepathic thrall. Of course, Jean becomes an ally to Spider-Man by the end of it all, even saving his life when he shields her from the Punisher’s bullet. She leaves town, Metzger evades authorities and goes on the run himself, and Peter reconnects with MJ and Ned.
With no mid-credits to be seen, the end-credits sequence plays off one small aspect of the film: Ned’s Spidey Tracker app.
The scene shows the app searching for the hero’s location. At first, he’s nowhere to be found, but then the digi-map begins to zoom out further and further until there’s a view of planet Earth. He zooms out even further to show the Spider-Man GPS icon now off somewhere in space.
A lingering title takes a cue from past MCU movies by informing the audience that Spider-Man will return.
It at least confirms Holland isn’t yet finished with his time in the role of Peter Parker. The actor previously spoke about this current moment in his career, between this and The Odyssey, as the last time he can play a boy. Many wondered whether he was signaling his superhero retirement, but then Spider-Man: Brand New Day showed him as an adult in his 20s.
“We definitely don’t see [Spider-Man: Brand New Day] as a closing…It’s a beginning,” Spider-Man franchise producer Amy Pascal told Entertainment Weekly in the lead-up to release.
“I think the truth is that this is the beginning of a new…thing,” Holland teased. “Spider-Man: Brand New Thing.”
In a separate interview for theHappy Sad Confusedpodcast, the actor hinted at how the movies will eventually make way for another Spider-Man actor. “There’s a whole plan that we have been working on for, I would say, since we finished Spider-Man: No Way Home. It’s laid out,” he said. “It’s gonna change for sure, but I have a really clear vision to the passing on of the baton, and I think it’s really exciting.”
We just don’t yet know where Spider-Man will return. Will it be in Avengers: Doomsday? There’s only one other Marvel movie coming this year, and it’s that December event film. Robert Downey Jr. returns to the fold, this time as supervillain Doctor Victor von Doom from the Fantastic Four’s reality. His plot involves the collision of multiple dimensions in the Marvel multiverse. The studio revealed a hefty roster of new and returning talent, including returning stars from the live-action X-Men movies from the early aughts, but then clarified that there are more actors involved.
After that, there won’t be another Marvel movie release until the end of 2027 with Avengers: Secret Wars, the Doomsday sequel that promises to reshape the reality of this interconnected universe. So perhaps the answer is as easy as this post-credits scene teases Spidey’s return in these next big ensemble team-up movies.
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There is, however, another clue. Earlier in April, Mark Ruffalo, who returned as Bruce Banner/Hulk in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, participated in a Q&A event in Rome, Italy, to promote the movie. “I promise you 1,000 percent,” the actor told an audience member, “that he [Spider-Man] will be fighting an alien in the future.”
Since then, fans have been speculating about the MCU version of symbiotes, the aliens that produce vicious characters like Venom and Carnage. Hardy’s Eddie and that Venom, as cemented in Spider-Man: No Way Home, exist in a different reality than Holland’s Peter Parker. So what does this world’s Venom look like?
The Spidey Tracker did point to space, and symbiotes came to Earth from space! Maybe Ned’s app is picking up on something that resembles Spider-Man but isn’t in fact of the friendly neighborhood variety. To argue for the other side, Ruffalo could mean many things. The Guardians of the Galaxy, for instance, are considered aliens by certain MCU characters.
It’s been a minute since we had so little to go on, but we’re also now getting into a more lax cadence of one or two Marvel movies releasing annually. The crumbs, for now, will have to suffice.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
