bySam Summers|Published on15th August 2026 at 4.29pm
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Sadie Sink
Sophie Turner
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After months of speculation about who Sadie Sink would be playing in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, one of Marvel’s worst-kept secrets is finally out there. That’s right, the mysterious, mind-controlling, red-haired baddie glimpsed briefly in trailers is none other than Jean Grey, one of the X-Men’s most famous, and most powerful, members. As one of Marvel’s very first mutants, Jean has a long history in comics, animation, and movies, but she’s never been seen quite like this. Always portrayed as a straight-up good guy (when she’s not going Dark Phoenix mode – more on that later), it’s rare to see her take on a villainous role, even temporarily. But though it might move her away from her comics roots in some ways, this new take on Jean manages to stay true to the spirit of the character while also setting her up for a bright future in the MCU.
Jean debuted in 1963’s X-Men #1 as ‘Marvel Girl’, a nondescript name for a pretty nondescript character. While her teammates quickly took on distinct and enduring personalities – class clown Iceman, erudite Beast, rich kid Angel and boy scout Cyclops – Jean suffered from a clear case of ‘Smurfette Syndrome’; much like her Fantastic Four counterpart the Invisible Girl, who debuted two years earlier, she was defined simply as ‘the girl’, relative to the more individualised male characters around her. Her role was to be alternately ogled and rescued by the boys, with her character development mostly revolving around her budding relationship with Cyclops.
Jean Grey has an incredibly complicated comic-book history, even by X-Men standards.
Since then, Jean has had an incredibly complicated comic-book history, even by X-Men standards. Rare is the X-Man who hasn’t been killed, cloned or driven to the dark side, but Jean has done all three – and then some – to the point that it’s hard to keep track. She’s spent so much of her comics career dead, possessed or replaced that she hasn’t had the opportunity to develop in the way that other ‘60s superheroines have. There’s a long list of things that have happed to her,sure. Even her defining storyline – the ‘Dark Phoenix’ saga – doesn’t give her all that much agency. The iconic comics run, in which Jean gains uncontrollable cosmic power from a big fiery space bird, mostly involves her being captured and controlled by others, until her final noble sacrifice saves the universe from the deadly Phoenix inside her.
Even this was later taken away from her: when she eventually returned from the dead, a retcon revealed that this wasn’t Jean all along, but just the Phoenix itself wearing her face. Jean got to come back with a clean slate, without the Phoenix’s crimes on her conscience, but also without the character growth that should have resulted from such a seminal comics arc.
When she’s not Dark Phoenix-ing about – a fate that awaits all on-screen Jeans – the Jean that we tend to see in later comics and adaptations is generally portrayed as smart, capable and fundamentally good. She’s a dependable figure at the centre of the team, much like Cyclops, but without the tragic powerset, smug charisma, and uneasy relationship with the burden of leadership that make him so interesting. This is essentially how we find her in the ‘90s animated series and the 2000 X-Men film, played by Famke Jassen. Sophie Turner’s teenage take in X-Men: Apocalypse never got that far, introduced as a troubled girl struggling to control her powers, already well on road to Phoenix-dom.
Jean’s history with the X-Men makes her a must for any adaptation – but other X-Women like Storm, Rogue, and Jubilee have tended to overshadow her. Introduced in the ‘70s and later, once comics writers had begun to take female superheroes more seriously, those characters are much more clearly-defined in their own right. Jean, meanwhile, remains largely defined by her relationships with others – namely Cyclops, Wolverine, Xavier and the Phoenix itself.
This is especially true in the Fox X-Men films, where her most important role is as a love interest for Wolverine, something which is drawn from the comics but given an outsized focus on screen. For Logan, Jean represents a moral purity that sits just out of reach for the savage superhero. After he’s forced to end her life to stop the Phoenix in X-Men: The Last Stand, she also comes to represent his guilt, with her memory haunting him in future films long after her death. As with many female characters who fall victim to superhero storytelling’s long history of ‘fridging’, her impact is felt mostly in the mark she leaves on our male lead, which feels like a disservice to such a major member of the team.
The version of Jean we meet in Brand New Day has a lot of things going for her, but moral purity isn’t one of them. Some of her actions range from morally, well, grey to outright nasty. During her spell as the film’s body-hopping antagonist, she causes havoc as the Hulk, walks an unsuspecting citizen right into a speeding car, and pulls a shocking switcheroo with MJ that even Peter says in unforgiveable. For some fans this will no doubt be a step too far for a character mostly known as one of the kindest, noblest mutants around. However, while not super-faithful to more typical depictions of Jean, I’d argue this more aggressive take on the character fits just fine within her history in the comics, and paves the way for a more interesting journey for the character.
It’s easy to see Sadie Sink’s character growing into the Jean Grey we know.
Given where we find Jean in Brand New Day – orphaned, on the run, and just getting to grips with her massive mutant potential – it’s probably best to look at this as a what-if scenario, rather than a straight-down-the-middle adaptation. More specifically: what if Jean Grey didn’t have Professor X to look after her, or Cyclops and the other X-Men to support her? In both the comics and the Fox films, Jean is one of Xavier’s first students, and he trains her from a young age to harness her incredible powers. In one of his dodgier moral decisions, he also secretly puts a dampener on her psychic abilities, to help her control what could be extremely dangerous powers. Jean grows up with a much more limited skill-set, not really knowing her full potential until the Phoenix is unleashed.
In Brand New Day, Jean hasn’t yet had the chance to thrive in the hallowed halls of Xavier’s Academy, but she has started to reckon with the scale of her mental abilities. She goes from taking over one body at a time to a fully-fledged psychic powerhouse, telepathically shutting down a good chunk of New York, and wrecking house with her trademark telekinesis. She also, eventually, taps into her compassionate side, with a pep talk from Spidey (and an assist from Aunt May) unlocking a glimpse of something closer to her classic comics persona. She’s not there yet, but it’s easy to see Sink’s character growing into the Jean we know, just taking a different, more independent route to get there.
If anything, this brings her more in line with a more recent comics take on the character. In a 2012 run called All-New X-Men, Beast – bear with me here – goes back in time to fetch the original teenage X-Men at the start of their career, bringing them to the present day. His plan was for these wide-eyed idealists to speak some sense to their jaded older selves, especially Cyclops, who had taken a turn for the supervillainous and murdered Professor X (like I said, bear with me). With Jean in particular, it had the opposite effect. Learning that she’s fated to die twice, kill a bunch of people, and get possessed by a psychic space bird does a number on her, leading to a much more cynical and antiheroic take on the character, quite close to what we get in Brand New Day. With Xavier out of the picture, she also taps into her telepathy at a younger age, which she wields a lot more indiscriminately than her adult counterpart. Sink even looks more like the time-displaced Jean, who ends up rocking shoulder-length hair with a fringe like she does in Brand New Day. Crucially, this version of the character is more complex, more independent, and even ends up coming out of Cyclops’ shadow to lead her team of X-Men.
With the MCU positioning Jean as the jumping off point for mutants as a whole, we could be about to see her take on a similarly major role in X-world – and not a moment too soon.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in cinemas now. Marvel’s X-Men film comes to cinemas on May 5, 2028.
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