What a Tangled Web: Exposing the Weirdest Fan Rumors Surrounding Spider-Man: Brand New Day | Spider-Man

IIt’s hard to pinpoint when Marvel’s trailers stopped being just hype and started sparking conspiracy theories of their own, but it was probably around the time early footage from Spider-Man: No Way Home surfaced showing the Lizard being pummeled out of thin air – and the internet correctly pointed out the recently deleted digital ghost of Andrew Garfield. Since then, we’ve had Patrick Stewart’s voice hint at Professor

And now it’s happening again with Spider-Man: Brand New Day. With the fourth Marvel Spidey movie due out next month, the internet is abuzz with anticipation. “This movie is a real mystery,” Tom Holland told Esquire. “And for a good portion of the movie, even Spider-Man is a little at odds and lost and wondering, ‘What’s going on?’ We’re just trying to find ways to make this movie feel like a detective movie.

So what do we think it’s all about? Two trailers have been released so far, revealing that Spider-Man is going through some kind of strange transformation, that someone or something seems to be playing musical chairs with human bodies, that the Hulk is back and bigger than ever, and that no one knows Peter Parker is the wall-crawler because of Doctor Strange’s spell at the end of the last film. However, we are no closer to actually working on solving any of them.

The problem is that ever since three Spider-Men appeared in No Way Home, Marvel has trained us to treat trailers with a degree of healthy skepticism. If there’s even the slightest glimpse of a blurry frame, subtitle, eye line, or missing body, we’ll work on it. It doesn’t take long before even flimsy rumors are upgraded into forensic evidence by bloggers and YouTubers. Take Sadie Sink, who was cast in an unknown role. Some people think she’s playing the consciousness-swapping masked villain from the trailers, a version of the X-Men’s Jean Gray who was parachuted into the Spider-Man movie in the same way the webslinger first appeared in Captain America: Civil War. But others think she could be the daughter of Parker from another world, comic book favorite Mayday Parker, known (usually) as Spider-Girl. Or Rachel Summers, Jean Grey’s time-displaced daughter from the future. Or Madeline Pryor, Jean Grey’s clone. Or Hope Summers, the transformed Messiah. Or Shathra, the spider wasp god from the least user-friendly angle of Marvel continuity.

Then there is the structure. Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner is involved in the trailers because apparently someone wise and scientific needs to explain to Parker why his eyes keep turning black and he’s shooting webs from his wrists like it’s 2001 all over again. But naturally, the rumors go further than that. Some fans believe this is the long-awaited return of the Savage Hulk, because the trailer also shows off a bigger, angrier, and less house-trained version of Banner than we’ve seen in years. Others seem convinced that Marvel brought him in so Spider-Man could battle one of comics’ most popular characters before discovering the real enemy — perhaps that body-hopping villain — is wandering around inside the Hulk’s skull like a wasp in a pint glass.

Next up: Miles Morales, whose rumored arrival in the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to be based not so much on anything in the trailers as on the iron law that all modern Spider-Men movies must eventually double up on screen like Gremlins caught in the rain. Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that Sony will be letting Marvel play with one of the cleanest bits of Spider-Man IP that it still largely has to itself, namely Miles as the Oscar-winning star of the animated universe. It would also take another desperate retreat into the multiverse, at a time when Marvel seemed to be trying to drag Spider-Man back to street level.

Finally there are all the evil rumours. Tom Holland records that no one has yet guessed who the real enemy is in A Brand New Day. Which seems less likely, given the number of people who have tried, than the possibility of J. J. Jonah Jameson opening a mindfulness retreat. Could it be Jean Grey? Negative master? jackal? Mr. Evil? Or perhaps William Metzger, the wonderfully mysterious anti-mutant fanatic who would at least explain why the supposed street-level Spider-Man appears to be wearing X-Men pajamas under his costume?

Someone has probably already done most of the work, just like they did in No Way Home. Unfortunately, there are about 20,000 false rumors, each one ready to confuse everyone until opening night.