‘Even Spider-Man is like, “What’s going on?”’ … Tom Holland in the forthcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy View image in fullscreen ‘Even Spider-Man is like, “What’s going on?”’ … Tom Holland in the forthcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy Week in geek Spider-Man O what a tangled web: unweaving the weirdest fan rumours surrounding Spider-Man: Brand New Day Will X-Men’s Jean Grey be in the fourth Marvel Spidey film? What about Spider-Girl? Which Hulk will we see? Who is the real villain? And is Marvel fuelling the internet’s frenzied rumour machine on purpose?
Prefer the Guardian on Google I t’s hard to pinpoint when Marvel trailers stopped being mere hype and started teeing up their own conspiracy theories, but it was probably around the time that early footage from Spider-Man: No Way Home appeared to show the Lizard getting thumped by 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 hinting at a Professor X cameo in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Wakanda Forever revealing a new Black Panther suit while declining to mention that Shuri was inside it.
Now it’s happening again with Spider-Man: Brand New Day. With the fourth Marvel Spidey film out next month, the internet is abuzz with predictions. “This movie is a real mystery,” Tom Holland told Esquire. “And for a large portion of the film even Spider-Man is a little bit at odds and lost and is like, ‘What is 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 undergoes some sort of weird metamorphosis, that someone or something appears to be playing musical chairs with human bodies, that the Hulk is back and bigger than ever, and that nobody knows Peter Parker is the wallcrawler due to Doctor Strange’s spell at the end of the last movie. Yet we’re no closer to actually working any of it out.
The problem is that, ever since three Spider-Men turned up in No Way Home, Marvel has trained us to treat trailers with a degree of healthy suspicion. If there’s even the merest glimpse of a shonky-looking frame, subtitle, eyeline or missing body, we’re on it. It doesn’t take much before even the flimsiest rumour is being upgraded to forensic evidence by bloggers and YouTubers. Take Sadie Sink, who has been cast in an unknown role. Some people think she’s playing the consciousness-swapping hooded villain from the trailers, a version of the X-Men’s Jean Grey who has been parachuted into a Spider-Man movie in the same way the webslinger once debuted in Captain America: Civil War. But others think she could be Parker’s daughter from another universe, the comic book favourite Mayday Parker, otherwise known (usually) as Spider-Girl. Or Rachel Summers, Jean Grey’s time-displaced daughter from the future. Or Madelyne Pryor, Jean Grey’s clone. Or Hope Summers, the mutant messiah. Or Shathra, a spider-wasp deity from the least user-friendly corner of Marvel continuity.
Then there is the Hulk. Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner is involved in the trailers because it seems somebody wise and sciencey needs to explain to Parker why his eyes keep turning black and he’s shooting webs out of his wrists like it’s 2001 all over again. But the rumour mill, naturally, has gone further. Some fans think thi…