If you've seen Spider-Man: Brand New Day, you probably have questions after that shock finale, which is where our Spider-Man: Brand New Day ending explained comes in. We won't spoil it for you just yet, but we're sure you're searching for answers after spending two and a half hours with Peter Parker and co.
The fourth movie in the Tom Holland-led film series takes place after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home on the Marvel timeline, when Peter had Doctor Strange enact a spell to make the world forget that he's Peter Parker. Following the death of Aunt May and the loss of his friends, Peter lives in anonymity as New York City's Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. When a new threat arrives, however, Peter is forced to confront his old life and deal with some strange new changes.
As with every Marvel movie, there's a lot to keep track of, and that's where we come in. Below we've answered every burning question you might have after watching Spider-Man: Brand New Day. But be warned: there are major spoilers below.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day ending recap
After Jean jumps into MJ's body and cruelly tricks Peter Parker, MJ wakes up mid-air as Peter takes her to Frank Castle's cartoonishly booby-trapped hideout on the outskirts of New York City. Frank is reluctant to let MJ stay, but Peter reminds Frank that he owes him because of whatever happened in Staten Island. While there, Peter manages to get a hit on Jean's face and identifies her as Jean Elaine Grey. Realizing he has to "get his shit together" (as DeWolff told him) before he enters into this final fight, he uses Frank's tools to work on his inhibitors. MJ, using her biochemical engineering knowledge, figures out that Peter's goggles are too close to the inhibitor chip, and are therefore making the inhibitors overheat. After fixing it, she points out that the tech he's working on is enough to control a "monster," and that Peter doesn't seem like one to her.
In the morning, Peter is drinking coffee with his mask on – which becomes a point of contention for Frank that leads to an emotional moment between the two – and explains that he's created a universal inhibitor that would halt Jean's powers. Meanwhile, Jean has broken into Damage Control and is looking up "V-Max" on the computer. Bill Metzger and his staff are hiding in the room with the big protected vault that Peter pointed out earlier. Jean is controlling Hulk, and makes him fight Peter when he arrives. Having convinced him that he probably needs some backup, Frank Castle arrives at Damage Control guns a-blazing. Bruce manages to get Jean out of his head after some back-and-forth struggle, and he wakes up confused. Peter attempts to give him the universal inhibitor he made, but her rooting around in his head causes Bruce to turn into Savage Hulk. Jean takes control of Frank, tells Spidey 'Good luck,' and goes to blow up the vault.
Spidey gives up on attaching the inhibitor to Hulk, as it is unable to pierce his skin, and tries to appeal to his humanity instead. He lets go of the building, but is caught safely in Peter's web. Inside Damage Control, the vault is opened with Jean controlling Frank. "Where is she?" Jean demands before Spidey swoops in and attaches the inhibitor to the back of her neck. Before she passes out, she says the name Sara. Before Spidey leaves, he asks Bill what she meant… but Bill says it was something that Jean pulled out of his mind.
Back at Frank's hideout, MJ is standing in the kitchen with the letter Peter wrote to her four years prior. She demands an explanation, and finds it unfair that he would do that to her. He explains that after the Green Goblin killed Aunt May, he couldn't let anything bad happen to MJ. Peter tells her that he still loves her, that he never stopped, but MJ tells him that Doctor Strange's spell really must've worked… because she doesn't love him and doesn't even really know who he is. He takes her home, and Peter (still in his Spidey costume, of course), MJ, and Ned all hang out for the first time in years. When they have a second alone, Peter apologizes for kissing MJ while Jean Grey was controlling her, but MJ says she doesn't remember anything. This means Bill lied about Sara. He uses Ned's computer to call up Yelena, who is able to figure out that Sara is Jean's kidnapped sister. Realizing he's been wrong about Jean the entire time, he decides to go to Roosevelt Island where she's being held by Bill and co. We go inside a memory to when Sara was captured by Bill, shortly after their mother abandons the sisters for being mutants.
Bill tells Jean that she and Sara have power that could help a lot of people if placed into the right hands, and that it's essentially not fair for a "child" to possess these powers. Before he goes to Jean, Frank warns Spidey about setting her free and plans to come in armed. Bill begins torturing Jean by way of tracking all of her jump patterns and seeing how many she can attempt in a certain amount of time. When Jean looks up at the ceiling, she sees a "V-Max" label on the vent, which really reads, "Ventmax." "V-Max" is the last thing Sara sent to Jean telepathically before she died in the very same chair that Jean is being held in. Overcome with emotion, Jean sends out a massive power strike that freezes most of the city and rips out the inhibitor. When Peter arrives, she unfreezes the Hand and makes them fight Peter. During the fight, Peter is wearing his inhibitor and is therefore using his home-made webshooters. As it turns out, the weapons that the Hand is using (based on Shocker's arm technology) were designed specifically to destroy Peter's artificial webbing.
As Peter is losing the fight, he unmasks himself and coughs up blood, revealing black eyes. Jean tells Spidey that Sara died in that room simply because she was special. "We don't get to have a normal life… No friends, or family… Those people are gone. That life is over." She then asks Peter, "Be honest with yourself. Are you Peter Parker, or Spider-Man?" Peter breaks off the inhibitor and replies, "I'm both." He takes off the inhibitor, but is able to retain enough self-control that he traps the Hand instead of killing them. The Damage Control weapons also have no effect on his natural, organic web.
After defeating the Hand, Spidey pleads with Jean not to kill Bill, as it won't make it right or bring Sara back. She traps Peter in that weird frozen power aura, and he allows him to enter his mind. Jean walks into a memory of Aunt May, and sits down on the bed next to her. "Because you're special, people can do dark, monstrous things to you… We love you, not because you're special, but because you're you." May and Jean hug. Peter sits down on the bed next to Jean and says, "I'm sorry about your sister… Just because we lost someone, doesn't mean we have to do this alone." She says, "I have no one." Peter says, "You have me." In a split second, he senses a bullet heading towards them and manages to pull Jean out of the way. It breaks her frozen hold over the city, but Peter is near-fatally wounded. Frank realizes he shot Peter, and carries him to the hospital.
News that Spider-Man is potentially on his deathbed spreads over New York City. There are candlelight vigils, and the Empire State Building lights up red and blue in honor of Spider-Man. Jean is elsewhere trying to wake up Peter's mind telepathically… and he finally wakes from his coma. Frank explains that Jean has been "using her magic voodoo shit" to keep him alive. He apologizes, and says, "I've seen real bravery in my day, but that was something else." After a sweet and funny moment, Frank explains that they had to cut through the suit, but he has a plan that'll allow Peter to leave anonymously. He walks out of the hospital, and Frank stands in the window with the mask on. The crowd goes wild. Peter is moved by the crowd, which is full of people wearing Spider-Man masks and holding signs.
We cut to Peter back at Frank's, watching the sunset, then cut to MJ sitting on their high school rooftop watching the same sunset. Jean is on a bus headed to what appears to be upstate New York. In the final moments of the film, Peter goes to visit Aunt May's grave, and says he won't "do it alone" anymore. We cut to him at the bodega while on the phone with DeWolff, who tells him that Bill is missing. Ned walks in, and Peter introduces himself. Instead of saying anything else, they do their best friend handshake without missing a beat. Ned, in what appears to be a moment of recognition, says, "Peter!" Cut to credits.
In a brief post-credits scene, Ned's Spidey Tracker tracks Spidey off-planet, aka in outer space somewhere.
What happens to Jean Grey?
After Peter saves her from Frank's bullet, she manages to escape before any law enforcement or government officials arrive. When she wakes Peter from his coma, she's sitting on the same park bench where she and her sister sat in the flashback we saw. At the very end of the movie, she's on a bus that appears to be moving through Upstate New York (which we can tell from the autumn leaves and otherwise rural landscape).
This is speculation, but the X-Mansion is located in Upstate New York. Given that an X-Men movie is on the horizon, could it be possible that Jean is headed to meet Professor Xavier and be one of the core mutants who form the X-Men? Other than that, we're not sure where the bus is headed, but we know she's safe.
What happened to Jean Grey's sister Sara? What is V-Max?
After being kidnapped in broad daylight by Damage Control, headed by Bill Metzger himself, Sara Grey is subjected to the same torture that Jean was subjected to. The torture in question involves forcing them to use their telepathic abilities to their absolute limit in order to push as many jumps as possible so they can record the pattern in order to utilize it as some sort of weapon. The last thing Sarah sees before she dies is the vent above her head that reads, "Ventmax," though the "ent" part is faded away. She's able to send one last telepathic message, "V-Max," before ultimately dying during the experimentation.
What happens to Bill Metzger?
After Peter is shot and Jean gets away, Bill is nowhere to be found. We know that he's a powerful man who likely has a lot more cronies, a lot more money, and a lot more dark tech tucked away somewhere. In the comics, Bill Metzger is a vocal anti-mutant activist who goes up against the X-Men (though we'll let you guess how that ends). At the time of writing, we have no clues as to Bill's whereabouts, though we do know that it's hardly the last we've seen of him.
What happens to Hulk?
Jean enters Hulk's mind and uses him to fight Peter, but Hulk isn't the average superhero. Bruce is able to fight back and forth with Jean to get her out of his mind, and Peter warns her about rooting around in his brain. After Jean exits, Bruce is unable to think straight, and this sends his humanity out the window and turns him into Savage Hulk. There are many iterations of Hulk, but Savage Hulk is the most violent, most unpredictable, and easily the most lethal. Peter is able to subdue him by appealing to his humanity, and the last we see of him is via stretcher in an ambulance.
The creation of the universal inhibitor, however, presumably has some big implications. The one Peter crafted is too small to pierce Hulk's incredibly thick skin, but if Bruce can develop one of his own… then that certainly changes things. Hulk is presumably not in Avengers: Doomsday, so we don't know when we'll see him again.
Can Peter control his new powers?
It takes some trial and error, but one final push from Jean by way of manipulation (the verbal, emotional kind, not the telepathic kind) causes him to rip off his inhibitor chip and harness his new power in a way that doesn't allow him to be ultra-violent – but still allows him to kick some major ass. It's important to note that Peter didn't stand a chance against the hand, or even the guards at Damage Control who weren't being controlled by Jean, as the weaponry they made from Shocker's arm device was designed to destroy Peter's synthetic web. The organic web, however, was able to suspend them, and his heightened senses allowed him to sense Frank's oncoming bullet.
Going forward, we can expect Peter to utilize his own webbing, much like Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man or "Peter 2," as Peter refers to him. We don't know if the black eyes will return during particularly tense or difficult moments, but we'll just have to wait and see.
Does Ned recognize Peter?
The million-dollar question. When Peter walks up to Ned at the bodega, he recognizes Peter from the housewarming party as "the flower guy." Peter goes to shake his hand, and the two naturally go into their special best friend handshake without missing a beat. The movie simply ends with a smiling Ned exclaiming, "Peter!"
It's worth noting there that MJ had no recollection of Peter whatsoever, and that Doctor Strange previously said that the spell could not be undone. It's possible that Ned remembered the handshake through muscle memory. But if Ned could recognize Peter, then that means that MJ could eventually recognize Peter some way, somehow.
How does Peter leave things with MJ?
While the three hang out at MJ's place, with his mask still on, Peter apologizes for kissing her while Jean was controlling her. MJ admits that she has no recollection of this, which makes Peter realize that Bill was lying about Sara. Peter uses Ned's computer to call up Yelena Belova to do some research, and said research reveals that she is indeed Jean's sister who was kidnapped. The scene cuts to Peter on his way to Roosevelt Island to free Jean from Bill's clutches.
The next time we see MJ, she's seated on the rooftop of her building watching the sunset. We don't know exactly how the two left off, but I think Ned's implied revelation at the end of the movie holds the key to what happens next with her and Peter.
Who dies in Spider-Man: Brand New Day?
There are no major deaths in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and that's thanks in part to Peter's no-killing policy and his reluctance to let Frank shoot anyone dead. Sara Grey does die, but this happens before the events of Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Each villain, including Scorpion, is apprehended and taken elsewhere with the exception of Bill Metzger. He gets away sometime after Peter is shot. The cop whose car Peter throws also presumably lives.
Is there a post-credits scene?
There is a very brief post-credits scene that shows the screen of Ned's Spidey Tracker. The tracker shows Spidey on a planet that goes far beyond the moon of Earth-616, and registers his status as "Off-planet." We don't know what this means yet, but before you jump to the excitement of a new interplanetary Spider-Man – remember that Ned's technology was designed to track Peter's Spider-Man specifically (though we don't know how that all works).
This means that Peter specifically is off-planet, and I think this is a key to Avengers: Secret Wars. The upcoming film is based on the comic book arc that takes all the heroes to a terrible planet known as Battleworld, and it introduces the alien symbiote that turned Eddie Brock into Venom and gave Tobey Maguire's Peter the black suit in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3. Only time will tell.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in theaters now. For more on the MCU, here's our guide to how to watch all the Marvel movies in order.
