According to Spider-Man: Brand New Day co-writer Chris McKenna, the new MCU movie almost went down a completely different path from the metamorphosis story that was delivered, revealing that we could have gotten a British Peter Parker.
"We went down some different roads," said McKenna on The Bulwark podcast. "At one point, we had him putting on a British accent. So it would have been Tom’s British accent, but Tom from Queens pretending he’s British."
McKenna explained that the scene involved Tom Holland's Parker running into Zendaya's MJ, but because her memory was wiped at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, he had to introduce himself. However, rather than pretending to be 'Maynard' like he does in Brand New Day, McKenna explains that the alternate idea had Parker pretending to be from across the pond. But it was all about "juggling personas."
McKenna continues, "So he meets MJ a few years later. The circumstances are that he's Spider-Man, and he's talking to her, but basically he has to fall in with her to get in on this mystery. But in that version, he's not Spider-Man. He's pretending to be someone else. Ben Reilly. But he's Ben Reilly, a British person, who then falls in with her to find out what is going on with something that she knows about."
In Marvel comics, Ben Reilly is a Spider-Man variant and a clone of Parker who was created by the supervillain the Jackal to torment Spidey. But Reilly later broke free from the baddie and went on to become a hero known as the Scarlet Spider. Reilly, however, is not British, so the accent idea was probably a little dig at Holland's nationality. But Brand New Day still makes light of this, as when Ned shares his Spidey tracking with Parker, ahem, Maynard, he poses the idea of Spider-Man being British.
However, you may be thinking to yourself, 'Wait, where have I heard the name Ben Reilly recently?' Well, that is the alias used by Nicolas Cage's Spider-Noir in the Prime Video series. Although Amazon's Spider-Noir series is separate from the MCU, and Noir's real name in the comics is Peter Parker, both Brand New Day and the TV show mentioning different versions of Ben Reilly may have caused some confusion.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is out now. For more, check out our Spider-Man: Brand New Day review, or our spoiler-filled guide to the Spider-Man: Brand New Day ending explained.
