Spider-Man: Brand New Day has officially hit theaters and has absolutely smashed both fan and box-office expectations. The latest entry in the MCU is being praised for its heartfelt story and jaw-dropping action scenes. However, one of the biggest surprises was that Sadie Sink is playing the iconic X-Men character, Jean Grey. Fans speculated for months about Sink’s role in the film, and now many of those fan theories have been confirmed. But Jean Grey’s introduction opens up a Pandora’s box of dark implications for the future of the MCU X-Men.
In Brand New Day, Tramell Tillman plays Director William Metzger, the cold, calculating head of the Department of Damage Control. He and Jean Grey are caught in a deadly cat-and-mouse game as the young mutant seeks to liberate her imprisoned sister, while Metzger pursues her for the same experimentation he subjected her sister to. The Director’s goals are to study the telepaths, hoping to decode their biological signatures to replicate their abilities in other subjects. This pattern of exploitation mirrors familiar comic book narratives, most notably the schemes concocted by the sinister Weapon X program from X-Men lore. With Spider-Man’s unintended assistance, Metzger and Damage Control now possess the critical resources required to usher the Weapon X program into the MCU.
One of the more ominous developments in Spider-Man: Brand New Day stems from a new device Spider-Man invents in the film, which could cast a long dark shadow into the MCU’s future. As Spider-Man struggles with his own terrifying new mutations, he seeks guidance from an Avenger with a similar problem: Bruce Banner. He hopes to adapt Banner’s Hulk inhibitor, but when Peter suggests modifying it to affect any superpowered individual, Banner rightfully warns him of the implications. Fans of the X-Men are no strangers to Inhibitor Collars, powerful devices that prevent the wearer from using superpowers; functionally, they are no different from what Peter creates. Not only does he ignore Banner’s warnings, but he eventually uses a universal inhibitor on Jean Grey before handing her, and the inhibitor, over to Metzger and Damage Control. This sets the stage for a dangerous new status quo: Inhibitor Collars are an essential tool in mutant oppression, and Peter Parker has positioned himself as the MCU’s Oppenheimer, in terms of anti-mutant technology. Inhibitors have been used to visit unspeakable horrors on mutants, and the chain imagery around the neck speaks for itself. Spider-Man’s inhibitor isn’t designed to resemble a collar, but that doesn’t rule out future models of the tech having a more oppressive design.
The 1991 story arc “Weapon X” established the covert government agency as a cruel and unusual program dedicated to the weaponization of mutantkind. This is the same program that bonded adamantium to Logan’s skeleton, turning him into the iconic hero Wolverine. It’s almost impossible to imagine the X-Men joining the MCU without Wolverine, making the emergence of Weapon X (in one form or another) inevitable. The organization needs a way to subdue and control the most dangerous mutants on the planet, while also having powerful test subjects to exploit and study. Spider-Man: Brand New Day places both objectives into Director Metzger’s hands and shows us how far he is willing to go in pursuit of this power. It’s telling, but not surprising, that one of the first reactions to mutants in the MCU is to lock them up and study them like a petri dish.
We’ve seen this playbook before, and it’s a familiar story for comic readers. In the recent comic series Ultimate Wolverine, Logan escapes a captor known as Directorate X, which serves as the Ultimate Universe’s equivalent to Weapon X. Just like Metzger in Brand New Day, they are obsessed with weaponizing mutants, specifically by holding Jean Grey captive as their deadly ‘Phoenix Specimen.’ Both the comics and the film feature strikingly similar scenarios: Jean is kept sedated and forced to use her incredible powers against her own will to serve a villain’s dark agenda. In Brand New Day, Jean is neutralized by the inhibitor and forced by Director Metzger’s scientist to trigger her powers against her will, a dangerous and painful thing for the young mutant. Each time her powers are triggered, Metzger collects more data, bringing him closer to recreating her abilities in others. “Imagine if that power was placed in the hands of people who actually know what to do with it,” Metzger tells Jean in a frightfully intense scene. When held side by side, it’s undeniably clear; the Department of Damage Control is actively laying the foundation for what will be the Weapon X program. Director Metzger is running the same experiments and inflicting the same injustices on mutantkind. At the end of the film, Metzger escapes, leaving him free to continue his schemes.
With Avengers: Doomsday rapidly approaching, the X-Men are poised to make their long-awaited debut in the MCU. How the world chooses to receive these often feared and hated mutants will inevitably define the version of the mutants we will see for all future X-Men stories and films. The Weapon X program has always been a looming threat for the uncanny mutant team. Now, thanks to the volatile combination of Director Metzger’s ambition and Spider-Man’s well-intentioned but misguided interventions, Weapon X is already being positioned as a formidable and existential threat to the X-Men, setting the stage for conflict long before they even make their grand big-screen debut.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now out in theaters.
