Spider-Man: Brand New Day is just around the corner, but even as its July 31 release date draws ever closer, so many questions remain on the table. Among the mysteries still to be revealed once the web-slinger returns to the big screen is, of course, who Sadie Sink is playing in the movie, as well as numerous questions tied to the apparent mutation of his powers. However, the movie will also need to provide quite a bit of context as audiences hop back into the story, as Brand New Day is confirmed to have a four-year time jump following Spider-Man: No Way Home.
While this is already devastating as a plot detail because it means that Peter Parker has truly been on his own for years after being forgotten by everyone at the end of No Way Home, it also raises some serious questions about the timeline within both the Spider-Man movies and the Marvel Cinematic Universe overall. Tom Holland has just provided a bit more insight into why this decision was made, and while it makes sense to a degree, this choice may have just created its own set of problems for the larger MCU.
As reported by Den of Geek, Holland explained, “One of the reasons we took a big break between No Way Home and Brand New Day was to allow the characters to grow up off-screen…Audiences who love the original franchise will see a different version of these characters from the outset.” In a way, this does make sense. For one, it means skipping over the characters’ college years, which they were just entering into at the end of No Way Home.
It also means that Holland, who is now 30 years old, won’t be playing a considerably younger Peter Parker (although MCU fans are unlikely to worry too much about that, honestly). As the fourth installment in the MCU’s Spider-Man movies, it’s additionally understandable that the creative minds behind Brand New Day would want to depict a new phase of life for Peter, MJ, and Ned, which is precisely what Holland is describing.
Those considerations aside, though, this news does raise its own quandaries, particularly considering the timeline issues that already exist within Peter Parker’s MCU story—namely, that five years had already passed between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, during which no one in the Spider-Man movies aged, and the fact that the Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming timelines were already confusing. Adding yet another multi-year gap to those existing complexities surely isn’t going to make things more straightforward.
However, there may be more to it than audiences are currently seeing (or Holland is currently saying) right now. Presumably, Brand New Day will have some direct ties to Avengers: Doomsday, but it’s possible that, even more than that, Brand New Day is set just before Doomsday and will lead right into it. If that’s the case, then it would make a lot more sense for this jump to be necessary. For now, though, this is yet another area where audiences will just have to wait and see.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
