The MCU risks repeating one of the oldest Spider-Man movie problems in the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker will return to headline a record fourth solo movie as the wall-crawler, spinning out of No Way Home‘s twist ending, wherein the world (including his girlfriend and best friend) forgets who he is. Still, Peter won’t be entirely alone: Zendaya’s MJ and Jacob Batalon’s Ned will return in some capacity, but there’ll also be more major MCU characters along for the ride, including Frank Castle/The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and, reportedly, Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner/Hulk.
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Quite how they fit in remains to be seen, but it’s likely there’ll be plenty of bad guys for them to go up against (though both of them could be antagonistic to Peter in some way). There are several villains rumored for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Michael Mando is set to finally return as Mac Gargan, presumably paying off Spider-Man: Homecoming‘s post-credits scene, which set up Scorpion to become a much bigger nemesis. There are many more besides – but how many villains is too many?
Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s Villain Rumors Could Be A Problem
As with any MCU movie, there’s a lot of speculation surrounding Brand New Day, and not all of it will be true. Nonetheless, the sheer breadth of villains who have been linked to the movie is quite astonishing, including:
- Black Cat
- Boomerang
- Chameleon
- Hulk
- Mr. Negative
- The Punisher
- Ramrod
- Scorpion
- Spider-Slayer
- Tarantula
- Tombstone
- Venom
- Vulture
Obviously, not all of those will happen, and some (such as Tombstone) are more likely than others (we surely have to get an MCU symbiote payoff eventually, but this might be too soon). But even if around half of those are in the movie, then we’re looking at a potentially sinister number of enemies for Spider-Man to go up against. Some rumors have been more specific and said Brand New Day will have eight villains in total (which would, in fairness, be a rather appropriate number).
A lot of these names are exciting, and most haven’t been in a live-action movie before, but there’s a catch: we’ve been down this road with Spidey movies, and seen how they can get tangled in a web of having too many foes for the hero to face. Spider-Man 3 is the classic example of overloading a comic book movie with too many villains, as it collapsed under the weight of them all. It featured Venom, Sandman, and New Goblin, and while it has its moments, the sheer number of them was a major reason for it feeling overstuffed, without any of them being given the necessary time to breathe. A similar thing happened with The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which had its own Goblin alongside Electro and Rhino as it attempted to quickly provide a springboard into the Sinister Six.
Why There’s Hope Brand New Day Can Succeed With Multiple Villains
The MCU has, in fairness, done better with this approach. Spider-Man: No Way Home also featured a trio of villains – Doc Ock, Electro, and Green Goblin – and while it wasn’t perfect, it did do a reasonable job of balancing them. It was massively buoyed by nostalgia and fan-service, and even then couldn’t do justice to other returning foes such as Sandman and The Lizard, but it’s nonetheless a much better example of handling so many major villains.
Brand New Day could easily have double that number, however, so how will it fare? One possible solution, which has been the subject of rumor, is that it’ll use a montage sequence to open things up. There’ll likely need to be something that addresses the jump in time from No Way Home anyway (set photos have suggested Brand New Day takes place in 2027, so around 2-3 years later). Having Spider-Man face off with multiple villains in quick scenes could be a fun way of catching viewers up and giving some minor foes their time to shine.
Obviously, that wouldn’t include The Punisher or Hulk, who’ll likely have bigger roles – and be both antagonists and allies to Peter. Scorpion, too, you’d assume will have a more sizable role, while the likes of Tombstone and Tarantula could also be bigger villains. Some, like Black Cat, may simply be laying the groundwork for the future as well. It’s still a hell of a lot of enemies, no matter how you try to break it up, and outside of any montage has to make them all feel fleshed-out. But it might not be as bad as the sheer number makes it seem, and it could, hopefully, do it better than Spider-Man 3.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be released in theaters on July 31st, 2026.
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