Sadie Sink's Spider-Man: Brand New Day Character Is Exactly Who We Thought (And It Works)

Warning: This article has major spoilers for "Spider-Man: Brand New Day."

When Sadie Sink was cast in "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" in 2025, her character was not disclosed. That amazingly carried through the entire marketing campaign of the film, which kept Sink's role shrouded in secrecy. But Marvel fans who remembered rumors that Marvel Studios wanted Sink to play Jean Grey from "X-Men" connected the dots.

Sink as Jean would fit the pattern (cast a redhead rising star) that got Sophie Turner, still riding a "Game of Thrones" high, picked as Jean for 2016's "X-Men: Apocalypse." The evidence only piled up when the "Brand New Day" trailers teased a superhuman who could possess other people or hold entire crowds of New Yorkers frozen in place. Both of those suggested a powerful telepath like Jean.

Well, in this case, Marvel fans were right! Sadie Sink is indeed playing Jean Grey in "Spider-Man: No Way Home." The mystery of her identity carries over into the movie itself. During the first half, she only speaks to Spider-Man (Tom Holland) via mental possession of other people. She also dresses in a hooded jacket with a mask to hide what she looks like. If that seems like a generic costuming choice, note that her hood is yellow, and the jacket is a leathery green. Those are Jean's colors, the ones she wears in her costumes as Marvel Girl and as the Phoenix. 

This is no mere cameo, either. The mystery of who Jean is and why she's attacking government agency Damage Control is the driving force of the film, and she ends up as the closest thing to a main villain. This is a darker, ruthless Jean than fans might expect, because this Jean has never met Charles Xavier and had to survive almost all on her own.

When comic Jean Grey was a child, her friend Annie Richardson died in front of her after being hit by a speeding car. A traumatized Jean's telepathy awakened, so she actually felt Annie die. To help Jean recover, her parents enlisted Charles Xavier, who taught her to master her telepathy through her childhood. When Xavier put his X-Men together, Jean was among his first recruits. She arrived at Xavier's School as a pretty normal teenage girl who just happened to read minds and lift objects with her own.

That's not what happened to Sadie Sink's Jean. In this iteration, her sister, Sara Grey (Olivia Booth-Ford), was also a mutant with the same powers. Once they got those powers, their frightened mother abandoned them. The Grey sisters had to survive on their own in foster homes and the streets, until one day, Damage Control abducted Sarah. Jean wants to rescue her sister from the government agency, a sympathetic goal, but her destructive methods — like mind controlling the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) as a blunt instrument — show that she considers herself and Sarah the only people in the world worth saving.

Jean herself is taken by Damage Control as its director, Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman), tries to harness her psychic powers. Jean realizes Sarah is already dead, killed by Metzger's experiments, and lets loose. Her telekinesis manifests, she holds all New Yorkers in a one-mile radius as hostages, and only Peter letting her into his mind to feel his own loss of Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) calms her.

This is not the Jean Grey intro anyone had expected, but it's a story filled with powerful emotions, the kind that makes "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" feel more like a *real* movie (as our "Brand New Day" review said).

"Spider-Man: Brand New Day" also makes me want to see how Sadie Sink's Jean becomes the full-fledged hero we recognize. Jean ends the movie riding a bus to an unknown destination, and it's a good bet it'll eventually take her to a certain Westchester County school intended for gifted youngsters. The X-Men are a superhero team known for taking in penitent villains, after all.

Jean's role in this movie also contextualizes where mutants stand in the Marvel Cinematic Universe ahead of the upcoming "X-Men" reboot. Enough mutants have started appearing (or at least maturing into their powers) that the government is taking notice and preparing countermeasures. But not enough have appeared for the word "mutant" to catch on in public consciousness. Considering Jean's psychic freakout might be the public's introduction to what mutants can do, that sets up a world that'll hate and fear mutants even if it's already been dealing with superheroes for decades.

A key plot device in "Brand New Day" is Peter's powers escalating (like his Spider-Sense increasing exponentially or him growing organic webshooters). It's a rough transition, so he develops a DNA inhibitor to suppress the mutation. When he still hasn't learned Metzger is the real bad guy, Peter uses an inhibitor to take away Jean's powers so Damage Control can grab her. This tech could easily be a forerunner to "inhibitor collars" that suppress mutant powers, which governments enforce on mutant prisoners.

The exact shape of Marvel Studios' "X-Men" reboot hasn't been revealed yet, but "Brand New Day" and Sadie Sink's Jean Grey make the picture clearer.

"Spider-Man: Brand New Day" is now in theaters.