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At the end of 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) cast a spell that ensured no one would remember Peter Parker or that he is the MCU’s friendly neighborhood webslinger, but in Sony’s upcoming fourquel, Brand New Day, there is someone who remembers Spidey’s secret identity.
Brand New Day star Tom Holland, who is reprising the role of Spider-Man once more this summer, recently teased to IGN that the real villain of the movie is “still very much a secret” and “unlike anything we’ve seen in one of these movies before”, while also confirming that “one person” remembers Peter Parker after the events of No Way Home, stopping short of naming the character in question. Still, we have a few ideas.
Our first guess is the Hulk, and with good reason. Though Hulk seems to be in smash mode when it comes to Spidey in the latest Brand New Day trailer, and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) clearly doesn’t recall ever meeting Peter, his Jade Giant counterpart has a history of remembering secret identities.
In Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee’s Sentry comic book series for Marvel, Bob Reynolds (portrayed by Lewis Pullman in the Thunderbolts movie) begins to remember the Void after wiping everyone’s memory and tries to warn everyone that the Void is coming. However, no one remembers who he is, except one hero: Hulk. Having been hidden inside Banner during the memory wipe, Hulk’s memories remained intact. Could this be the case with Peter’s identity as well? After all, we do see Banner wearing a gamma inhibitor device that completely suppresses his Hulk transformation—for a while, at least.
Hmm, perhaps. Yet, like many of you, we’ve also heard the rumors that Sadie Sink is playing the X-Men mutant Jean Grey in Brand New Day, and that she will turn out to be the “secret” villain of the film. In the Marvel universe, magic and psionics are often written as distinct. Strange’s spell may well have worked on someone like Jean initially, but she’s powerful. Canonically, she can both alter mental pathways to repair psychic trauma and restore hidden memories. It’s totally possible that by the events of Brand New Day, Jean knows exactly who Peter is.
Of course, there are other (way more obvious) MCU characters who may know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. We just might not have all the pieces of the puzzle yet. Frank Castle, a.k.a. The Punisher, seems to know exactly who Peter is in Brand New Day if we take the movie’s trailers at face value. There may also be other cameos in the movie that have yet to be revealed. If Doctor Strange doesn’t show up in this one, Wong (Benedict Wong) still might, as he’s done in a handful of other MCU projects. It’s far more likely that the Sorcerer Supreme himself is immune to spells cast on his memory, and he’s been keeping tabs on Earth’s Mightiest (potential) Heroes since the events of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
One more interesting possibility remains, and that’s the piece of the Venom symbiote that Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) left behind in Peter’s universe in the post-credits of No Way Home. While Brock was returned to his own universe (where people hate “murderer” Spider-Man), the piece left behind will possess its own memories, which may not have been affected. The symbiote may well have found a new host by now and could have reminded them of what was lost during Strange’s spell.
It’s fun to speculate, but we’ll find out for sure when Spider-Man: Brand New Day is released on July 31.
The post Who Remembers That Peter Parker Is Spider-Man in Brand New Day? appeared first on Den of Geek.
