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This article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
After months of speculation, we can finally say for sure that the X-Men have arrived to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Well, one of them, anyway, but it’s a founding member! Sadie Sink is indeed Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a mutant telepath and one of the most important characters in X-Men history.
Even so, and with Jean Grey at the center of the movie, the film didn’t actually do much setting up for the future of the X-Men. Neither Cyclops nor Wolverine appeared, and the post-credit scene didn’t involve her getting an acceptance letter for Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. We didn’t even see an exit sign for Salem Center, New York, when Jean rode away on a bus presumably upstate. But the mere existence of a high-profile mutant in the MCU means that the universe will be changed forever. Here’s how.
Feared and Hated?
In a lot of ways, the original Fox movies had it easy. When Senator Kelly complains about mutants who can walk through walls and into any house, or even control someone’s mind, at the start of 2000’s X-Men, we understand why people would be afraid. Such powers are new to human characters we meet in the movie, and they’ve never seen anything like this before, used for good or ill.
But that’s not the case in the MCU. Over the course of 36 movies, the MCU has shown time and again how people with incredible abilities can help regular people. Even though the citizens of the MCU have seen villains like Thanos and Loki try to wipe them out of existence, they’ve also watched the Avengers save the universe again and again. Moreover, regular people celebrate the powerful, enshrining them with celebrations like AvengerCon (seen in Ms. Marvel) and Rogers: The Musical (seen in Hawkeye).
So what makes mutants different? Why would someone love Thor but fear Storm?
Brand New Day gives us an answer. As an impulsive teenager, Jean will stop at nothing to retrieve her sister, Sara. She hops into anybody that suits her needs, treating even people who just happen to be on the street nearby as a tool. Consider the young man who talks to Peter after the first failed suppressor field test. As far as we can see, the man did nothing to threaten Jean or Sara. And yet, Jean took over his body, used him to threaten Peter, and allowed him to get stuck in Spider-Man’s webbing.
The climax, with Jean’s psychic attack only intensifies this fear. Hundreds of people who had nothing to do with Damage Control or its treatment are trapped in a bubble, held frozen but conscious and, if the tears on MJ’s face are any indication, terrified. To his credit, Brand New Day director Destin Daniel Cretton pays attention to the average people in New York in a way we haven’t seen since the days of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. The camera holds on the faces of the frozen people, even before Punisher walks us through them, showing us how regular people react to this attack upon their lives. This attention to regular folk helps Jean’s attack feel more immediate than even the climax of Thunderbolts*, when the Void zapped away citizens, but did it while floating above them.
In Brand New Day, we can see why people in the MCU consider mutants something strange, different, and scary.
Mutants Among Us
Surely, the decision to make Jean Grey a central character in a Spider-Man movie will rankle some. While there’s certainly something to be said for letting Spidey get all the attention and letting Jean co-exist with Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, and Angel, the strategy works for building up the mystery of the mutants. Spider-Man does not recognize Jean and Sara as harbingers of an evolutionary step up. He just sees them as two girls who happen to have powers.
Jean may be the most prominent X-Men to officially appear in the MCU—X-Men ’97 and Deadpool & Wolverine don’t count—but she’s not the only mutant. We’ve already confirmed that Namor and Ms. Marvel are mutants, and the same might be true of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law guest characters Mr. Immortal and El-Aguila, even if they aren’t identified as such in the show. What happens if the information from Damage Control leaked to Detective Jean DeWolff got out into the public, and they saw that these five people were all just born with their powers? What seemed like a random coincidence starts to feel like a pattern—and then it becomes scary.
Jean’s introduction in Brand New Day could set the model for bringing mutants into the MCU. We could have Hank McCoy show up as a science student in VisionQuest. Warren Worthington III could be hiding his wings at a high society event with his father on season three of Daredevil: Born Again. In Black Panther III, T’Challa’s son could encounter a white-haired thief called Ororo Munroe, on the run from a mysterious villain.
For those dying to see the X-Men in the MCU, this drip-drop approach is likely maddening. But it would replicate the feeling that regular citizens have in the Marvel Universe when they slowly realize that mutants have become more prominent. Instead of comparing these adolescents to the super soldiers, Asgardian gods, and tech geniuses who make up the Avengers, mutants will feel like something uncontrollable, slowly taking over their lives.
The Dawn of the Dream
Even though Brand New Day wisely revealed their Homeland Security analogue Damage Control and its ICE-styled agents were the true bad guys, the film did not hesitate to show just how much damage a mutant like Jean can do. On first glance, that seems like a strange place to properly introduce the X-Men, some of the most popular heroes in all of comics. However, making the first major mutant feel so scary is exactly how the MCU can show the importance of Professor X and his school.
Professor Charles Xavier built his School for Gifted Youngsters to advance his dream, a dream of mutants and humans living together in peace. Using the supercomputer Cerebro to enhance his formidable mental abilities, Xavier finds young mutants and brings them to the school where he can provide shelter and community for them while teaching them to control those powers. From that group, he selects his X-Men, a superhero team who shows the world they have nothing to fear from mutants by using their powers to help people.
In a vacuum, Xavier’s dream can feel like optimistic nonsense. But after Brand New Day, his dream seems urgent, difficult, and necessary. If Jean is just the first of the young mutants to show up in the MCU with incredible powers, then there is already a need for someplace where mutants can see themselves as heroes instead of villains, safe instead of feared; a way for them to turn the things that make them different into a force for good.
Xavier’s school is exactly that place and the X-Men are exactly that way. And one by one, movie by movie, Xavier can start recruiting these kids to a better future, not unlike a guy name Nick Fury did once upon a time. Thanks to Jean’s arrival in Brand New Day, the MCU is ready to evolve, ready to finally realize the X-Men’s dream.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now playing in theaters.
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