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Spider-Man: Brand New Day builds an MCU that is right to fear the X-Men

A teenage mutant brought NYC to its knees without trying. Now imagine what Professor X could do

Image credit: Marvel Studios

Features by Trent Cannon, Senior Contributing writer

Published on Mon Aug 03 2026

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By now, you’ve hopefully had a chance to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Judging by the monstrously good opening weekend it enjoyed, you’re ready for a spoiler-filled take on the movie, because Brand New Day is doing a lot of heavy lifting to set up the MCU version of the X-Men… and it shows that maybe the public is right to be terrified of them.

Heavy spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day follow.

By now, you probably know that Sadie Sink’s character is, in fact, Jean Grey, one of the founding members of the X-Men in the comics. She is nearly as ubiquitous with the team as Wolverine and Cyclops. Jean Grey is an incredibly powerful telepath, which makes her both a great hero and a terrifying villain on occasion. In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, she has her villain hat on as she goes on a veritable body-swapping rampage across New York City.

Image credit: Marvel Studios

This is very clearly a Jean Grey that is still learning, both about herself and her powers. At the start of the movie, she is only using her powers to possess people, piloting them like puppets in her quest to uncover the dark secrets that the Department of Damage Control is keeping. And she does a very good job of that, effectively evading the police, government agents, and Spider-Man in the process. She is absolutely terrifying, staying one step ahead of everyone until the climax of the movie where she takes control of a shockingly high proportion of New York’s densely populated center.

This is a Jean Grey who has learned what she knows on her own, without the tutelage of someone like Professor X and without the support of an entire school designed to help her wield her powers. A little, baby Jean Grey, barely recognizable compared to her comic book counterpart, brought one of the great cities of the world – one with at least one major superhero team and plenty of street-level heroes in it – to its knees without even trying.

Now imagine what Professor X could do.

Charles Xavier in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness — Image credit: Marvel Studios

This is maybe the best way to introduce the X-Men to the MCU if you want people to be justifiably terrified of them. It won’t take long for people to figure out that Jean Grey was responsible for this latest disaster in New York, which has probably only just psychologically recovered from everyone disappearing into the Sentry’s depression gauntlet in Thunderbolts last year. It isn’t like she uses a codename or a mask while on the team; she is just Jean Grey – team mom and Omega-Level mutant who invaded everyone’s thoughts for a while there.

Sure, Cyclops can blast you with his eye beams, and Wolverine is going to go snikt on someone’s liver more than once, but Jean Grey already single-handedly did a war crime in the MCU. And that was before she even knew what she was doing. The next time we see her in the MCU, Jean Grey will have a couple more years of experience and training under her belt. It is always worth remembering that the X-Men don’t usually seek to help mutants just control their powers; they have a whole Danger Room designed to help them wield them safely. They come out of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters more powerful than when they go into it.

The fun thing is that not only is she not the only telepath on the X-Men (the recent Emma Frost casting comes to mind), but she isn’t even the most powerful. While he lacks Jean’s telekinetic powers, Charles Xavier is in a class all his own when it comes to getting into people’s minds and messing around in there. He could do what she did with less effort.

Phoenix — Image credit: Dave Cockrum/Marvel

So when the MCU does finally stop recycling the Fox cast and get around to introducing their version of the X-Men, they’ll be entering a world where the public has had exactly one encounter with a mutant, and it did not go well.

Probably the most important thing in Spider-Man: Brand New Day for the wider MCU is how it sets up the X-Men. This is going to be a world where fear of mutants is already brewing and distrust of the X-Men is growing before they even go public.

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