Spider-Man: Brand New Day has been available for just under two weeks, giving audiences time to debate its many theories and major story decisions. One question has become especially divisive: does the film genuinely earn Jean Grey’s attempted redemption?
Jean Grey’s tragic explanation
Sadie Sink plays Jean Grey, a telepathic mutant who is expected to become part of the MCU’s X-Men after Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars. In Brand New Day, Jean terrorises New York City by possessing civilians and launching violent attacks across several boroughs. She repeatedly targets the Department of Damage Control, using unwilling people as human weapons.
The film later reveals that Jean is searching for her sister, who was kidnapped and killed during experimentation by Damage Control. That revelation reframes Jean’s actions as those of a desperate victim. After Spider-Man de-escalates the crisis, she does not immediately return to society as a celebrated hero, although she and Peter separate on relatively good terms.
That is a significant change from their earlier relationship. Jean possessed MJ’s body in what Peter described as an “unforgivable” attempt to manipulate him. Peter may ultimately empathise with her, but Jean’s actions affected many more people than Spider-Man, MJ and Damage Control personnel.
The civilian Jean leaves behind
Several New Yorkers are possessed, caught in the psychic blast that covers part of the city, or injured in the resulting chaos. Much of that damage can be understood as collateral harm caused by Jean’s search for her sister rather than deliberate cruelty. One scene, however, makes that interpretation much harder to accept.
Before Jean is fully revealed as the film’s villain, she demonstrates her abilities by taking control of people in the street. She uses several passers-by to toy with Peter, shows that she knows his secret identity and threatens MJ, triggering a psychic chase through the city.
Among the people Jean controls is an older man wearing what appears to be a construction worker’s reflective vest. He is simply going about his day when Jean walks him into oncoming traffic. Instead of releasing him with enough time to escape, she allows a taxi to hit him.
That moment has become a particular point of criticism among fans. Jean does not know the man, and the scene presents his death as a demonstration of power rather than an unavoidable consequence of her search. The fact that he is an ordinary civilian makes the act feel especially difficult to reconcile with the sympathetic explanation offered later.
Is the criticism unfair?
Marvel characters have been forgiven for comparable, and sometimes worse, actions. Loki helped Thanos pursue near-apocalyptic ambitions in the first Avengers film before receiving his own television series and moving towards heroism. Other Marvel protagonists have also killed, although their victims are generally presented as villains or dangerous wrongdoers.
Jean’s situation is different because she deliberately places an innocent man in danger simply to prove a point to Peter. That does not make redemption impossible, but it does require the story to acknowledge what she has done rather than treating the death as disposable villainous spectacle.
One fan’s character breakdown on Reddit argues that Jean at the start of the film seems like an irredeemable sadist, while the Jean presented at the conclusion is a tragic victim acting out of desperation. The criticism is not limited to the death itself: the fan argues that Jean’s decision to target Peter through MJ, including the casual killing of the civilian, signals a disregard for human life that the ending never addresses.
Others see this as excessive scene-by-scene fault-finding. The sequence may primarily exist to establish the film’s threat and launch its central conflict. Even so, superhero stories have long been criticised for treating the ordinary people being saved as background objects rather than individuals with names, families and consequences. Captain America: Civil War, in particular, engages directly with that problem.
Jean’s actions therefore do more than establish the stakes of Brand New Day. They define the boundaries of her morality. If the film wants audiences to accept her as a future hero, a later story needs to confront the damage she caused instead of relying solely on the revelation that she was searching for her sister.
Jean Grey’s future in the MCU
It remains to be seen whether Jean faces serious consequences in a future appearance. Sink is set to reprise the role in Avengers: Secret Wars, followed at some point by a new X-Men film.
Kit Connor, known for Heartstopper, will appear alongside Sink in that film as Cyclops. The character has historically been Jean’s love interest across much of the X-Men franchise.
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