Spider-Man: Brand New Day Villain Rumors Hint at Big MCU Co-Star
A new report sheds some light on the direction Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be going, confirming – if it pans out – a rumor that had been going around for months. Spidey’s next big-screen adventure has been hit by turmoil recently with the announcement that Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars will be delayed, pushing Doomsday past Brand New Day’s release. This causes problems because Brand New Day was supposed to take place after Doomsday, with the latter affecting the former’s storyline to some degree. That means one of two things must happen: either Brand New Day is delayed as well, or the script will have to be altered to exclude anything related to Doomsday. It now appears that Brand New Day will still be released on July 24, 2026, meaning a script change and timeline reshuffle are the likely results. Keeping that in mind, here is who will be appearing in Spider-Man: No Way Home according to this new report, as well as some other rumored character appearances, and my thoughts on how all of this will conform to the changed MCU release timeline. I’ll put this under a spoiler warning, although I imagine this will be officially revealed early and be featured prominently in every trailer and poster for the film.
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According to Nexus Point News, Mark Ruffalo will show up in Spider-Man: Brand New Day as Bruce Banner and, presumably, his crowd-pleasing alter ego, the Hulk. Well, “crowd-pleasing” is mostly a thing of the past since Marvel has eschewed the classic Savage Hulk, whom everyone loves, in favor of Smart Hulk, a CGI version of Mark Ruffalo playing Mark Ruffalo. (Seriously, Smart Hulk doesn’t even have Banner’s personality; this is Ruffalo collecting a paycheck and Marvel sidelining yet another classic superhero.) And while Nexus Point News isn’t sure if the Hulk that appears in Brand New Day will be the lame one or the awesome one, rumors about the enormous green rage monster joining this film have been happening for months, with Gary from Nerdrotic mentioning it quite often, and he specified that this would be the Savage Hulk. (The story at the time was that it would be the Hulk and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, but according to ComicBookMovie.com, that was part of an earlier version of the film, possibly not even at the scripting stage, and the Punisher is no longer involved). Also suggesting this is the case is an X post by Josh Lucas, the founder of Den of Nerds, in which he says he’s had it confirmed from two sources that the Hulk will be the villain of the movie, which means it’s almost certainly the Savage Hulk:
A SECOND PERSON JUST CONFIRMED HULK IS THE VILLAIN OF BRAND NEW DAY!!! Prob not Maestro, but I def think Savage Hulk is back pic.twitter.com/uTt5ZCAivD
— Josh (@JoshDenofNerds) May 26, 2025
Interestingly, there have been reports of other villains bedeviling Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. First, reports from a sizzle reel shown at the Disney Consumer Products presentation a week ago claim that Scorpion, Tombstone, and Boomerang will be in the movie. Scorpion was set up in Spider-Man: Homecoming, which introduced Mac Gargan, played by Michael Mando, as a minor criminal who figured into the plot. Scorpion has been a part of Spider-Man’s rogues gallery since the 60s (one of the more unsung ones, in my opinion; I always thought he was really cool, even though he never got the recognition of some of Spidey’s other foes), while Tombstone and especially Boomerang are lesser-known enemies. Another rumor from reliable scooper Jeff Sneider on John Rocha’s pocast The Hot Mic says that the film’s heavy will be Mister Negative, a more recent Spider-Man villain who appeared in the “Brand New Day” comic storyline. (He was also one of the central villains of the fantastic video game Marvel’s Spider-Man, which also featured Tombstone in one of the DLC stories.) Adding credence to this is another big scooper, MyTimeToShineHello, who said that Steven Yeun, who almost played Sentry in Thunderbolts*, is “being eyed for a role” in Brand New Day, which again initiated speculation that he could play Mister Negative, who is of Chinese descent.
Steven Yeun is being eyed for a role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day pic.twitter.com/lJr56Aq757
— MyTimeToShineHello (@MyTimeToShineH) May 18, 2025
So, assuming all of this is correct, here’s my take on this situation. I think Marvel knew they were going to delay Doomsday, so they started planning on how to change the story for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. If the Hulk is the villain, he’s probably under some sort of mind control that’s causing him to destroy New York, and Spidey will have to try to stop him. What if this was previously a result of Doctor Doom’s evil machinations in Doomsday – maybe he used his tech or sorcery (or both) to get rid of Smart Hulk in favor of Savage Hulk, then turned him into a killing machine to take his most physically powerful enemy out of the equation – and Hulk’s story would carry over into Brave New World? That’s a plausible way of keeping Spider-Man’s next movie relatively grounded while still tying it into a big Avengers film. (It’s also reminiscent of a classic Spider-Man comic called “To Stop a Juggernaut,” where Spidey had to take on a rampaging Juggernaut single-handedly and almost got himself killed because he was so outmatched.) With the new timeline switcheroo, this obviously couldn’t be the case, so instead of Doctor Doom being the source of Hulk’s mind control, they use Mister Negative, who can turn people into his unwitting servants with his mystical powers. I have no idea if this is true, but if the Hulk is going to be a villain, this makes the most sense to me. And I think I prefer it being Mister Negative being behind the Hulk’s attack because it makes the movie more intimate and grounded, with Spider-Man fighting his own villains instead of the runoff from a different film.
If this is the direction Spider-Man: Brand New Day goes, it doesn’t sound too bad to me. Having Spider-Man face the Hulk is a good way to get around the rights stipulation that a different Marvel hero must appear in each of his solo movies for Marvel to be allowed to use him (which is why Iron Man, Nick Fury, and Doctor Strange were featured in Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home, respectively); this way, you can have Spidey on his own while still honoring the contract with Sony. The real villains are characters we haven’t seen on film yet, which is what Kevin Feige said he wants to do with the MCU Spider-Man movies, so that works. I do worry about Scorpion getting lost in the shuffle, though; as I said, I like him a lot, and I would love to see him be the main antagonist of a film. And if the storyline is as self-contained and grounded as this sounds, it suggests that Sadie Sink will not be a multiversal variant, which was widely suspected. Marvel has proven they can ruin anything over the past few years, but Spider-Man: No Way Home was easily their best movie since Endgame, so hopefully, they’ll get the web-slinger’s next adventure right, too.
Let us know what you think of the new Spider-Man: Brand New Day villain rumors in the comments!
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