The Spider-Man trailers have purposely been misleading people since they first began, but can we figure out who the mysterious character is?
Once Sadie Sink was announced to be in the film, things got really mysterious. We still haven’t learned who she is playing, and what new character is coming in the film which releases in less than two weeks. But we have been scouring the Marvel universe, and the internet, to bring all the fan theories together in one place, so we can hopefully figure it out.
The strongest ongoing theory is Jean Grey. This is personally my least favorite theory, unless the film is hinting at multiple things. And this could be the case. It’s a typical Hollywood trick to splice together scenes during trailers to totally throw people off, or show something without blatantly showing it. It could be the case here where we are clearly seeing a body jumping character, mixed with scenes of Sadie Sinks character, but its two totally different people.
The film is already jam packed with several characters including Hulk, Spider-Man himself, Peter’s friends, Scorpion, The Punisher….you get it. So adding not only Jean Grey, but an additional character on top of that seems like much. But that’s the only way I’d be happy with it being Jean Grey.
Why? Because the way it is presented doesn’t fit Jean Grey’s moral code. While Jean Grey can technically body jump, she rarely does because she only ever does it in emergency situations, not freely. She sees the power move as “mental enslavement” and doesn’t enjoy doing it. So (allegedly) seeing this character take over characters all around Spider-Man, even Scorpion, and using it to purely tease Spider-Man doesn’t fit the scenario.
A majority of the grounding in this theory is purely based on rumors/leaks, or the business side of things. Sadie Sink is signed for three movies in the MCU, which appears to be the only grounding to this whole theory. Every other character on this list teams up with Spider-Man in cross universe events, Jean Grey only had a few minor events with him.
At the end of the day, the MCU is currently going through a Secret Wars storyline (there is even an Avengers movie with that title coming) and that means we are jumping between universes, while the characters from them all collide. We already have Doctor Doom roaming between universes, and we have hints of The Beyonder. That means whoever it is, needs to have an ability to work with this concept, which yes could lead to Jean Grey, but we have several other options that fill that role better.
The studio has been having fun tricking us, so lets swing back around to that two character concept to make it work. You have Jean Grey, but the body jumping could be someone else like Karma, who is being used by a villain against her will, and is capable of body jumping. She even attempts to control Spider-Man in her origin story, and would require the assistance of a character like Jean Grey to bring back to reality. If we are to believe rumors, then the last part of it is that an “asian character is leading the Hand,” which aligns with this theory and takes Jean away from the villain arc.
But who else could Sadie Sink be playing?
The first one, Jean Grey’s daughter, Rachel Summers.
Need a speed run of who Rachel Summers is? Go watch the latest season of X-Men 97 on Disney Plus, which conveniently revealed her for the show the same week as a new Spider-Man trailer. Or go pick up a wide selection of comics. But the TLDR version is that she is the daughter of Jean Grey and Cyclops in an alternate timeline, who is very capable of universe jumping. In fact she is one of the few “multiversal anomalies” which means she not only jumps universes, but she doesn’t have an alternate universe parallel.
Rachel Summers is incredibly powerful, one of the few characters that statistically outpowers Jean Grey herself. Rachel has frequently bonded with the cosmic Phoenix Force. This connection enables her to manipulate space-time, open portals, draw cosmic energy from across the multiverse, and travel between dimensions, which is ideal for the current MCU storyline.
In fact if you go to the Secret Wars storylines, the most recent one (2015) uses Rachel Summers as a target of Doctor Doom. Perhaps her spin is she is the only one powerful enough to protect the heroes, before she gets stranded on Earth-616. Plus, in the comics, she was also captured in her own timeline and her powers are used against her will, forcing her to essentially body hop and take over characters to go after other mutants. So we have a similar scenario as Karma.
Next up, Nocturne
To me this is my most favorite possibility, if they re-write the character slightly and utilize two different variants of the character.
Nocturne (Talia Josephine “T.J.” Wagner, version) is the daughter of Nightcrawler and Scarlet Witch. This ties beautifully into bridging the X-Men with the modern MCU, while opening universe bending tie-ins. She’s known as a “reality hopper” who ends up on a team named Exiles. The Exiles were a team created to fix historical glitches, broken timelines, and reality-threatening anomalies. They were chosen because their own timelines had become unhinged, and were in danger of being erased.
What makes this interesting is the tie-ins the Exiles themselves have. This includes freeing a “mad” Professor X, working alongside Deadpool and Sabertooth, and having a major storyline of relying on Thor. Their biggest part of their story being King Hyperion, a genocidal, god-like variant of Hyperion who was jumping universes to conquer Earth after Earth. The Exiles had to stage a massive, multi-reality stand to finally dethrone him.
To me this all lines up with what we’ve physically seen. Thor plays a big role in the latest trailer, Deadpool is already reality hopping, and something is happening with Professor X. Switching Hyperion with Doctor Doom wouldn’t be a reach. And more importantly this story was basically a “one-shot” which more aligns with the 3 movie role of Sadie Sink.
And there is one more potentially major clue. During the first trailer of the movie there is a shot of a woman in a window that looks a lot like Rogue with her white strip of hair, and people went berserk thinking this was a teaser for that. However in several issues of comics, Nocturne has the exact same hairstyle. Could they have blatantly told us so clearly?
Where the re-write could occur.
In the comics, Nocturne faces off against an evil “Spider-Man” called “The Spider.” The Spider had combined his DNA with that of Carnage and became a maniac, who aligns with Hyperion. The Exiles come to this timeline and need to take him out. This is somewhat aligning with what is happening in the Brand New Day trailers. It appears that Peter is experimenting with some type of Symbiote, with darker tones, or possibly becoming Doppelganger Spider-Man (six arms) and is actively trying to fight it off.
Interestingly, Spider-Man (Earth 616) has another character named Nocturne as well. This version, Angela Cairn, is labeled as a “Street level” ally of Spider-Man, and doesn’t share any of the same similarities, but does have traits that could be stolen for adding Talia into the story. They have already taken creative liberties with Spider-Man stories such as having Doctor Strange warp reality, and having Bruce Banner assist with Spider-Man powers, so again, not much of a reach.
Less likely, but worth mentioning
Option 1, Malice.
Malice fits the MCU world – in the future – not currently. Sue Storm has an alter ego, which has gained massive popularity on Marvel Rivals, who has a thing with Doctor Doom. She is incredibly powerful and a big story aspect of Secret Wars, but there are several problems with this possibility so we don’t have to dive too far into it. The biggest issue is Sue Storm. We have a Sue Storm, and she’s an incredible actress, who already expressed interest in playing this version of her multiple times. If other actors are conveying their alternate universe versions of themselves, we can expect Sue to do it too.
Option 2, Firestar
This rumor is very similar to Jean Grey for me. If it’s her she’s either written wrong, or the trailers are totally pulling a fast one on all of us. Firestar is similar to Human Torch in a sense where she has fire based powers, but she is a mutant that utilizes electromagnetic fields and projection. The problem with the theory is she has no telekinetic powers. She’s also relatively obscure outside of some 1980’s animated Spider-Man fans, and a few Amazing Friends stories. I don’t think hyping up a big character reveal as much as this would lead to Firestar. She’s more a character you would need to educate people on so they get hyped to see her.
Option 3, Menace (Lily Hollister)
Having this character would make a bit of sense overall, if it’s Sadie Sink or not. However Sadie signed that 3 movie deal, and having Menace breach 2 MCU movies doesn’t make sense in many ways. The reason I even bring it up is because the current casting of Spider-Man Brand New Day has no real central villain. You have Scorpion, Tombstone, Boomerang, and The Hand. All of which play supporting villain cast roles, and the movie crew also confirmed the “real villain” hasn’t been revealed at all.
If you read the actual Brand New Day comics, Menace is an overall main villain of the arc. Next to her is Mr. Negative, which would also be cool, but he appeared in the video games so Sony might want to explore someone new, and a female twist on Green Goblin seems like an opportunity. Plus… she’s a redhead. And along with that, a lot of people are wanting to see Black Cat, and Menace is essentially a variation of that in many ways.
But the thing is, if you introduce Sadie as Rachel Summers or Jean Grey to assist Spider-Man, that means whatever villain they are fighting has to be a rather large force to be reckoned with. So perhaps we tone down Sadie’s powers a bit and slot her here.
One last guess.
Gwen
Perhaps the whole “trick” to the trailers goes deeper than visual ques and scene cuts. Perhaps the studio purposely picked an iconic red head actress to play an iconic blonde hair character to throw people off. It’s happened before, ahem Emma Stone, so why not happen again? The MCU is going through a multi-verse crisis, and in the Secret Wars comics Marvel used it to bridge the gap to bring in Spider-Man characters into the main timeline. So Sony/Disney could essentially be using it to introduce new Spider-Man characters like Mile Morales and Ghost Spider (Spider-Gwen).
Plus the real reason for “Brand New Day” in the comic universe was to soft reboot Spider-Man. He had gone to extremes in many ways, and was getting cornered with various stories. The arc allowed them to bring back characters, reset Spider-Man to a “street level” hero, and put him back on the right path. Perhaps Sony Pictures is using the opportunity to reset the Spider-Man universe they’ve failed at building so far by adding a new Spider-Gal character.
And here is one big clue that people seem to be missing. Sadie Sink signed a 3 movie deal, but in multiple interviews she mentions she is “excited to be a big part of the franchise.” In one interview she specifically states both Tom Holland’s franchise, and the MCU. Perhaps this is a reach, it probably is, but with how much they seem to be enjoying tricking us, you gotta reach for something.
It would make sense if the body jumping villain is someone entirely different, which again would allow almost this entire list to be realistic. Perhaps The Shadow King is the villain, which explains the whole “can’t see them” twist the promotions have mentioned, since it’s an entity that body jumps. Or the Mindworm, which is a strong telepathic villain in Spider-Man as well. Both of which would draw help from characters like Jean Grey or Rachel Summers, similar to how Karma would.
