By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 4 seconds ago
In case you’ve been living in a cave (presumably making your own Iron Man suit), you know that Marvel has been having a bad week thanks to the high-profile leak of the Avengers: Doomsday trailer. Other trailers were soon leaked, including one for Spider-Man: Brand New Day that changes everything the fandom had been assuming about Sadie Sink’s role in the upcoming Marvel film.
Countless fans were quite sure the Stranger Things star would be playing the heroic Jean Grey, but details in the leaked trailer seemingly confirm the fan theory that she will secretly be playing a villain instead.
A Surprise Villain Emerges
When it was first announced that Sadie Sink would be playing a character in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, many assumed she’d be playing a redheaded character such as Jean Grey. Some fans, though, have long speculated that she might be playing a villain such as the shape-shifting multiversal baddie, Shathra. In the leaked trailer for Brand New Day, dialogue from Sink’s character seems to verify she will be playing a villain because she very explicitly threatens our friendly neighborhood webhead.
“You’re a mess, Spider-Man. Don’t get in my way,” she says. “Otherwise, it won’t just be your friends who don’t remember who Peter Parker is.”
Who Is This New Bad Guy?
Based on her words and menacing tone, many are assuming she is playing a villain. Who, though, might this new character be? One of the leading theories is that Sadie Sink may be playing Shathra, a shapeshifter from another reality that hunts down Spider-heroes throughout the multiverse.
If Sink is playing Shathra, that might explain why she will pop up again in Avengers: Secret Wars. Not only would she fit right in with that movie’s multiversal focus, but she’ll likely have several Spider characters to snack on, including (if you believe the rumors) the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield versions of Spider-Man. Of course, what larger role she might play in Secret Wars is something we can only speculate about.
Another reason some fans think Sadie Sink is playing Shathra is that her multiversal roots would explain why she knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Remember, nobody in the world is meant to know this information, thanks to Doctor Strange’s spell, and in this same leaked Brand New Day trailer, Hulk doesn’t seem to know that Peter Parker is secretly Spidey. The spell is clearly working (as further evidenced by Peter’s narration comments about the spell), so if this new character knows this juicy secret, it implies that they were somehow immune to Strange’s spell or managed to avoid it altogether.
Who Else Could She Be?
While Shathra might know Peter is Spidey thanks to her multiversal travels, reliable scooper Daniel Richtman recently posted on X that the latest Shathra rumors are a misdirect from Marvel Studios. In that case, Sink could be playing another multiversal character, including Mayday Parker, Peter’s daughter from an alternate future. She could still be playing a more threatening incarnation of Jean Grey, and there’s even an outside chance she’s playing Mephisto, Marvel’s version of Satan and the character who made the world forget Peter Parker was Spider-Man in the comics.
While the Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer could be a misdirect, Sadie Sink’s threatening dialogue has mostly put to bed the old rumor that she’d be playing Jean Grey. However, knowing she’s playing a villain (or, to split hairs, an antagonist) doesn’t definitively answer the question of who her character is. We won’t know that until Marvel decides to make an official announcement.
Or, you know, it gets leaked like everything else. Whichever comes first!