{"id":802658,"date":"2026-08-04T18:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T18:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/802658\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T18:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T18:22:11","slug":"spider-man-brand-new-days-ending-splits-fans-on-what-it-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/802658\/","title":{"rendered":"Spider-Man: Brand New Day\u2019s Ending Splits Fans On What It Means"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part of Peter Parker\u2019s internal struggle during Spider-Man: Brand New Day<\/a> is that he has essentially lost himself in being a superhero. He has forsaken friendship and any connection with others for over four years, ever since the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home erased him from everyone\u2019s memory. While he may not be close with his best friend Ned or his ex-girlfriend MJ, he still checks in on them through social media and even crashed a house party they were hosting. As events unfold, the two of them are put in danger and he meets them as Spider-Man, his first step toward rebuilding a connection with the pair. However, the final scene of the movie has fans wondering if somehow Doctor Strange\u2019s spell removing Peter from everyone\u2019s memory has been broken.<\/p>\n

\"Spoiler<\/p>\n

Spider-Man: Brand New Day ends the way most MCU movies do, in that Spider-Man has saved the day and is settling back into his daily routine of heroism. Jean Grey, who essentially held part of the city mentally hostage after learning that the Department of Damage Control killed her sister, has left the city to places unknown, but Ned and MJ were also caught in Jean\u2019s psychic, mind-hijacking blast, and were once again saved by Spider-Man. After things have calmed down, Peter sees Ned at a store and goes to introduce himself, and the two, without missing a beat, do their signature elaborate handshake seen in previous movies. Ned is clearly confused as to why he knows how to do this with a guy he has no recollection of meeting beyond a brief appearance at his house party, but when it\u2019s done, he looks up and says Peter\u2019s name, and it\u2019s left ambiguous as to whether he remembers his old friend or he\u2019s just putting some things together, having heard earlier in the film that Spider-Man\u2019s name was also Peter.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot to unpack in this scene. My initial reading was that Ned\u2019s muscle memory had kicked in and he was able to do the handshake because he\u2019d done it hundreds of times before. If you\u2019re reading Kotaku, you\u2019re probably very familiar with the concept because you use it to play video games all the time. Your body gradually learns the rhythms of something and reacts accordingly. It\u2019s a habit that has embedded itself into your neural pathways. Musicians are also very familiar with it, as it\u2019s how they learn to play songs without having to stop and think about every chord change. So if you\u2019ve done a weirdly elaborate handshake numerous times over the years, that sequence probably sticks with you, even if your memory of the person you did it with has been erased.<\/p>\n

So on its own, Ned remembering the handshake isn\u2019t enough to tell us whether he remembers Peter, but it\u2019s certainly got Spidey fans debating what it all means. One prevalent theory is that Jean may have unintentionally resurfaced these memories when she telepathically mindfucked millions of people in the city. After the climax, MJ is seen sitting on a rooftop where she and Peter used to hang out while holding onto a necklace he gave her in Far From Home, implying that she might remember Peter fully, or at least be reflecting on her newfound knowledge that there was a version of her that did love Spider-Man and that she forgot a major part of her life.<\/p>\n

However, earlier in the film, when Jean was controlling MJ as a way of manipulating Peter, she makes it clear that his ex has no memories of him whatsoever in her mind. Doctor Strange\u2019s spell worked, and it was thorough. Jean is shown to be an exceptionally powerful telepath, so I doubt she overlooked a space in these characters\u2019 minds where memories of Peter were locked away. Could the power of friendship and a psychic rattling be enough to undo a magic spell? It\u2019s unclear, but it\u2019s the theory a lot of fans are running with right now.<\/p>\n

Another wrinkle in this is that Ned seems to have some level of latent magical capability. As illustrated in No Way Home, he\u2019s able to open portals similar to Strange, which allows him to locate Tobey Macguire and Andrew Garfield\u2019s versions of Peter as the multiverse starts to converge on the MCU\u2019s New York City. Some theorize that this might have made it possible for him to protect his memories of Peter subconsciously, but that\u2019s all speculation, without much to pull from in Brand New Day itself.<\/p>\n

Right now, Spider-Man isn\u2019t confirmed to be in any upcoming MCU projects, though Brand New Day\u2019s post-credits scene<\/a> heavily implies he\u2019ll show up in Avengers: Secret Wars<\/a> next year. So there\u2019s a strong possibility it will be years before we get a definitive answer about whether or not Ned remembers Peter. Some fans are content with that open-ended question, because it invites discussion and gives the MCU a little wiggle room to decide what it wants to do in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think even the director\/writers know, which is why they left it so open ended,\u201d a fan writes on Reddit<\/a>. \u201cIf they wanted it to be conclusive, they would have shot the scene with a more clear answer. They chose to make it ambiguous so I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a right or wrong answer\u2026 yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

That does mean that over the next few years, we\u2019re likely going to see a lot of explainers, debates, and definitive statements from fans about what this final scene means. Though, given the events of Secret Wars in the comics, there\u2019s a possibility that the next two movies will end up sweeping this whole thing under the rug. I sure hope not, though. It would be a shame if the emotional arc of Peter\u2019s movies got undone because of some elaborate multiverse shenanigans. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Part of Peter Parker\u2019s internal struggle during Spider-Man: Brand New Day is that he has essentially lost himself…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":802659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,13168],"class_list":["post-802658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-spider-man-brand-new-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}