'Spider-Man's Brand New Villain Could Be the MCU's Biggest Yet

According to the synopsis, a mutating Peter Parker's transformation might be "the only thing that can stop a shocking new threat to the city and those he loves — a powerful villain no one can even see." How Spider-Man is immune to the mystery villain's mind-control powers has something to do with his heightened spider-senses, and it's this power that makes it Peter's responsibility to face this threat... whoever it is.

Holland — whose wallcrawler battled the likes of the Vulture (Michael Keaton), the Shocker (Bokeem Woodbine), Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), and Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) over the course of his Spidey trilogy — said at a recent press stop in Berlin that the main villain in Spider-Man: Brand New Day is "still very much a secret" and "unlike anything we've seen in one of these movies before." With that in mind, which comic book villain might be the brand-new big bad? Here are some potential suspects to get those Spidey-senses tingling.

Is Jean Grey the Main Villain in ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ or a Secret Mastermind?

One well-kept secret is Sadie Sink's mystery role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. That appears to be the Stranger Things star as the mysterious hooded figure getting inside the Hulk's head and later telepathically controlling a citizen, who says to Spider-Man, "You're the only one I can't hop into." Online speculation posits that Sink is Jean Grey, a powerful, omega-level mutant with telekinetic and telepathic powers she often uses for good as a member of the X-Men, protecting a world that hates and fears mutantkind.

As one of the original students of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Professor Charles Xavier taught the traumatized teenager to control her telepathic abilities, which once manifested as a shockwave of pink psychic energy in the 2008 prequel comic book X-Men Origins: Jean Grey #1. (A similar psionic shockwave appears in the Brand New Day trailer.) Jean Grey's villainous Dark Phoenix persona eventually emerged after the cosmic Phoenix Force impersonated Jean and was driven mad by Jason Wyngarde, also known as the illusion-casting mutant Mastermind (a villain whose powers are — you guessed it — all in the mind). The Phoenix Force is, well, a force to be reckoned with, acting as a nexus of all the psionic energy existing throughout the multiverse.

Could it be Mastermind manipulating Jean into doing his bidding? Or is the Phoenix Force controlling Jean, and it's Dark Phoenix telepathically tormenting Spider-Man? Marvel might not want to retread old ground after Fox's X-Men movies adapted The Dark Phoenix Saga of the comic books, first turning Famke Janssen's Jean Grey and then Sophie Turner's younger version to the dark side (in 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand and 2019's Dark Phoenix, respectively), but stranger things have happened. Or maybe the red-haired heroine is a red herring for the real villain.

Bill Meztger and the Department of Damage Control

Originally a cleanup crew when they first appeared in 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming, the U.S. Department of Damage Control has become the foremost authority on "enhanced individuals," including the likes of Iman Vellani's Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel), Tatiana Maslany's Jennifer Walters (She-Hulk: Attorney at Law), and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's Simon Williams (Wonder Man). If the DODC is after Sink's character, is it because she's super-powered... or because she's a mutant?

In the comics, William Meztger rallied against mutants as the leader of the Anti-Mutant Militia. 1999's X-Men: Children of the Atom #1, set before the events of 1963's X-Men #1, introduced Meztger as a Hitler-like figure who stoked anti-mutant hysteria at a time when Professor X and Magneto had yet to form the first class of X-Men or the Brotherhood of Mutants. Metzger, calling for mutant extermination, used a tracking system from a prototype Sentinel — giant mutant-hunting robots — to track down and capture Jean Grey. Scott Summers (a.k.a. Cyclops) and fellow students Hank McCoy (Beast), Bobby Drake (Iceman), and Warren Worthington III (Angel) teamed up to rescue her, and Jean joined the X-Men as their official fifth member.

The ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Villain Could Be a Major X-Men Villain

Here's what we know about the main villain so far: they have the power to control minds, can telepathically hop from mind to mind, and can even puppeteer possessed bodies without being seen. It could be telepathic X-Men villain the Shadow King, first appearing in the pages of Chris Claremont and John Byrne's Uncanny X-Men #117 in 1979. The very first telepath that Charles Xavier ever encountered, the Shadow King was inhabiting the body of Amahl Farouk when he psionically assaulted Xavier in Cairo, ultimately losing a "psi-war" that took place in the psychic plane.

Years later, the Shadow King got his revenge on Xavier by taking control of his student, the New Mutant Karma, who first used her powers of possession to command Spider-Man's mind and body in 1980's Marvel Team-Up #100. (Although Farouk's physical body died, Shadow King survived, having transferred his consciousness to the astral plane after his psychic duel with Xavier.) The Shadow King-possessed Karma was ultimately freed by the Soulsword-wielding Illyana Rasputin/Magik, but he would resurface once more, this time in the body of FBI Agent Jacob Reisz.

The Shadow King

Shadow King was the main villain of The Muir Island Saga (also known as The Shadow King Saga), a four-part crossover spanning issues of Uncanny X-Men and X-Factor in 1991. Growing stronger by feeding on the negative emotions of his corruptible victims, and once again seeking revenge on archnemesis Xavier, Shadow King possessed the minds and bodies of several X-Men — including Gambit, Jubilee, Psylocke, and the armored Colossus — before jumping into the schizophrenic mind of Xavier's son, telepathic and telekinetic mutant David Haller/Legion. Only by severing Shadow King's link to a human host (his nexus between the physical and astral planes) could the X-Men defeat him.

Thought destroyed, Shadow King later manifested as a being of pure telepathic energy. The 1998 storyline "Psi-War" in X-Men #77-78 saw the psychic mutant Psylocke battle the mind-jumping villain in the Psionic Plane — a metaphysical realm only telepaths can enter — causing a psychic shockwave that affected those with psionic, telepathic, or intuitive abilities (like Doctor Strange and Spider-Man). The Shadow King planned to infect the collective subconscious of every unprotected psyche on Earth, so Psylocke trapped him within the shadows of the Psi-Plane.

Mindworm

A psychic parasite, the mutant known as Mindworm was introduced in 1974's Amazing Spider-Man #138. In his first appearance, he fed on emotions and sensed a mind seething with it: that of the recently evicted Peter Parker. The Mindworm was able to telepathically turn hundreds of people into mindless "zombies" at once, and while Spider-Man was strong enough to resist, he still felt the psychic pull of the mind-feeding Mindworm.

William Turner wormed his way back into Spider-Man's mind once more in The Spectacular Spider-Man #35, but the thought eater reformed and departed ways with the webhead as friends. Mindworm eventually ended up on the streets, where he seemingly met his tragic end in a 2004 issue of Spectacular Spider-Man.

The Beast

Not to be confused with the blue-furred X-Man Hank McCoy, the Beast was created by Daredevil visionary Frank Miller, who introduced the assassin Elektra and the red-clad Hand ninjas. The ninja cult's Snakeroot clan has been in service to the demon-god Krahllak for ages, with the Beast-worshiping sect once attempting to fuse a piece of the resurrected Elektra's soul to their own killing machine that would serve their dark master.

The Beast has the power to possess people, as he did when a corrupted Daredevil took over the Hand to reign over Shadowland in Marvel's street-level event in 2010. When the Beast possessed Matt Murdock, Spider-Man teamed with the Punisher, Elektra, and other street-level defenders to defeat his army of Hand ninjas and save Daredevil from the demon. Might the Hand's return in Brand New Day have something to do with the invisible threat jumping from mind to mind?

The Spider-Queen and the Jackal

Then there's Adriana "Ana" Soria, the telepathic Spider-Man villain known as the Queen who triggered Spider-Man's mutation into a spider. The Queen first showed up in a 2004 issue of Spectacular when she triggered a head-splitting reaction from Peter's spider-sense before telepathically connecting their minds and turning half of New York City's population into her drones. She planned to mate with the mutated Man-Spider, only for Peter to emerge from his arachnid form with enhanced abilities, including organic webs.

Soria eventually returned as the main villain in Spider-Island. During Dan Slott's run on Amazing Spider-Man, Soria became the Spider-Queen, and Manhattan was (literally) crawling with spider-powered New Yorkers as result of an infestation of genetically manipulated bed bugs. The other Spider-Man villain behind the city-wide epidemic was Professor Miles Warren/the Jackal, the clone-creating geneticist who was once Peter Parker's biology teacher.

Warren, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1965's classic Amazing Spider-Man #31, wouldn't become the Jackal until much later. It was 1974's Amazing Spider-Man #129 (also the first appearance of Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher) which introduced Warren's green alter-ego, but the Jackal's secret identity wouldn't be revealed until Amazing Spider-Man #148 in 1975. The Jackal was behind a string of attacks on Spider-Man, first convincing the Punisher that Spider-Man was a murderous criminal before masterminding fights with the Scorpion and Tarantula.

Is it a coincidence that all three characters happen to be in Spider-Man: Brand New Day? Spider-senses tingling...