Somehow, we have gotten ourselves in a situation where the biggest mystery of the MCU is not the details of Avengers: Doomsday, but rather who a single actress is playing in the next Spider-Man movie, Brand New Day.
That would be Sadie Sink, about to finish up her run as Max on Stranger Things, where season 5 debuts tomorrow and will finish up on Christmas and New Year’s Eve with more episodes (groan). Now, she’s talking to EW about a lot of things, but finally chats a bit about her Spidey role, albeit without confirming anything specific. Still, more clues here.
- On being able to talk about the role at all: “Tom can wave at the fans because people know who he is, but then you get a glimpse of me and I’m like a penguin That’ll be the situation for a bit.”
- On potentially being Jean Grey: “That was happening before I even knew that I would be working on this project,” Sink clarifies of that specific speculation. “I was like, ‘Wait! What are people talking about?’”
- On potentially being Punisher sidekick Rachel Cole-Alves, and guesses about comic redheads specifically: “A lot of people forget that hair color can change, but, yeah, I understand all of the theories.”
She says that, but…filming on set, we can see she does in fact seem to have her natural red hair color, so I’m not sure we’re about to see her transform into Gwen Stacy or anything that extreme.
The Jean Grey idea came when Sink was first cast without us knowing that she would be in Brand New Day, as we knew A) the MCU is about to introduce a new cast of X-Men with Secret Wars and B) well, the red hair thing.
This idea was recently leant more validity when it was reported that after Brand New Day, Sink would actually appear in the Avengers: Secret Wars, the X-Men based sequel to Doomsday, out in December 2027. That raises the profile of the Jean Grey theory, but also Firestar, a redhead (obviously) who was both in a hero group with Spider-Man, but also an X-Man. Not a very well-known character, but she fits the bill.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has confirmed that Jon Bernthal’s Punisher will appear in the story, lending weight to the idea this may be more “street level” (albeit that would discount X-Men possibly showing up). And that’s how the Punisher sidekick rumors started. The “penguin” spy shot photo of her may have shown her wearing camo pants and combat boots.
At this point, I have no idea. I think that’s the way Marvel wants it, but they’re not going to be able to keep this a secret until release. It may be time to start talking soon with Brand New Day, just over half a year away.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/11/25/stranger-things-sadie-sink-on-her-spider-man-brand-new-day-role/
