As summer approaches, fans are already buzzing about one of the most anticipated movie releases of the year: Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The film is set to hit theaters on July 31, 2026, with Tom Holland returning as Peter Parker and Zendaya as MJ. The trailer, released in March 2026, quickly became one of the most watched movie trailers in history, according to People magazine, gaining over 1.1 billion views within hours. The film has already attracted massive attention online, sparking excitement, speculation, and nonstop fan theories (people.com).
The new movie continues four years after the events of Spider-Man No Way Home, where Peter Parker ultimately sacrifices everything, by choosing to have the world forget who he is. As a result, Peter is left completely alone, starting over without MJ or his best friend Ned. In the trailer, we see Peter living alone in a small apartment in Midtown Manhattan watching Ned and MJ, now attending MIT, from afar through social media, emphasizing how isolated he is.
One of the most talked-about aspects of the trailer is what is happening to Peter’s powers. His powers seem to be mutating and changing for the worse, as shown in one sequence when he wakes up hanging off the side of a building encased in organic webbing. There are also multiple scenes of his “spidey senses” glitching and his eyes turning completely black. This has led to many fan theories, the most popular being that Peter’s organic webbing is evidence of a massive shift in his biology. The trailer explains that spiders have three distinct stages of life, and most spiders never make it through the final transition, but if they survive, they become something much more powerful. This has led many people to believe that Peter is hitting that final stage and developing organic webbing as a byproduct of this evolution. Essentially, it’s a sign that he is becoming more spider than man, becoming stronger, faster, and way more unpredictable, making him the strongest Avenger of all time.
Junior Mathias Baluyot, a Spider-Man Fan said, “I 100 percent believe in this theory. I think Peter definitely will become a man-spider and that Ned will turn evil because the movies follow a similar route to the comics.” Ned’s potential transformation is another popular theory. In past Spider-Man stories, Peter’s best friend always becomes a villain, and in the comics, Ned eventually becomes the Hobgoblin, who is a wealthy criminal mastermind.
This theory is also supported in No Way Home, when Ned opens portals and mentions that magic runs in his family, meaning he has some unknown powers that could become corrupted. Some fans
will also bring up the fact that after Ned heard that the other Spider-Men had their best friends turn evil, he promised he wouldn’t turn into a super villain and try to kill Peter, but that promise no longer means anything because Peter was erased from his memory. The most significant piece of evidence is that the Hobgoblin is inspired by the Green Goblin, and after the final battle in the last movie, the Green Goblin’s mask is left behind. Could that mask be what triggers Ned’s transformation?
Fans are also closely watching MJ’s storyline, especially when it comes to whether she will discover Peter’s identity. Before her memory was erased, she told Peter she would find her way back to him, and many believe that connection still exists. At the end of Peter’s letter in No Way Home, he writes to MJ “…and I hope that deep down, something inside you remembers you love me too.” She is also wearing the black dahlia necklace that Peter gave her, suggesting that some emotional connection still remains. When it comes to wondering where the necklace came from, MJ has a definitive hole in her memory that she just can’t shape. As we saw in the past movies, MJ is determined, she’s driven, and she doesn’t let things go. This gap in her mind will surely drive her up a wall, so much so that she is not going to be able to help trying to figure out where her necklace came from, and may ultimately lead her to rediscover Peter.