The Marvel Cinematic Universe is constantly treating us to new projects, both in theaters and streaming with a Disney+ subscription. The next highly anticipated upcoming Marvel movie heading to theaters is Destin Daniel Cretton's Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which will finally follow up on No Way Home's twist ending. We'll be in a world that has completely forgotten about Peter Parker, and are there still photos of him in existence? The director weighed in.
Fans who have spent years watching the Marvel movies in order have been not-so-patiently waiting to see how Tom Holland's hero was doing now that he's basically alone in the world. Brand New Day's trailer showed a glimpse of this, but in an interview with IndieWire, Cretton was asked a simple question: is Peter's picture still in his yearbook? The Shang-Chi filmmaker responded with:
We believe… gosh, we went back and forth. But we believe no.
It sounds like the team behind the new Spider-Man movie had some debate about whether or not photos of Peter Parker are still out there in the world of the MCU. Destin Daniel Cretton's ultimate answer is that yes, the web-slinger's image would still be in places like this yearbook... even if no one retained any memories of his years at Midtown School of Science and Technology.
Later in the same interview, Cretton went on to share how much the photo question actually influenced the way Brand New Day was shot. He purposefully didn't include any of them in the movie thanks to the questions they might inspire from the audience. In his words:
But there’s a reason why you don’t see any photos in our movie. Because I don’t fully know how to answer that. But what we definitely want to believe is that we didn’t actually go back in time and delete somebody so that everything changed from that point on. It’s really just a memory erasure of everybody’s brains. But! What happens to print or names? I can’t even start.
Maybe it's better that fans don't think too hard about how Doctor Strange's memory-erasing spell actually works. Rather than getting in the weeds about it all, perhaps we should just watch Brand New Day and focus on the fact that Peter Parker's loved ones no longer remember him. Holland's hero was shown monitoring MJ and Ned from afar in the trailer, which you can see below:
This new blockbuster is set four years after No Way Home, which is a long time for Spider-Man to be living in solitude. He clearly misses Ned and MJ, and additional trailers have confirmed that he'll eventually step in to protect the latter from an unknown villain. And it should be fascinating to see if Zendaya's character ends up remembering her relationship with Peter, or if they have to start fresh. Either way, the truth about Strange's spell is bound to come out sooner or later.
All will be revealed when Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters on July 31st as part of the 2026 movie release list. Luckily for us, the wait for that long-awaited blockbuster is nearly over. Just don't look for any photos during its runtime.
