If you haven’t seen Spider-Man: Brand New Day and you don’t want to be spoiled, please watch the movie and then come back later. If you’ve seen the movie or you don’t mind spoilers, buckle up because we’re going deep into the topics of villainy and redemption and the spectrum of villains in the film.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day brings us a new villain, but what if it’s not just asking whether Jean Grey is a villain? What if it’s also asking us if a villain can be redeemed and if redemption should be a possible outcome for a villain?

There’s no doubt that Jean Grey does terrible things. Innocent people get hurt and some even die. Nothing I’m about to say excuses those choices made by Jean or asks you to ignore the harm she causes. Those are significant issues that have to be addressed, and part of that includes a candid discussion.

Online conversations are cropping up about Jean Grey as a villain, and they are some of the most interesting character discussions that I have seen in a long time. So, I decided to watch the movie again, and this time I went in asking “What defines a villain and a hero?” Is Jean a villain? Is she a misguided hero? Or is she something else? While these are all valid questions, I left the theater asking myself, “Can villains be redeemed?” Or, more to the point, “Does Jean Grey earn her chance at redemption?”

The answers to these questions all come down to Peter Parker and the type of man he has become over the years. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the crystallization of what heroism means for Spider-Man’s character and how that translates to every villain within this film.

You can read the full essay below or watch the essay on YouTube:

What Makes a Villain?

In superhero films, sometimes villains are formed by circumstance and a lack of options, sometimes they are just dark souls with evil intent, and sometimes their arcs are paved on the path of good intentions.

Villains are usually fixed characters within a story, serving as the hero’s obstacle to overcome. Their identities are fixed while a hero’s character arc is in motion. In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, it feels like this pattern is flipped because we know Peter Parker, but Jean Grey’s moral trajectory is in motion, giving her the active character arc within the film.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day doesn’t ask us to ignore the terrible choices she makes because that is part of her story. Instead, we are given a chance to understand the circumstances that led to her series of choices that started with mind hopping into people’s bodies. Intentional or not, her choices caused some of those people physical harm, as well as death, in her search for her sister Sarah.

Jean is a teenager who finds herself suddenly isolated and alone. Her fear escalates after receiving Sarah’s final, terrified psychic message, and that’s her origin point. That’s when Jean chooses to mind-hop into innocent people’s heads to rescue her sister. It’s unclear if she knew about Damage Control before or after this moment, but that’s her decision point.

Without an adult role model to guide, counsel, and protect her, Jean is essentially abandoned by the world and targeted by a government that has already taken her sister. While this doesn’t excuse her actions, it does help us to understand how Jean’s story unfolds and the role that Damage Control played.

If we ignore how someone arrived at their origin story, then villainy becomes little more than a label of convenience. Once that label is applied, the villain flattens out becoming little more than an obstacle to overcome. However, since the formula in Spider-Man: Brand New Day is inverted, we get to see Jean’s character arc from that day in the park when Sarah is taken to the final scene when Peter invites her into his mind.

Showing her character arc doesn’t make Jean Grey a sympathetic villain, it makes her a three-dimensional character rather than a stereotypical trope. We see her choices as well as their impacts, both good and bad. We also see other characters who cause harm, including Spider-Man when he injures and almost kills a police officer, The Punisher (Frank Castle) who causes harm to people in the pursuit of villains, and Damage Control that actively harms powered humans to extract their powers.

Damage Control’s Secret

In addition to the primary villain and hero, we also get a look at the moral spectrum of heroism and villainy that plays across the cast of characters, including from Peter Parker, Jean Grey, Frank Castle, Detective DeWolff, Director Metzger, and Damage Control itself.

As the story unfolds, we discover an unexpected character arc through Spider-Man’s meeting with Metzger and his tour of Damage Control, that they are developing weapons based on convicted villain’s technology. Worse, they’re even recruiting villains like The Hand into their service. Over time, Peter realizes that Metzger isn’t just hiding knowledge about “the entity,” he’s outright lying about Jean’s sister. Choice by choice, we see how Damage Control empowers itself by exploiting the very criminals and powered individuals who were entrusted into its care, and in so doing, the agency’s moral ground erodes through the torture and deaths it causes in the pursuit of its goals.

That is the slippery slope of Damage Control’s descent as it rationalizes its fall from grace. It’s only after Peter hands Jean over to Metzger that he realizes the truth that the organization’s mission to serve has been twisted into vicious opportunism that “turns threats into solutions” without public consent. Peter’s confrontation with Jean exposed the true scale of corruption at Damage Control, along with a lack of consequences and no oversight for choices like kidnapping Sarah, who is also likely a teenager, and then driving her to her death to capture her power.

Did Damage Control Create Jean Grey?

It raises the question of did Damage Control, through their collective choices, create the circumstances that influenced Jean’s choices as she became a teenage villain? What other choices might this child have made in her life if Director Metzger had taken a different approach with these children?

Instead, Damage Control’s actions created the inciting incidents for the film and the origin point for Jean Grey as the villain in Brand New Day. We witness the organization’s moral trajectory  and descent when, rather than processing Jean through the penal system to pay for her crimes, Metzger himself oversees the testing to map and mimic Jean’s mind by triggering her psychic abilities to jump-jump-jump, using the same processes that killed Sarah. He pushed too far and broke whatever barrier contained Jean’s power, and at the brink of death her response was instinctual to make everything and everyone “STOP.”

Metzger’s corruption didn’t start with Sarah, and it didn’t end when Jean landed in his lab for experimentation. It’s through Peter’s dawning realization of what Damage Control has done that makes us realize the extent of the agency’s villainy, and that’s also why we understand what he’s willing to risk when correcting his mistake in giving Jean to the man involved with her sister’s disappearance.

What did Metzger do to Sarah? What had he done to the others Peter had brought to Damage Control? To his horror, Peter had become an unwitting participant in exploiting powered humans, and he had just given Metzger a girl who was no older than Peter himself when he was bitten by the spider. What if he had been a child picked up by Metzger when he was new to his powers?

Peter Parker’s Greatest Strength

Peter Parker’s greatest strength is his moral compass. It’s the heart of his heroism and why the public loves and trusts him. He does what’s right, even if it comes at extreme personal cost to save others, whether they’re innocent or guilty. His trust in the system was unwavering, if a bit naïve, but he was part of that system. He believes in the work he does to protect the public from those who would do harm, and that includes his fight with the mind hopping entity who turns out to be Jean Grey.

Peter’s decision point when testing his own moral code as a hero was when the puzzle pieces fall together, joining Metzger’s lie about Sarah with the knowledge of who she was to Jean. While nothing Damage Control did justified the harm Jean caused, Peter knew they couldn’t be trusted with her care or she might go missing, too.

Complicating factors, Peter arrived too late. Metzger had unleashed Jean’s power and not even Damage Control could contain her now, and even if they could control her, they couldn’t be trusted with her power. And, yet it’s clear that when he sees her, he sees a child who is new to her powers despite some terrible choices that she made, which explains why that moment with Aunt May resonates so deeply for him where Jean is concerned.

Does Peter Parker Trusts Jean Grey?

Peter’s empathy is why he invites her into his mind, but it’s his moral compass that she finds. Unlike with the others, she doesn’t replace his conscious thoughts; he shares them with her. In that moment they understand each other, and she finds hope, guidance, and acceptance in Peter’s memory of Aunt May… something she has not received from any other adult.

While Peter never intended to be judge and jury over Jean’s actions, there was no time for him to do anything but to react on gut instinct. That choice to sacrifice his own life to save her didn’t put Jean on the path to redemption, but it did create the decision point for her to choose what comes next. Does she let Sarah’s death define her? Metzger’s lies to mold her? Or Peter’s sacrifice to empower her?

His choice also reinforces Jean’s origin point back in the park when Sarah was kidnapped and Jean was just an innocent kid who hadn’t yet jumped into another person’s mind.

Does Jean Grey Deserve Redemption?

Did Jean Grey deserve the opportunity for rehabilitation and atonement for her crimes? Could she be rehabilitated and redeemed if put into a prison system that was unlikely to hold her? Or can she be reformed through a life of atoning for her crimes, with her first act being to jump into Peter’s mind to suppress his body enough to keep him alive until Frank could get him to the hospital?

We don’t know if Jean Grey can truly be rehabilitated, but Peter thought so. We also don’t know if Damage Control can be rehabilitated but based upon how hard it is to get government organizations to change, they have a much harder row to hoe.

Damage Control’s failure is especially disturbing because, to borrow a term from Alan Moore, who watches the watchmen? If Peter can’t trust Damage Control with someone like Jean Grey and they are the only organization capable of containing someone like her, then it’s up to him to become the watcher of the watchmen. That creates the potential for a whole new set of decision points in the future, but first things first.

Jean Grey’s Decision Point

While Peter’s sacrifice may have created the potential for a new origin point for Jean, the choice of what to do next was always hers and she took it without a second thought. She didn’t leave him there to die. She didn’t fight with Frank when he arrived. She saved Peter, she stayed there and she kept him alive until his body could recover. Given the choice, she took multiple steps toward a new path that might someday change her character arc in the future, but not in this film.

If anything, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is just the possibility of a potential redemption arc. Does she deserve it? Does redemption excuse her crimes? No, but sometimes personal morality, extended trust, and belief in another person can be a powerful force for good. By solidifying Peter’s character arc, Brand New Day makes Spider-Man one of the most important heroes within the MCU.

Heroes, Villains, and Character Arcs

Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s story and character arcs have lingered in my imagination because of the variety of heroes and villains we get and how these two states of being actually operate on the same moral spectrum with origin points throughout their stories, giving characters the choice of how far to move forward in a direction and when to pivot. We see Peter falter and recover. We see Frank comfortable within his grayness while also sharing with MJ that if he could go back and make a different choice he would. In the end, because of his friendship with Peter, Frank does take a step in that direction.

We also see Metzger and Damage Control hurtling down their slippery slopes of criminal behavior while hidden behind walls that were meant to serve the public good. Finally, we see Jean in the moment before she chooses a direction as well as different points along her journey, sending her down the slippery slope of villainy as well as the choices that may take her to a higher road that may one day lead to atonement.

I can’t help wondering how each of these stories will play out in the future. Given the online conversations among fans and the record-breaking opening weekend for the film, there is clearly something in the story that goes deeper than just another superhero spectacle. Instead of just debates about logic, powers, and universe continuity, people are now debating heroism, villainy, redemption, and whether people can change. And personally, I think we all need to know that we can change and that redemption is possible. For me, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is one of the most human stories we have seen from the MCU in years.

Our desire for justice for Jean’s victims, together with the growing darkness within Damage Control and the questionable character moments for Peter and Frank, reveals two extraordinary truths: We want people to pay for their crimes, and we want to empower heroes we can trust to make the choices that the rest of us are unable to make. Superheroes are designed to be products of the time in which their stories appear, and 2026 was the perfect year for Peter Parker to become an adult and to show us what heroism looks like.

Why We Need Heroes

One of Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s strongest features is the array of complex moral trajectories for Jean, Damage Control, Frank, and Peter. The story doesn’t just ask “Who’s the hero?” or “Who’s the villain?” It also asks us “What is a hero?” and “What is a villain?,” even as it shows us how one descends from good to evil as well as rises from evil to good. This is something I see in real life every day. Characters all have multiple origin points in which the story of who they choose to become is always changing. That’s why it’s so easy to lose our way and why it’s so hard to regain our footing… especially when we are feeling lost, alone, and without hope.

In the end, a villain is not just defined by what we see on screen but by the choices and motivations that drive the person to villainy, and it’s those same types of choices that make it possible to pivot (for good or ill) with each new choice. It’s also important to remember that redemption is not always possible and it’s not a one-and-done decision. Life is choice, and each choice moves us on the spectrum of villainy and heroism, with most of us fluctuating somewhere in the middle with some people making more extreme choices that push them toward villainy, heroism, downfall, or redemption.

Final Thoughts: Can Heroes and Villains Change?

I think Spider-Man: Brand New Day has resonated with people because it makes us think differently about what it means to become a villain or a hero, and how sometimes we don’t even realize which path we are on until it’s too late. Jean Grey’s story reminds us that our choices matter. Some choices move us closer to the people we hope to become while others move us farther away. Character isn’t defined by a single moment, nor is morality. It’s revealed by the accumulation of decisions we make along the way, and it’s never too late to change our path because each new choice presents us with opportunities for change.

That’s what Peter Parker understands better than almost anyone else in this film. He knows that every redemption arc has an origin point, and that sometimes the greatest act of heroism isn’t defeating the villain. It’s recognizing the moment when another path becomes possible.

I’d love to know what you think. Was Jean Grey simply a villain? Does a person who shows regret deserve an opportunity for atonement? What about Frank Castle or even Peter Parker himself? Let me know in the comments below because I’d genuinely love to continue this conversation.

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