Mac Gargan is back in a Spider-Man film for the first time in nearly a decade, and Marvel Studios may not be showing fans everything. Michael Mando returns to the MCU in Spider-Man: Brand New Day as the fully-realized Scorpion, complete with the iconic mechanical tail, marking his first appearance since Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2017. Some have grown (rightfully) worried that the villain will only play a minor role in the film, but those fears might be overblown.
The second trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day wastes no time swinging into action. The footage opens with Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and Mac Gargan already trading blows in what looks to be a continuation of the nighttime brawl teased in the first trailer.
Fully decked out in his Scorpion suit, Mac sets the tone with a line that feels ripped straight from the comics: "Did you miss me, Spidey?"
Scorpion seems to catch the web-slinger off guard, landing a brutal shot with his mechanical tail before the camera cuts to a tight close-up of its likely venom-filled tip hovering inches from Spider-Man's face. For a moment, it looks like Mac has the upper hand.
However, that does not last. The trailer quickly flips the dynamic, showing Peter grab the tail, hurl Mac to the ground, then swing him headfirst into an NYPD squad car.
What makes the reversal feel so sudden is the context the trailer provides. Spider-Man's eyes have gone completely black, a visual marker of the physical metamorphosis Peter is undergoing throughout the film, and that transformation appears to be exactly why he can take Scorpion down so quickly in the trailer.
Worth noting: the first trailer back in March showed a different angle of this same fight. What it did not show was who won.
For those who need a quick refresher, the grudge goes back to Spider-Man: Homecoming. During a memorable fight on the Staten Island Ferry, Gargan suffered serious physical injuries at the hands of Spidey, including a prominent facial scar, and was eventually arrested. He has clearly held that against Peter ever since.
Strangely, despite that post-credits setup in Homecoming, Mac never appeared in Spider-Man: Far From Home or No Way Home. Now, in a film stacked with villains, he is the only one with an existing personal history with the web-head, unless you count Peter's (now fuzzy) history with the Department of Damage Control (DODC).
Some fans have quickly hopped online to express concern that Scorpion will only appear in that single sequence in the entire movie. There is also one more detail worth flagging. The Screen X version of Trailer 2 removes the Scorpion opening entirely, swapping it out for a sequence of Spider-Man fighting The Hand ninjas.
Based on the marketing, there are certainly fair worries from fans, but it is almost certainly not the complete picture.
Set photos from October 2025 showed Michael Mando wearing the same all-white prison uniform Mac wore during Homecoming's post-credits scene. Notably, Holland was also on set that day.
That should mean there's a prison break sequence in the film, one that comes before the Scorpion fight shown in the trailer and later explains exactly how Mac winds up in his full battle suit.
The idea that Mac gets broken out, suits up, fights Spider-Man once, loses, and that is the entirety of his arc feels thin for a character Marvel Studios sat on for nearly a decade.
Could the prison break sequence get cut before release? Technically, yes. But that would be a strange choice, and there is nothing to suggest it at the moment, especially with a listed runtime of 2 hours and 30 minutes.
Right now, the main throughline of Brand New Day seems to be Peter's mutating DNA and the DODC tracking down a mysterious mind-controlling threat terrorizing New York. Mac seems to be working outside of that, motivated by his Homecoming history.
The Scorpion is also not even the most hidden villain in trailers thus far. Marvin Jones III's Tombstone has yet to appear in either trailer, despite being confirmed for the film, but he could be the missing piece to how Mac gets the new suit.
How Scorpion Fits into Brand New Day
One theory for how Scorpion enters the mix, eventually squaring off against Spidey-Man, centers on Tombstone. As a street-level crime boss in the film, Tombstone could have every reason to want Spider-Man removed from the board.
With Peter aggressively policing New York for the last four years in the aftermath of No Way Home, it makes sense that a criminal like Lonnie Lincoln would arrange Gargan's prison break and potentially provide the Scorpion armor to take out their shared enemy.
Another theory is that Scorpion is not a central antagonist but a dangerous late-film wildcard. The idea is that after getting beaten in that early confrontation, Gargan waits and heals up in the shadows. Later in the movie, an already beaten-up Peter (after fighting the likes of The Hand and the Hulk) gets ambushed and hit with a full dose of the tail's venom.
This could greatly weaken the hero, possibly leading Peter to rely on new allies like Jon Bernthal's Punisher to reach a certain New York City-based nurse.
There's also an outside chance that Mac's suit is somehow connected to Adrian Toomes' (Michael Keaton) old operation, potentially now involving Tombstone, as the design seems reminiscent of the alien-tech used in that film to create weapons for the likes of Vulture and Shocker.
