Marvel Studios made Jean Grey the villain of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and the choice silently rewrote a piece of Spider-Man movie history. Sadie Sink plays the young telepath, whose identity remained under wraps until the film arrived in theaters on July 31. The Stranger Things star spends much of the story as a hooded figure tearing through New York in search of something buried inside the Department of Damage Control, with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker treating her as his newest enemy.
Jean’s role as the movie’s lead antagonist makes Brand New Day the first Spider-Man film with a woman as its primary villain. The streak she broke ran for 24 years. Every main villain since Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin in 2002 was a man, across Sam Raimi’s trilogy, both Amazing Spider-Man films, the earlier MCU entries, and the two animated Spider-Verse movies.
Brand New Day keeps Sink’s face hidden for roughly half its runtime. Her mystery character seizes control of anyone within about 33 feet, hopping between bodies as she tries to break into Damage Control’s New York headquarters. She takes over Michael Mando’s Scorpion, then Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner, removing the inhibitor that keeps the Hulk contained and setting the monster loose on the agency’s skyscraper. Peter and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher fight side by side to stop the rampage.
The last act comes with a twist, revealing the telepath's true motivations. Jean wanted inside Damage Control to find her older sister, Sara, a fellow telepath who died during experiments overseen by Bill Metzger, the agency boss played by Severance’s Tramell Tillman. That reveal turns Jean into a grieving runaway and Damage Control into the movie’s real evil. Still, she is the antagonist Peter hunts for most of the film, and its marketing heavily portrayed her as one.
Speaking with Variety after the film’s release, Sink described the version of Jean that audiences meet: "She’s very flawed. You’re meeting her at a strange point." Sink added that Jean has no desire to hurt anyone. Someone hurt her first, and that influenced her actions.
Women barely appear anywhere on the franchise’s villain side, despite the comics being packed with many compelling female antagonists. Counting secondary villains, the previous ten theatrical Spider-Man films include just one female villain. Kathryn Hahn voiced Olivia Octavius, the animated Doc Ock working under Kingpin in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. No live-action entry has cast a woman as a villain at all until now.
Every Spider-Man Movie’s Primary Villain Since 2002
Green Goblin (Spider-Man)
Willem Dafoe’s Norman Osborn started the run in 2002. The Oscorp founder tested an unstable performance enhancer on himself and fractured his own mind, then terrorized New York from a glider as the Green Goblin. His war with Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker turned personal once he learned who wore the mask, and Dafoe’s unhinged performance remains a benchmark for the genre.
Doc Ock (Spider-Man 2)
Alfred Molina followed in 2004 as Otto Octavius, a gifted scientist whose fusion experiment killed his wife and welded four artificially intelligent arms to his spine. Molina played Ock as a decent man corrupted by the machines whispering in his ear, which is why many fans still rank him among the best comic book movie villains ever made. His redemption in the finale gave Spider-Man 2 its most affecting scene.
Venom (Spider-Man 3)
Spider-Man 3 packed its story with three antagonists, but Venom dominated the final act. Topher Grace played Eddie Brock, a rival photographer who bonded with the alien symbiote after Peter rejected it. Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman and Harry Osborn’s New Goblin split the remaining screen time, a balancing act many Spider-Man fans criticized over the years.
Lizard (The Amazing Spider-Man)
The 2012 reboot introduced a new threat, with Rhys Ifans portraying Dr. Curt Connors, a one-armed scientist experimenting with regeneration through reptile DNA. His serum regrew his missing limb but turned him into the Lizard. He then hatched a plan to disperse the formula over Manhattan and transform the entire city into lizards. Andrew Garfield’s first outing ended with Connors cured and behind bars.
Electro (The Amazing Spider-Man 2)
Jamie Foxx’s Max Dillon began as an invisible Oscorp engineer obsessed with Spider-Man. A fall into a tank of electric eels turned him into Electro, a living power grid with a grudge against the hero he once idolized. Dane DeHaan’s Green Goblin surfaced late in the 2014 sequel, but Electro was the face of the marketing and the central villain of the movie. Foxx reprised the role years later in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Vulture (Spider-Man: Homecoming)
Michael Keaton featured in the MCU’s first solo Spider-Man film in 2017 as Adrian Toomes, a salvage contractor squeezed out of business by Tony Stark’s cleanup operation. Toomes spent years selling weapons scavenged from alien wreckage before crossing paths with the wall-crawler. Vulture and Spidey had an intense battle that sent the villain to prison, where he met Michael Mando's Scorpion, who demanded Spider-Man's identity from Toomes, but he refused. Vulture somehow ended up in the Sony Spider-Man Universe later, with Keaton reprising the role in the poorly received Morbius.
Mysterio (Spider-Man: Far From Home)
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Quentin Beck introduced himself as a hero from another Earth in Spider-Man: Far From Home, then later dropped the act. A bitter former Stark employee, Beck used drone swarms and illusion tech to stage Elemental attacks and then pretended to stop. He also did more lasting damage than most villains before him, exposing Peter’s identity to the world with his dying breath.
Kingpin (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)
Miles Morales inherited a mountain of an enemy in 2018's Into the Spider-Verse. Liev Schreiber voiced Wilson Fisk, the crime lord bankrolling a particle collider that could pull versions of his dead wife and son out of other dimensions, whatever the cost to reality. Fisk also savagely killed the Peter Parker of Miles’ universe in the opening act, a startling move for an animated family film.
Green Goblin (Spider-Man: No Way Home)
Willem Dafoe returned through the Multiverse in 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home and immediately showed why his Goblin is one of the best live-action Spider-Man villains ever. Among the five bad guys pulled from past film universes, Norman Osborn emerged as the true danger, murdering Aunt May and pushing Tom Holland’s Peter toward a darker place than any of his previous stories dared. The scene where Norman lets out an eerie laugh while Peter punches him in the face is one of the most unhinged Goblin scenes in a live-action Spider-Man film.
The Spot (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse)
Jason Schwartzman voiced Dr. Jonathan Ohnn, a scientist left covered in portals after the collider explosion in the first Spider-Verse film. The Spot causes lots of chaos in Across the Spider-Verse, especially after Miles describes him as the villain of the week. His dimension-hopping abilities make him close to impossible to stop. His story remains unfinished, with the final confrontation saved for Beyond the Spider-Verse.
Jean Grey (Spider-Man: Brand New Day)
Sink’s Jean arrived with more comic book history than many villains before her. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963, Jean Grey was a founding member of the X-Men and ranks among the most powerful mutants Marvel ever put on a page. She was previously played on screen by Famke Janssen and Sophie Turner. Her MCU version differs from these previous iterations; this Jean is a darker, isolated teenager who is still learning to harness her abilities.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
