Marvel Studios’ X-Men reboot just received its first true catalyst, and it did not come from an X-Men project at all. A new X-Men film from Thunderbolts director Jake Schreier is in development, with Beef creator Lee Sung Jin and The Bear showrunner Joanna Calo writing the script for a story expected to arrive after Avengers: Secret Wars. Every great X-Men tale runs on one idea: a world that fears and hates mutants, and the MCU has now planted the seed for that fear.
Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey is that catalyst. In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the young telepath brought New York City to a standstill, seizing every mind within her reach in a display of mutant power unlike anything the MCU had shown before. When the X-Men reboot arrives, humanity will have a genuine reason to hate mutants, a perfect setup for an X-Men story, and it will all trace back to what Jean put the city through.
How Sadie Sink's Jean Grey Sets Up the X-Men Reboot
The film introduces Jean as a faceless threat, one operating in the shadows. An unseen telepath keeps hijacking minds across New York, and the Department of Damage Control cannot stop her. The agency’s director, Bill Metzger, played by Severance star Tramell Tillman, turns to Spider-Man for help because Peter Parker is immune to her powers, and he is the only one who can sense her coming.
Initially, Peter views the hunt as a service to the people of New York until the truth comes out. Jean wasn’t attacking innocent people for no significant reason. She went after Damage Control because the agency kidnapped her sister, Sara Grey, and experimented on her in an attempt to harness her abilities. Sara died in the process, and Metzger was the man who ordered it.
Spider-Man helps capture Jean before he learns any of this, and Damage Control locks her away to run the same experiments that killed her sister. The decision backfires horribly. Jean’s powers surge past every limit she had shown, stretching her telepathic reach from roughly 33 feet to a full kilometer. Everyone inside that radius falls under her control at once. The city grinds to a halt, Bruce Banner loses command of his own mind, and Jean comes close to killing Metzger inside a headquarters full of hostages.
Peter manages to calm Grey down by offering her an open door into his own mind. Inside, Jean meets his memory of Aunt May and hears the advice that once steadied him: that what makes people special is who they are rather than how powerful they become. Peter then takes a bullet meant for Jean, and she repays him by keeping his mind alive while his body heals. The film ends with Jean honoring a promise to leave New York, boarding a bus toward an unnamed destination surrounded by trees, and will likely end up at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.
Jean Grey's Actions in Brand New Day Have Major Implications
Her citywide surge left one more mark on the MCU. MJ and Ned both show signs of remembering Peter by the film’s end, suggesting Jean’s telepathy cracked the memory spell Doctor Strange cast in Spider-Man: No Way Home. This shows how powerful she is even at a young age and a glimpse of her true potential; she will become more powerful once she fully masters her abilities, and for any regular person, that sounds pretty scary.
Ordinary people now have proof of what a single mutant can do to a city, and they could easily be swayed into hating them. The MCU already has superpowered individuals, so in theory the existence of mutants shouldn’t be any different, but what Jean did could easily be spun into political propaganda to fuel mutant hate. Metzger has proven to be a very shady individual, and he might use this incident to start an agenda against mutantkind.
His comic book history makes a scenario like that even more plausible, as William Metzger appears in Marvel Comics as a virulent anti-mutant activist. The MCU turning that name into the head of a federal agency says plenty about where this era is going.
Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey Is the MCU’s Future
Marvel Studios has major plans for Sadie Sink's character, and she's far from a one-movie experiment. Feige left no doubt about the studio’s plans in a conversation with Variety, revealing that Sink’s mutant "has immense significance" within the Marvel Universe:
"Sadie’s character is one that our fans know has immense significance within the Marvel Universe, and she plays a key role in the future of the MCU. I’m just happy that the secret is finally out and that Sadie can stop dodging the question."
That future even has a date attached to it already. Sink is reportedly set to reprise the role in Avengers: Secret Wars, which is expected to begin shooting in London later this year ahead of its release on December 17, 2027. New MCU heroes sometimes have to wait years for a second appearance, so a jump straight into the finale of the Multiverse Saga indicates how much trust the studio has placed in this character. Feige has also teased that Brand New Day "leads into another very well-known Marvel franchise created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby," a description the X-Men fit better than nearly any property Marvel owns.
Feige has also confirmed that the X-Men will be fully recast after Secret Wars for Schreier’s youth-focused film, which leaves Jean as the only member of the new generation who already exists on screen, another indication of how significant her character is in the future of the MCU.
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.
