Sadie Sink made her MCU debut in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, playing Jean Grey, a role that was shrouded in secrecy before the movie premiered on July 31. After the immense success of the fourth MCU Spider-Man movie, Sink is ready to board another project, and she's chosen the perfect one. The actress rose to fame on Stranger Things as Max Mayfield, the resilient and emotionally complex redhead who arrived in Hawkins in Season 2. She shone in that role and again in Brand New Day, and her career is only on the way up, especially after landing the ideal follow-up.
Sink has entered talks to star in and produce The Guest, a feature adaptation of Emma Cline's bestselling 2024 novel, from A24 and Square Peg. Lorene Scafaria, the writer-director behind Hustlers, is also reported to be in talks to helm the project.
Published by Penguin Random House, The Guest follows a calculating grifter and escort named Alex, a story about precarity, survival, and living on the edge. The novel was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award and named a best book of the year by more than a dozen publications, so readers have been eager to see it adapted. Sink is reportedly a big fan of the book herself and attached herself to the project as soon as A24 secured the film rights, per Variety.
In many ways, The Guest is the ideal next step after Brand New Day for Sink. It lets her lead a prestige drama, step into a producer's chair for the first time on a feature, and play a character with no superpowers before she steps back into cape roles.
In Brand New Day, Sink's Jean Grey operates as a villain, battling the Department of Damage Control and its boss, Bill Metzger, played by Tramell Tillman. The character is a deep cut from the comics, first appearing in the 1999 miniseries X-Men: Children of the Atom as an anti-mutant activist, reworked for the MCU as a Damage Control higher-up.
Over the course of her quest for revenge, Jean clashes with Tom Holland's Spider-Man before the two eventually settle their differences, and she boards a bus heading out of New York, presumably bound for Westchester, home of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. It's a perfect springboard into the X-Men reboot and Sink's future in the MCU.
What Sadie Sink's MCU Future Looks Like
Before the X-Men reboot arrives, the MCU must first close out the Multiverse Saga. Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters on December 18 and serves as a farewell to the Fox-era X-Men, with Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Alan Cumming, and Kelsey Grammer all returning. Avengers: Secret Wars follows on December 17, 2027, and there's an opportunity for Sink to enter the picture.
Even before Brand New Day premiered, a 2025 report from Deadline listed Secret Wars as the next MCU movie she would appear in. Months later, popular scooper MyTimeToShineHello claimed that Sink's telepath was set to play a "major" role in the Multiverse Saga finale. Of course, Marvel Studios, famous for shrouding its big reveals in secrecy, has yet to confirm any of this, but the signs pointing to Sink's appearance look promising.
Secret Wars is also expected to end with a soft reset of MCU continuity, one that clears the runway for the mutant era and the so-called Mutant Saga to follow. At least a cameo from the character expected to helm that saga isn't exactly out of place. Giving Jean Grey a role in the movie also makes sense as a way to build buzz for Jake Schreier's X-Men reboot, especially in an era where it's getting harder to fill theater seats.
Sink will lead the X-Men film, which arrives on May 5, 2028, a few months after Secret Wars. Jean Grey will be one of the five founding X-Men members in the movie, and with Cyclops and Angel already cast, that's three of the original five from the comics accounted for. Plenty of stories can spin off from that film, giving Sink no shortage of MCU work.
Adam Driver has also been cast as Mister Sinister, a notorious geneticist whose comic history spells trouble for Jean Grey and Cyclops, two characters he's utterly obsessed with. Rumors making the rounds suggest Sink has signed on for three or more Marvel movies, pointing to a much bigger future beyond Brand New Day and the X-Men movie.
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.
