The Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer appears to have digitally removed at least one character from its final ninja fight sequence — the same trick Sony pulled on the No Way Home trailer to hide Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. The four most likely hidden characters are Daredevil, the Hulk, Kingpin, and Jean Grey. Evidence for each is below.
Sony has done this before. In the No Way Home trailer, Spider-Man was shown fighting a group of villains at the Statue of Liberty with a conspicuously empty space where an invisible force was clearly kicking the Lizard in the head. We all know how that turned out. Two Peter Parkers, scrubbed from the footage to protect the biggest surprise in MCU history.
The Brand New Day trailer has a shot with the exact same problem. Spider-Man leaps toward a group of Hand ninjas in what appears to be an outdoor setting — but the eyelines are wrong. Several of the ninjas aren’t looking at Spider-Man at all. They’re tracking something else. Something that isn’t in the frame. Scooper MAJESTIC_ucm, who has a reliable track record on Marvel material, confirmed the trailer removed at least one character from the sequence. The question is who. Possibly more than one who.
Here are the four strongest candidates — ranked by how much the evidence actually holds up.
1. The Hulk
Bruce Banner is in the trailer. The Hulk is not. That imbalance is strange on its own — Mark Ruffalo hasn’t appeared in an MCU film since She-Hulk: Attorney at Law in 2022, and if you’re bringing back the Hulk’s human half for a Spider-Man movie, the green half is coming too. The only question is when.
The specific theory gaining traction is that the outdoor ninja sequence isn’t what it appears to be. One reading of that shot — and it’s a compelling one — is that two separate scenes have been composited together. The Hand are fighting in one location. Spider-Man is leaping toward something entirely different in another. What if he’s leaping toward the Savage Hulk? The trailer already confirmed Banner is studying Peter’s mutation. Banner’s wrist inhibitor, which he’s worn since the Shang-Chi post-credits scene and repaired after the She-Hulk car crash, is visible throughout. That device is there to keep Savage Hulk dormant. The film is about things that are dormant coming alive.
There’s comic precedent worth noting here too. In the comics, after Doctor Strange’s memory wipe spell, the Hulk is one of the only beings who still remembers Peter Parker is Spider-Man — because the Hulk’s consciousness was dormant when the spell was cast. That beat is sitting right there for the MCU to use.
2. Daredevil
Charlie Cox says he’s not in Brand New Day. He said the same thing about No Way Home.
The Hand are Frank Miller’s creation — introduced during his legendary Daredevil run that began with Daredevil #168 in 1981 and defined the character for the next four decades. In every MCU appearance so far, the Hand have been Daredevil’s problem specifically. They turned up in Daredevil Season 2, Iron Fist, and The Defenders. Dropping them into a Spider-Man film without Daredevil anywhere nearby would be a strange choice, especially given that Born Again Season 2’s showrunner has confirmed the Mayor Fisk storyline ends this season — meaning the MCU’s street-level corner is undergoing a major reset right before Brand New Day picks up.
The specific scenario that makes most sense: Born Again Season 2 ends with both Fisk and Matt in legal jeopardy. The Hand, who have reason to want both dead after the events of the Netflix era, mount an attack at Rikers. Peter shows up to protect them. Daredevil is in that prison fight. He’s in the ninja shot. He’s been painted out.
Cox’s denial carries less weight than it would for any other actor. Marvel asked him to lie before. He obliged. He’ll oblige again.
3. Kingpin
The key to the city ceremony is the tell. Wilson Fisk called out Spider-Man by name in his inaugural address — he doesn’t hand vigilantes civic awards. The fact that Sheila Rivera, his own political adviser from Born Again Season 1, is the one presenting the key means the administration has changed. Fisk is gone. Someone with a different agenda is running the city.
Vincent D’Onofrio has stated publicly he’s not in Brand New Day, citing rights complications — though the specifics of those complications are unclear given Disney owns both the character and the studio producing the film. It’s possible he’s misdirecting. It’s also possible Kingpin appears only briefly, in a prison context, in a way that doesn’t constitute a major role requiring a public announcement.
The Hand’s appearance in Brand New Day needs a reason beyond ‘ninjas are cool.’ If they’re there to eliminate someone specific — someone currently incarcerated who got on their bad side during the Defenders era — Kingpin fits that target profile perfectly. His presence in the ninja sequence, even as a non-combatant being protected, would make narrative sense.
4. Jean Grey
This one is less about the ninja shot and more about what’s missing from the trailer overall. Sadie Sink appears in two brief moments — the containment cell and the hooded figure in Peter’s apartment — but her actual power set in action is almost entirely absent. We see the effects of what she can do. We never see her doing it.
If Jean’s abilities are what trigger Peter’s mutation, and if the film builds toward a confrontation where she’s at full strength, Marvel has every reason to keep her most dramatic moments out of the first trailer. What we do get — consciousness-jumping, mind control of multiple bodies simultaneously, the sheer infrastructure required to contain her — points to omega-level psionics. There’s a short list of Marvel characters that describes.
The bigger picture is that Jean’s presence in Brand New Day isn’t just a casting coup. She’s the mechanism. If dormant X-genes are firing across the 616 because of incoming multiversal pressure, someone has to be the first. Her awakening is what sets everything else in motion — including whatever is happening to Peter’s body. That’s not a cameo role. That’s the spine of the movie. Of course they’re protecting it.
The No Way Home precedent is instructive not just as a trick Sony has pulled before, but as evidence of how Marvel thinks about trailers for Spider-Man films specifically. The goal isn’t to show you the movie. It’s to show you enough of the movie that you can’t stop thinking about what you haven’t seen. That final ninja shot is doing exactly that. Someone is in it. Probably more than one someone. We’ll find out July 31.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens July 31, 2026. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton.