Spider-Man: Brand New Day Just Gave a Major Marvel Character a New Origin Story

For months now, there have been reports Spider-Man: Brand New Day would introduce Sadie Sink as the X-Men’s Jean Grey. That meant few people were surprised when Peter learned he was dealing with a powerful telepath named “Jean Elaine Grey,” who apparently possessed the ability to possess others. Marvel got the film rights for the X-Men back in 2019, and until now they’d settled for bringing back Fox legends like Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman, while retconning Iman Vellani’s Ms. Marvel as a mutant. Now, at last, we have our first Earth-616 version of an X-Man.

It’s a delightful reveal, albeit a chilling one. The traditional comic book Jean is no wallflower or shrinking violet; she’s best known for the “Dark Phoenix Saga,” which unlocked her potential for evil and saw her destroy an entire star system. But this Jean feels like she’s inspired by the Ultimate universe version, who would ultimately become a hard-edged revolutionary. In fact, for all she’s redeemed through Peter Parker’s willingness to connect, this Jean is responsible for at least one death in the film. That’s because she has a whole different origin story.

Jean Grey’s MCU Origin Story is So Much Darker

In the MCU, both Jean and her older sister Sarah developed the same mutant power; the ability to psychically possess others. Their minds can initially only reach so far (Spider-Man estimated Jean had a limited radius of 33 feet or under, although his calculation may have been wrong). But they can also surf from one body to the next, extending their range by an incalculable amount. According to a flashback, Jean and Sarah’s powers freaked their parents out, and they were abandoned. There’s a certain tragedy here, in that mutants with the power of connection… lost all connection.

It looks as though Jean and Sarah wound up as runaways. Sarah appears to have had her powers for longer than Jean, and she will have initally taken responsibility for looking after them both. Certainly she began training Jean, helping her understand the basics of her powers, but unfortunately Sarah’s experimentation caught the attention of Damage Control. They spotted the body-hopping in a park, and moved in to catch Sarah. Jean would have been caught too, if not for her sister’s possessing her to hold her back.

Jean’s Origin is Nothing Like the Comics

In the comics, Jean Grey has a very different origin. For one thing, her sister Sara wasn’t a mutant at all; she was an ordinary human (whose story did become quite tragic). There, Jean’s powers first manifested when her best friend Annie was hit in a car accident. Jean’s mind connected with Annie’s, and she experienced her death. The trauma left Jean retreating into herself until her parents called on Professor Charles Xavier to help. Though Jean ddn’t know it, her psychic experience of death also caught the attention of the Phoenix Force, explaining why it came to her years later.

Oddly enough, though, Sara Grey did almost become a mutant exactly 40 years ago. The iconic “Dark Phoenix Saga” ended with Jean Grey’s death, but Marvel editors decided to resurrect her as part of a new X-Factor team (who consisted of the reformed original X-Men). Superstar X-Men writer Chris Claremont fought against this, and he proposed an alternate plot where Sara took Jean’s place, having developed mutant powers of her own. That said, Claremont’s idea was for Sara to have a different power – the ability to trigger latent mutations in others. Marvel nixed the idea, and Sara faded to obscurity, ultimately killed off in the ’90s.

As I noted earlier, the MCU’s Jean Grey feels a lot more hard-edged than the traditional version. That’s likely because she draws heavily on the Ultimate universe version (which is quite common for the MCU). A modernized relaunch from the early 2000s, this featured a Jean Grey who had retreated into herself after nightmares of the Phoenix Force. She wound up committed to a mental institution, pretty much abandoned by her family, and was eventually found by Charles Xavier.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day Completes Jean Grey’s Origin Story

In truth, Spider-Man: Brand New Day completes Jean’s origin story. It’s one of heartbreaking trauma, as she ultimately discovers her sister Sara died during Damage Control’s experiments. That experience of trauma apparently leads to a spontaneous evolution of Jean’s powers, unlocking the more typical Jean Grey powersets of telepathy and telekinesis. Spider-Man prevents her killing Bill Metzger, and she’s ultimately redeemed enough to use her powers to keep him alive.

Brand New Day ends with Jean on her way upstate. We don’t know exactly where she’s going, but we can guess; the X-Men are usually based in Westchester, which is upstate from Manhattan. Alternatively, Marvel has cast Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, another psychic who ran a rival school for mutants in Massachusetts. That’s north of Manhattan, too, so it’s entirely possible Jean is traveling further north; in which case, Marvel could deliberately be throwing a curve-ball.