Spider-Man: Brand New Day Finally Ends A Frustrating Billion Dollar Post-Infinity Saga Trend

Published Aug 20, 2026, 2:30 PM EDT

Simon Gallagher has worked in movie and TV journalism for more than 15 years. He has written more than 6000 articles and reviews, and edited thousands more. He is an expert in the entertainment industry, particularly in the golden age of screen superheroes. Simon is also a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic.
 

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is not like the other biggest-selling MCU movies released since Avengers: Endgame, and its huge success should be seen as a good thing for the future of the MCU. The concern, though, is that Avengers: Doomsday cannot hope to learn the biggest lesson from Brand New Day that set it apart from the biggest hits of the Multiverse Saga.

Look, the sequel was never going to flop. Spidey is one of Disney’s biggest retail powerhouses away from the screen, he still sells comics, and Tom Holland’s first MCU trilogy delivered three top-tier movies. Combine that with a very clever marketing campaign that refused to reveal its big X-Men selling point to whip up some of that cameo-like speculation hype, but also made it obvious enough that mutant fans knew they had to see it, and it was a golden formula.

There are very obvious factors to consider, too. The trailers promised a great movie, Destin Daniel Cretton has quietly built an incredible name for himself through excellent work, and people just really love both Hulk and Punisher (both of whom promised interesting dynamics with Spider-Man). And then you factor in the fact that the early word of mouth was glowing - even at a higher level than the usual MCU hype - with an engaged fanbase working alongside near perfect critical consensus. Guaranteed money.

But Brand New Day also didn’t rely solely on fast-fashion-like cameos as its major selling point. Everyone who praised it was talking about substance rather than nostalgia or cheap thrills, which both have an awful habit of swallowing up everything around them in even good movies. And in that realization, we find the frustrating MCU box office trend that Brand New Day broke.

Marvel's Biggest Multiverse Saga Hits Have Been Cameo-Filled Movies

One of the biggest issues with the MCU since Avengers: Endgame's release is also one of the biggest catalysts for its major successes. Indeed, Marvel’s biggest box office successes since Endgame reveal a pattern: audience engagement is directly correlated with nostalgia-driven event movies, and standalone character journeys comparatively struggle. It doesn’t even matter what the quality involved is. While more original entries fail to find their footing in the Multiverse Saga landscape, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness all succeeded by using the unevenly-developed multiverse lore as a setup for legacy character returns and flashy cameos.

It’s disingenuous to dismiss that tactic as hollow and unsatisfying stunt marketing, though: it’s hard to argue that at least two of the three were true cultural events. No Way Home built on two decades of Spider-Man history, reuniting three generations of heroes in one of the worst-kept Hollywood secrets ever. And for all of the cynical revisionist takes on it now, Deadpool & Wolverine merged the legacy Fox universe directly into the MCU in glorious R-rated fan service. And even though it didn’t do quite as well, Multiverse of Madness used multiverse variants as a smart part of the spectacle (it’s arguably all the movie is widely remembered for).

In contrast, excellent movies like Thunderbolts* and even The Fantastic Four: First Steps were sold on their own drawing power, whether through story or characters (and that’s the case for almost every release not yet named). They weren’t marketed particularly poorly, but they simply didn’t capture the same level of appetite as the top three box office winners.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day Has Cameos, But Isn't A Cameo Movie

You could be forgiven for scratching your head at this point, because Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s pre-release marketing campaign was defined by relentless fan speculation, based partly on the mystery of who Sadie Sink was playing, and also near countless theories and fake leaks on other cameos. To their benefit, Sony and Marvel Studios actually leaned into that intrigue, teasing to build hype, and even outright revealing fan-favorite villain appearances. But, unlike the Multiverse Saga blockbusters, here, cameos work as a secondary hook and not the whole story.

When the movie actually released, lots of the most heavily speculated appearances amounted to seconds of screentime. Spidey's rogue's gallery featured in the opening montage was nothing like what the aggressive marketing (and subsequent fan engagement) has suggested. If you were a conspiracy theorist, you could even say that might have been a conscious bait-and-switch commentary on the entire trope.

And, obviously, yes, Hulk and Punisher are involved, and Jean Grey ended up being the big mystery, but all the crossovers were necessary to the narrative. They weren’t just empty fan-service, and the story simply would not have worked without them. There’s a version of this movie - like the version 4Chan, Reddit, and some of the lesser “scoopers” suggested actually existed - that had way more cameos, but Brand New Day simply didn’t need it.

Avengers: Doomsday Is More Like The Previous MCU Movies Than Brand New Day

With the MCU’s huge Avengers double-header coming over the next 18 months, you have to ask: should we be worried about what comes next? The track record of Multiverse Saga movies isn’t exactly great, but the Avengers are a juggernaut, so financial performance feels inevitable. But that doesn’t mean it’s not interesting to note how much more like the three biggest post-Endgame movies Avengers: Doomsday looks than resembling Brand New Day.

Given the success of Brand New Day, the very next movie seemingly taking a step back feels… weird. There are even rumblings among the more seasoned parts of the MCU fanbase that there’s a little too much reliance on the cheaper thrills of cameos and hidden multiverse characters (because there surely has to be some) in the marketing and not enough substantive story. But then, that’s what happens when you’re simultaneously committed to spoiler protections and necessarily driven by the promise of who might drop by. The multiverse was always a skeleton key to untold creativity, after all.

And this is not exactly shocking as a marketing approach. Even though Marvel limited Brand New Day’s official promotional campaigns to subtle trailer teases, they actively welcomed fan speculation, and it was still sold on the promise of who would appear. Like all three of the biggest box office successes, it was - and Doomsday will be - positioned not as straightforward sequels, but as essential, even historic crossover milestones that meant seeing them at any point other than the first weekend was the same as not seeing them. We can only hope now that Avengers: Doomsday has more of the story depth of Brand New Day that doesn’t rely on nostalgic payoffs and fleeting cameos.

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  Peter Parker / Spider-Man

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  Jean Grey

Four years after No Way Home, Peter Parker lives alone, forgotten by everyone he loves, and devotes himself entirely to being Spider-Man.