Remember me
For months, the mystery surrounding Sadie Sink’s character in Spider-Man: Brand New Day was a major topic of conversation. Finally, as many had suspected but couldn’t yet be sure about, it was confirmed that Sink is indeed the MCU’s Jean Grey, the beloved and ultra powerful X-Men character. However, Brand New Day made it clear that this character is rather complex, and the MCU isn’t shying away from that side of her. In fact, very similar to Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, Jean Grey toes the line between villain and hero—the latter of which the MCU will no doubt explore in other projects moving forward, including, presumably, .
Yet, like with Wanda (especially after WandaVision, not so much after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), a question remains regarding how villainous or evil Jean Grey really was. After all, as Brand New Day ultimately revealed, Jean was really just looking for her sister, Sara, who had been taken and, Jean eventually learned, experimented on to the point of dying. That revelation led to a considerable amount of empathy for Jean from many in the fanbase, as it’s clear that much of her behavior stemmed from trauma and that desperation to save her sister. However, there was one action in Brand New Day that many fans are finding tough to forgive, but new details suggest that it may not be as bad as we think.
Jean Grey did a host of awful things in Brand New Day, from the very act of forcing people to engage in a variety of behaviors against their will to the heart-wrenching scene in which she tricks Peter Parker into believing that MJ remembers him and then kisses him. Of everything she did in the movie, though, many viewers took the most issue with the moment in which she uses her telekinetic abilities to force an innocent man to walk into traffic, at which point he was struck by a car. The rate of speed at which he was hit with the car heavily hinted that Jean had, in fact, killed him.
New details have emerged that suggest this man may actually have survived, though. According to The Direct, based on a new set video, this scene was (impressively) done practically, with an actor, Charlton Jud, who was actually struck by a car. The logic regarding the possibility that the character survived is that, if Jud was really hit and walked away fine, then presumably, this was actually survivable.
Granted, there are all sorts of reasons this might not be the case, from protections on set that wouldn’t exist in real life to, as The Direct mentions, the possibility that the car was sped up on screen. Even so, it’s nice to imagine that Jean didn’t truly kill this man (although her actions are still horrifying), especially considering this is now a hero who will be sticking around in the MCU.