Yelena Belova
Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) drops in for a brief but memorable cameo. Needing intel he can’t get anywhere else, Peter pays a visit to Yelena’s ‘office’ — her favourite bathhouse — where she helps him track a crucial lead in his investigation. The scene also gives Peter a handy link to the new Avengers line-up: Yelena was last seen in 2025’s Thunderbolts* (retitled/referred to as The New Avengers in some marketing material) and is set to return in Avengers: Doomsday. Pugh even credits Holland with getting her on board for Brand New Day.

Bruce Banner/Hulk
One of the movie’s showstopping set pieces is a full-on brawl between Spider-Man and the Hulk. Last seen in Phase Four’s She-Hulk series, Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) now wears an inhibitor device that keeps his big, green, angry alter ego in check — for a while, anyway.

As to what happens after his Brand New Day Hulk-out? Avengers: Endgame Encore, the recent re-release of the 2019 blockbuster with additional scenes, picks up the thread. In a new post-credits scene, Bruce has locked himself away in an underground military bunker, only for Doctor Doom to show up and ‘collect’ him, setting up his role in Avengers: Doomsday.

Frank Castle/Punisher
In the comics, Spider-Man and the Punisher have long been ‘frenemies’ — and off screen, Holland and Jon Bernthal are pals. The pair starred together in 2017’s Pilgrimage and even helped each other film their Marvel audition tapes: Holland for Spider-Man and Bernthal for the Punisher. Bernthal went on to play the gun-toting vigilante in Netflix’s Daredevil and The Punisher, before Disney+’s Daredevil: Born Again folded the Netflix-era characters into the MCU proper. He also headlined The Punisher: One Last Kill, a gloriously violent standalone special. All of which makes it extra amusing to watch Frank Castle squeeze into a PG-13 movie alongside Spider-Man in Brand New Day.

Dawn of the Mutants
Sadie Sink’s casting sent fans into overdrive. Her role was kept under wraps in early announcements, and the cast and crew stayed tight-lipped, but, much like Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s return in Spider-Man: No Way Home, it was a poorly kept secret. The rumours were true: Sink plays the powerful telepath Jean Grey, Brand New Day’s antagonist — albeit a sympathetic one, driven by the search for her missing sister. Comics fans will know Jean as a founding member of the X-Men, and she isn’t going anywhere. Sink has a major role in the MCU’s X-Men reboot, due in May 2028.

Then there’s the universal inhibitor Peter builds to shut down Jean’s powers. The film leaves its fate open, but if it ever fell into the hands of the Department of Damage Control, it could pave the way for the power-suppressing collars used against the X-Men in storylines like X-Men: Days of Future Past — which would make Peter an unwitting Oppenheimer of the mutant world.

Spider-Man’s Space Odyssey?
In the post-credits scene, Ned’s Spidey Tracker app reveals that Spider-Man is somewhere in … space, far beyond the Moon, before a title card promises that ‘Spider-Man will return’. Where, exactly? Theories are split between Avengers: Doomsday and its follow-up, Avengers: Secret Wars. With no Spider-Man actor yet confirmed for either, fans will have to wait and see.

Longtime Marvel readers will recognise the set-up. In Marvel’s original 1984–85 Secret Wars storyline, a godlike cosmic being known as the Beyonder whisked Spider-Man, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men off to a patchwork planet called Battleworld. The arc also gave Spider-Man his black symbiote suit, which eventually led to the arrival of Venom.

In 2015, Jonathan Hickman wrote a different crossover event, also called Secret Wars, in which Doctor Doom takes centre stage as the all-powerful ‘God Emperor Doom’. The MCU’s take on Secret Wars will most likely draw more from this version. Then again, the tracker might be picking up Spider-Men from other corners of the Multiverse — and fans are already speculating about a return for Maguire’s Spider-Man.