Yesterday, we learned that Spider-Man: Brand New Day's lead villain will reportedly be a female shapeshifter. We're not sure what this means for characters like The Scorpion and Tombstone (not to mention The Punisher and The Hulk), but we may now know who she is.
Multiple online scoopers are indicating that Shathra is the movie's big bad, with Stranger Things star Sadie Sink playing the character.
Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige is a big fan of J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr.'s Amazing Spider-Man run; he wrote the foreword for "Coming Home," while Spidey's budding friendship with Doctor Strange ended up being a big part of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Shathra debuted in 2002's Amazing Spider-Man #46, where she was introduced as the Spider-Wasp totem, a monstrous, insectoid predator of the Astral Plane who sought to kill Spidey and feed him to her young. The villain took on a human form to cause chaos in the web-slinger's personal life, and very nearly revealed his secret identity on national television.
In recent years, we've learned that the elder goddess was tasked with designing the Celestial Map of Humanity, the "Great Nest." Its creation was overshadowed by her sister Neith's "Great Web," and driven to madness, she eventually became a Multiversal threat seeking to bring every Spider-Hero and Web of Life and Destiny under her control.
We've heard that Spider-Man: Brand New Day will mix street-level storytelling with a little bit of the Multiverse, and this could be the excuse Sony Pictures is looking for to bring back Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Spidey Variants in the final act.
They're expected to feature in the next Avengers movies, Doomsday and Secret Wars, and we got an update on the latter during a recent edition of The Hot Mic podcast.
"They keep saying that the script was finished, and yes, they had a finished script, but the ending had not been figured out and they were rewriting scenes on the set," John Rocha explained. "Even now, after wrapping Doomsday, they're not really finished. They're still shooting a lot more, my source says, in 2026 before moving on to Secret Wars in the summer."
This might not sound too good, but let's not forget that the same was the case for Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Those remain two of the most critically and commercially successful superhero movies of all time.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings helmer Destin Daniel Cretton directs Spider-Man: Brand New Day from a script by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. Tom Holland stars with Jon Bernthal, Mark Ruffalo, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Michael Mando, Tramell Tillman, Marvin Jones III, and Liza Colón-Zayas. Thunderbolts* star Florence Pugh is also rumoured to have joined the cast.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be released in theaters on July 31, 2026. Avengers: Doomsday is set to be released on December 18, 2026, with Avengers: Secret Wars scheduled to arrive on December 17, 2027.