Marvel fans were absolutely right about a Spider-Man: Brand New Day poster and trailer having characters removed, it just wasn’t at all who we all suspected. Marvel audiences have developed something of a sixth sense when it comes to promotional material. After years of altered trailers, strategically cropped posters, and carefully hidden cameos, audiences have become convinced that every suspicious empty space in an MCU image is hiding a major surprise. Most of the time, they’re not entirely wrong either.
That was exactly the reaction to one of the posters for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The artwork, taken from an image in the trailer, featured Spider-Man leaping into action against members of the Hand, with several enemies appearing to be looking toward areas of the image that, strangely, contained nobody at all. Combined with the unusually open spaces around Spider-Man, it didn’t take long for people to start theorizing that Marvel had digitally removed characters to avoid spoilers.
The speculation quickly escalated. Some believed Daredevil had been edited out, especially given the character’s close association with street-level crime stories and his history with Spider-Man. Others wondered whether another Spider-Man such as Tobey Maguire had been removed. A few even suggested Hulk might have originally occupied one of the empty sections of the image.
As it turns out, MCU fans were absolutely correct that something had been altered. The image did have missing characters. The surprise is that the updated artwork has revealed a very different answer from the one many viewers expected.
Characters Were Missing From The Spider-Man: Brand New Day Poster, Just Not Who We Thought
Marvel has now released an updated version of the Spider-Man: Brand New Day poster, confirming that characters were indeed absent from the original image. However, the additions aren’t the heroes many fans spent weeks theorizing about.
Instead, the revised poster adds Scorpion and Hulk among the Hand, with nothing new added to Spider-Man’s side at all – although the framing has shifted slightly. What’s particularly interesting is that neither reveal is especially shocking. Hulk’s appearance in Brand New Day had already been featured in marketing, while Scorpion was also visible in footage released before the film’s debut.
Unlike some of Marvel’s previous promotional edits, these weren’t earth-shattering spoilers being protected from audiences. That distinction is what makes the whole situation so fascinating. Fans correctly identified that characters had been removed, but they were looking for the wrong surprises.
Have Marvel’s Misdirection Tactics Evolved?
Marvel has spent so many years hiding characters from trailers and posters that audiences now expect it as standard practice. The studio famously removed Spider-Man from marketing materials for Captain America: Civil War, concealed key moments from Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, and routinely alters footage to prevent major reveals from leaking ahead of release.
As a result, MCU fans have become amateur detectives. Every strange edit, suspicious camera angle, or oddly framed poster becomes evidence in a new theory. In many cases, those theories end up being justified.
What’s intriguing about the Brand New Day trailer image is that it seems almost engineered to encourage that behavior. The empty spaces were noticeable enough to spark discussion, and the positioning of surrounding characters practically invited viewers to search for hidden heroes.
Yet the eventual reveal wasn’t Daredevil, another Spider-Man variant, or some unexpected MCU newcomer. It was two characters audiences already knew were involved in the movie. That raises an interesting possibility. Rather than simply hiding spoilers, Marvel may now be anticipating how fans analyze promotional material and using those expectations against them.
If audiences automatically assume every missing figure is a secret cameo, then revealing less surprising characters can redirect attention away from genuine surprises elsewhere. If that’s the case, Marvel’s marketing department may have entered a new phase of the game after Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The studio isn’t just hiding secrets anymore – it might be deliberately encouraging fans to chase the wrong ones.
- Release Date
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July 29, 2026
- Runtime
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145 minutes
- Writers
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Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers
- Producers
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Avi Arad, Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Amy Pascal, David Cain
