The ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Ending Conversation We Clearly Need To Have

This story contains major spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, including discussion of the ending.On reflection, it really shouldn't surprise anyone that Spider-Man: Brand New Day took in such a crazy box office haul during its opening weekend, roaring past Avengers: Endgame to a record-breaking $927 million worldwide.Because, come on: Spidey is the GOAT of the superheroes. Comic-book movie fatigue is a real thing, Marvel may well still be in its flop era, but those rules simply don't apply to the world's favorite hormonal teen arachnid (who's now in his 20s, but still.) And Tom Holland's last Spider-Man entry, No Way Home, ended on an all-timer of a twist—everyone forgets who Peter Parker was, including his best friends, a hard reset that both allowed Spidey to go back to his street-level roots, and promised huge emotional stakes to come. We had to wait five years to see how that would be resolved.Thankfully, that cliffhanger is paid off, albeit not quite in the tidy Hollywood fashion we might've expected. When Peter finally reveals their pre-memory-wipe relationship to MJ (Zendaya), it's not some big romantic reunion; instead, she gives him a bittersweet reality check, telling him that, owing to the fact that he has essentially been wiped from existence in her mind, her present self isn't in love with him. From her perspective, she never was. It's sad, sure—but also a lot more satisfying than a cop-out alternative that would've retroactively dulled the impact of Peter's sacrifice at the end of No Way Home, taking away from the profound sense of loss and loneliness that serves as Brand New Day's emotional engine.Well, it seems that way right until the ending of the movie, which some online have read as ambiguous—but it hardly seems so.So, as is obligatory for every single MCU final act ever, Spidey has that big scrap with the super-ninjas known as “the Hand” (God, comics are so gloriously stupid) en route to rescuing Jean Grey (Sadie Sink), who has frozen half of New York in a big bubble of shimmering CGI (well, “telepathic energy,” or something), while grieving over the death of her sister. He convinces her to let everyone go, taking a sniper bullet from the Punisher (Jon Bernthal) for his troubles. She heads off on a bus, presumably to Upstate New York, to enroll in a familiar-sounding school for the über-gifted—insert that riff from the X-Men theme song here—while Peter recovers from the brink of death to continue his life of largely intact anonymity.Then comes the very final scene, in which he visits his favourite bodega; there, he sees Ned (Jacob Batalon), to whom he had earlier re-introduced himself as a flowers-loving neighbor, and later hung out with as Spider-Man, albeit coming short of revealing himself under the mask. This time, he goes one further: approaching an initially confused Ned, they do their secret best-pal handshake, which Ned seems to follow purely by muscle memory. It's at that point that something seems to trigger deeper within his brain, as if a magical door has been unlocked. “Peter,” he exclaims, a look of shock etched onto his face. Peter returns a huge grin. Credits!This could mean one of two things: either that Ned realizes that this mysterious neighbor is the Spidey he met earlier in the movie—after all, MJ did refer to him as “Peter” in front of Ned. Alternatively, the spell has been broken, and Ned now remembers the true identity of his old friend. And by one of two things, I actually mean that it almost certainly points towards the latter, which the film doesn't actually do much to obfuscate. (For the record, my editor disagrees with me on this, but he—like everyone else on this subject—is wrong.)See the movie again, and watch the ending back: Ned's expression isn't that of a fanboy who is finding out the true identity of his hero for the first time; it's of a guy who has been struck by a realization all the more profound. Like, you know, seeing his one-time bestie who had been erased from his mind for all of his college years. And if you want clearer evidence of their deeper connection rising back to the surface, look no further than the damn handshake, which at the very least hints towards a memory of Peter lingering in Ned's subconscious. Perhaps it was the trigger that, in Ned's brain, brought his best pal back.As to why or how Ned's amnesia is seemingly lifted, there are TikTok theories out there: some think that Jean's telepathic nuke episode altered their brains, allowing the memory of Peter to return; someone just needed to turn the keys. There are other pieces of evidence for this: earlier in the movie, the Hulk, unleashed after Jean hops into the mind of Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), stops short of choking Spidey to death after Peter pleads that he is “his friend”—which may in itself placate his rage, but also suggests a deeper acknowledgement of their past relationship. And then, towards the end of Brand New Day, there's MJ pointedly grasping the Black Dahlia necklace gifted to her by Peter in Far From Home, as if to recognize that it means something to her that she'd forgotten. At the very least, she is joining up the dots.To be clear, I hope I'm wrong about all of this. It would be an underwhelming cop-out if they all just regain their memories in time for a reset in Spider-Man 5. But hey! Guess we'll find out in another five years.This story originally appeared in British GQ.