Spoilers are the Real Big Bad of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

After the Spider-Man team-up rumours that dogged No Way Home, Marvel has been very tight-lipped about the web-slinger’s latest adventure Brand New Day. David Opie welcomes the secrecy, and argues that cryptic trailers and character obfuscation only build intrigue.   

Marvel is back with a new era in the rather aptly titled Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Spider-Man himself, Tom Holland, wasn’t kidding when he described the movie as ‘a real mystery’ to Esquire ahead of release. And it still remains a mystery, despite each subsequent trailer breaking view records online. Because for the first time in a long time, we actually don’t know a lot about what Marvel has in store for us – and that can only be a good thing.  

Set leaks for Brand New Day have been few and far between, and the trailers themselves have teased what’s to come without going out of their way to spoil key plot details. Instead, each promo has built intrigue around the mysteries at hand, which primarily consist of Spider-Man’s strange metamorphosis and a new round of baddies for him to dispatch.

Beside multiple ninjas and the return of Scorpion from Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), the trailers also feature a consciousness-swapping mastermind and Sadie Sink’s mystery character, who may or may not be one and the same. Yet even with all these mini-reveals, Holland’s teased that the main villain ‘is still very much a secret’, suggesting no one has figured out their true identity. 

Whether that’s a misdirect or not, secrets like this are welcome regardless because, historically speaking, the most unsettling Big Bad to plague Marvel has actually been spoiler culture itself. 

The previous Spider-Man movie, 2021’s No Way Home, fell victim to this more than most when rumours around the return of previous Spidey actors went into full swing. It also didn’t help that an enemy named the Lizard appeared to be hit by thin air in one of the trailers, suggesting that someone important had indeed been edited out.   

Discussion around a possible cameo from either Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield overshadowed everything else, to the point where the actual story didn’t really matter as much as the surprises Marvel was keeping from us. That also becomes true for journalists who, in recent years, have grown more and more desperate to pry these secrets out for clicks, rather than tackle themes within the movies.

While Marvel did try to keep Maguire and Garfield’s involvement in No Way Home under wraps, they have leaned into spoiling their own movies elsewhere, most notably in trailers where major plot points are unveiled (despite the fact they would have been far more effective as surprises within the films themselves). 

Spidey’s first appearance in the MCU was revealed in one of the last trailers for Captain America: Civil War (2016), for example, undercutting the impact that coming across him organically on the big screen would have had. More recent Marvel films like Captain America: Brave New World (2025) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) have also included big reveals – such as the Red Hulk transformation and Peggy Carter’s superhero makeover – in widely released trailers ahead of release.

While marketing execs need to get creative when it comes to putting butts in seats, spoiling your own movie suggests a lack of confidence in it. That’s precisely why promotion for Spider-Man: Brand New Day has been so refreshing. It’s a return to the surety Marvel once had, a time when they would actively fight against spoilers rather than give into them.

Ahead of the first Avengers film in 2012, someone in the production office printed out a copy of Samuel L Jackson’s script and put it up for sale online. The unnamed culprit quit and fled the country so Marvel set up a fake buy for the script, only for them to not show up. From that point on, no script print-outs were allowed for the actors involved.

This need to prevent spoilers became the focal point of the studio’s campaign for Avengers: Endgame (2019), where the cast pleaded with fans not to post twists online following the film’s release. Unfortunately, #DontSpoilTheEndgame wasn’t as effective as Marvel hoped, at least if the deluge of clips recorded in cinemas upon the film’s opening were anything to go by.

Beyond asking the fans for help directly, Marvel’s head honcho Kevin Feige has openly discussed measures that the studio itself takes against spoilers on set. 

For Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), director Shawn Levy and his team avoided the comparative safety of a soundstage in favour of shooting on location. ‘We want it to be out in the real world, and that always comes with potential trade-offs,’ Feige told Variety. ‘We were in a lot of secure locations and places that were far away from prying eyes – with the exception of drones. It was a new experience for me to have paparazzi drones flying over set.’

Deadpool lead Ryan Reynolds ‘leaked’ set photos himself soon after, poking fun at the scoopers with images of Wade Wilson and Wolverine alongside random fictional characters like Mickey Mouse and Steve Urkel.

Marvel itself isn’t above toying with people who are looking for spoilers either. 

For almost a decade now, the studio has digitally altered a few of its trailers to throw people off the scent when it comes to key plot twists. Thor: Ragnarok trailers did so in 2017 by erasing shots of an eyepatch that gave away Thor’s injury, and the following year Avengers: Infinity War digitally inserted Hulk fighting scenes into promos to hide the fact that Bruce Banner was no longer able to transform.  

Whether it’s a misplaced script or Holland accidentally revealing the end of Infinity War (as he famously did to a group of early cinemagoers in 2018), spoilers will always pose a threat to some degree, regardless of what measures are put in place. But recently, it seems Marvel has figured out how to weaponise spoiler culture to draw in bigger audiences without ruining the surprises for everyone else.    

By creating an air of secrecy around releases again, as they’ve done so effectively with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Marvel actually spurs people to come see their films as soon as possible before the inevitable post-release spoilers pick up steam. The unspoken implication is that you need to rush out and watch Spidey’s latest adventure as soon as you can on opening weekend if you want to go in knowing as little as possible.

This approach was key to the release of 2025’s Thunderbolts*, which teased a mystery around the meaning of that asterisk in the title. Marvel’s aiming for something similar again with the big villain reveals set to come our way in Brand New Day. 

It really is a ‘brand new day’ for Marvel in that sense, one that looks set to continue with the release of Avengers: Doomsday later this year. Key information that has already been shared – including the return of Fox’s X-Men and Robert Downey Jr’s role as Doctor Doom – sets up new mysteries regarding the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of it all.

By making the prospect of spoilers the main attraction, rather than the actual spoilers themselves, Marvel now enjoys the best of both worlds, urging audiences to come on that critical launch weekend without being accused of revealing too much themselves. Let’s just hope that the Doomsday trailers to come continue like this, keeping the next Avengers film ‘a real mystery’ in the same vein as Spidey's latest adventure. 

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