Spider-Man: Brand New Day Script Notes Suggest MCU’s Peter Parker Returns to His Roots

When Peter Parker first entered the MCU, he was the Queens kid fans knew from comics and films—for about 30 seconds. He walked through his crowded apartment building, proudly holding a DVD player he’d found on the street, just like the standard-issue Peter Parker. Then he met Tony Stark.

From Captain America: Civil War onward, the MCU’s Spider-Man diverged from the classic depiction. Instead of a struggling freelance photographer, he became a protégé of Stark, a kid with access to cutting-edge tech and nano-suits, never needing to take a low-paying gig from J. Jonah Jameson.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day now promises to bring Peter back to his roots. With Tony’s death in Avengers: Endgame and the memory reset in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter is on his own. Script notes shared by director Destin Daniel Cretton with Entertainment Weekly suggest a shift back to Peter’s everyman persona. One key detail: “No more Stark money for gadgets.”

That’s welcome news for fans who love Spider-Man precisely because he’s an everyman. Yet those hopes are tempered by script pages revealing Peter’s AI and his Fabricator—tools that imply resources beyond what a self-sufficient genius should realistically have.

Cretton’s notes describe the Fabricator as “something that could be made by a kid genius with limited funds,” echoing a note about his AI (named E.V.): “All of his tech needs to be made by Peter.” The message is clear: Peter has lost his billionaire benefactor and must now do everything himself. And yet, he still has an AI and a suit-making machine, just as he did under Tony’s patronage. So what’s the difference?

Peter Parker’s Tech Problem: A Long-Standing Debate

Peter’s genius-level intellect and ability to invent high-tech gadgets have always strained believability. As early as his debut in Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), he was a working-class Queens teenager who somehow built a machine to shoot dissolving webbing from his bedroom. Over the years, he added spider-trackers, a spotlight that projects his face, and other advanced tools to his arsenal.

Critics often argue that Peter could be rich if he patented his inventions. But that critique ignores the character’s core appeal: Peter is a super-genius who’s also broke, forced to work for a stingy J. Jonah Jameson to fund his heroics. It’s a suspension of disbelief we’ve accepted for decades to preserve the classic Spider-Man stories we love.

The MCU’s Peter Parker, however, doesn’t get the same benefit of the doubt. Marvel has systematically removed him from his blue-collar roots and replaced Uncle Ben—who was laid off and left Peter struggling in the 2002 film—with billionaire arms dealer Tony Stark. Even after Stark’s death and the memory reset, Peter’s tech remains a point of contention.