The canonical stance regarding Spider-Man: Brand New Day is that Michelle Jones-Watson has forgotten all about Peter Parker, as she proclaims in the movie herself. This is the stance adopted by most of the ending explanation publications published after the movie’s release.
Not me, and the reason for it is neither the black dahlia necklace, nor MJ’s tears, nor her rooftop smile.
It’s Bruce Banner.
When Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey enters Banner’s head, we don’t see a therapist with a selfie-taking tendency in a tweed jacket that the MCU has used since Endgame. No, what we have here is a Savage Hulk, an uncontrolled monster that Banner had been trying hard to forget for a decade and a half and with whom he’d had to go through a series of therapies to become sane again. And this Hulk still remembers who the hell Peter Parker is.
Let this idea sink in for a second because this is clearly not the message the movie tries to impart.
Jean’s telepathic abilities, as displayed by Banner, aren’t controlling the current personality. Rather, she delves deep into the mind, digging up all the buried personalities along with the associated memories. These are the memories and associations that Stephen Strange’s spell should have completely obliterated in the process of wiping out the memories. If her powers can penetrate Banner and unearth his long-forgotten Hulk, she definitely has enough strength to access Peter Parker from MJ’s subconscious. It’s the same trick, and the film shows this trick performed on the version of the buried self that has enough screen readability.
With consistent implementation, this would add quite a few shades of meaning to other elements of the film.
MJ is crying when she’s frozen, not after that, but during. At the same time, Jean controls her mind, while MJ is supposed to be a passive passenger at this point. Controlling bodies shouldn’t be able to elicit any emotions from people under someone else’s control. Something is going on under that skullcap.
Then there’s the black dahlia necklace that Peter gave to MJ in Far From Home, which she broke and which Peter fixed. She has it on the rooftop, and she’s smiling. A person who has forgotten Peter Parker is a woman who doesn’t wear a piece of costume jewelry that a stranger has presented. The smile is about not the jewelry itself, but about what that necklace is attached to.
And Ned Leeds, who shakes Peter’s hand. Again, not an ordinary handshake, but a specific one that his hands have memorized,d whereas his head supposedly hasn’t done the same.
And this is the part that the “she has forgotten” camp refuses to consider: the spell wasn’t presented as deletion of the memories. In No Way Home, Strange himself states explicitly that after performing his magical trick, Peter could approach those people and talk to them, getting his story understood. These are not destroyed memories, just hidden ones. Every film that suggests that these people cannot now recall anything conflicts with its own source material. A telepath who can unearth the Hulk from the mind of Bruce Banner won’t even face the problem of opening a door that has already been unlocked.
The obvious criticism of this idea is that MJ specifically says that she neither remembers Peter nor loves him. However, the reason she’s mad at Peter is exactly that he stole her memories without her permission. He decided what she would be remembering. Given that, “I don’t remember you,” is the only sentence in the English language capable of shifting the responsibility back to the woman’s side. This sentence means absolutely nothing to her personally but is fatal for him.
Jean, in her turn, has no reason whatsoever for revealing the information about herself. She is not a healer in this film, but a burglar looking for her sister. Burglars leave a lot of stuff on the road. She whispers Sara’s name to Peter and leaves the scene with this phrase alone. This is how this lady operates in general.
I’ll agree that Marvel Studios and Sony have created another entertaining ending. Necklace, tears, and handshake are each separately deniable scenes, and that’s exactly how studios create room for sequels. However, deniability works both ways, and my position is clear on that matter: Either those scenes mean something or the people filming this movie have left a person on the rooftop crying, wearing some man’s gift with a smile just for the hell of it: one theory or another.
I believe the film knows that. I believe that Jean Grey has unlocked Peter Parker from the minds of MJ and Ned the same way she has unlocked the Hulk from Banner, and I believe the next film Marvel Studios will go into a little bit more detail about it.
