With a brand-new Spider-Man movie must come brand-new villains. While previous adaptations pit the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler against such classic comic book Spider-foes as the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Sandman, Electro, the Vulture, and Mysterio, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is taking an even bigger swing by having Tom Holland’s Peter Parker face off with a gauntlet of B-list supervillains. Besides the returning Mac Gargan (Michael Mando) — suiting up as the pincered Scorpion nearly a decade after we last saw him in the post-credits stinger in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming — the Sony-Marvel franchise’s fourth installment expands Spider-Man’s rogues gallery with the likes of the spike-toed Tarantula, Aussie assassin Boomerang, marble-skinned mobster Tombstone (Marvin “Krondon” Jones III), and … Hand ninjas?
The death-defying ninja clan has been a fixture of the television side of the MCU since 2015, with the Hand being the ones to ultimately unite street-level heroes Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), Luke Cage (Mike Colter), and Danny Rand (Finn Jones) in a saga that spanned episodes of interconnected Marvel-Netflix shows Daredevil and Iron Fist before culminating in crossover series The Defenders. Alongside the Hand proper, Daredevil season 2 also introduced Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), who first donned his skull-emblazoned bulletproof vest while mowing down the expendable ninjas in a season-clinching scene.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day 2026 Film Trailer
Why Is the Hand in ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’?
Bernthal’s big-screen debut as the Punisher in Spider-Man: Brand New Day coincides with the return of the Hand, not seen since a resurrected Elektra (Elodie Yung) dethroned and decapitated leader Alexandra Reid (Sigourney Weaver) before the Defenders defeated the immortality-obsessed death cult — seemingly for good — as the destruction of the Midland Circle building brought about an end to Elektra’s Hand in the 2017 series finale of The Defenders. (Elektra, like many members of the Hand, has a habit of not staying dead.)
Are the red-clad ninjas just PG-13-friendly canon fodder for Bernthal’s R-rated, gun-toting vigilante? Maybe, but there’s a comic book basis for Spider-Man fighting ninjas — something he does in the Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer, which teases what appears to be the film’s climactic sequence: a prison-set showdown between a mutating Spider-Man and a faction of sword-wielding red ninjas.
In the comics, the Hand has served primarily as enemies of Daredevil — who poached Spider-villain Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. the Kingpin, as his archenemy, so let’s call it even — since writer-artist Frank Miller created the army of assassins in 1981’s Daredevil #174. (In their first appearance, the hired Hands dissolved into smoke upon defeat, which could allow for bloodless Punisher kills in Brand New Day.) While Spider-Man’s cinematic antagonists tend to be scientists-turned-supervillains (Willem Dafoe‘s Gobby, Alfred Molina‘s Doc Ock), hapless mutates (Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman, Jamie Foxx’s Electro), or bad guys with grudges (Topher Grace’s Venom, Michael Keaton’s Vulture), there is comic book precedent for the webhead going toe-to-toe with the Hand.
What the Spider-Man Comics Could Tell Us About ‘Brand New Day’s Biggest Twist
Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can. Look out! Here comes the … Man-Spider?
Has Spider-Man Fought the Hand in the Comics?
One of Spider-Man’s earliest encounters with the Hand bears some resemblance to the plot of Brand New Day. In 1997’s Amazing Spider-Man #424, a sai-wielding Elektra questions a lone ninja about the Hand’s return to New York, and learns that they’ve come to exterminate their hereditary blood enemies: an offshoot of the Hand called the True Believers. Spider-Man is caught between the two warring cults of assassins at a time when the web-slinging superhero’s powers are on the fritz after a humiliating public defeat at the hands of a super-charged Electro and a bite from Morbius, the Living Vampire, causing him to suffer disorienting headaches. (In the Brand New Day trailer, we see Peter pass out as he undergoes some sort of metamorphosis.) The blood feud forces a team-up between Spider-Man and Elektra, but it remains to be seen whether such an alliance could form in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In the 1992 graphic novel Spider-Man: Fear Itself #1, penned by legendary Amazing Spider-Man scribes Stan Lee and Gerry Conway, Spider-Man is roped into a team-up with another hired gun: Silver Sable. The Symkarian mercenary is tasked with retrieving fear-inducing crystals stolen from Harry Osborn’s chemical company, which originally developed a crystallized drug to potentially reverse the effects of schizophrenia. The thief is the White Ninja (a Japanese mutant with the ability to turn invisible), hired by the terrorist Baroness Zemo, who plans to rule the world through fear. Although affiliated with the Yakuza rather than the Hand, the White Ninja’s speed, agility, and martial arts abilities made the ninja a formidable foe despite Spider-Man’s superhuman reflexes and spider-sense. But the one-off villain died in his first and only appearance after exposure to the fear vapors resulted in a lethal fall.
Spider-Man Teamed Up With the New Avengers and More Marvel Heroes To Fight Ninjas
The trailer-ending shot of Spider-Man leaping into action toward members of the Hand brings to mind the iconic cover of 2007’s New Avengers #27, in which the mysterious samurai Ronin (an identity shared by Echo, real name Maya Lopez, and later a disguised Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye) stands alone against the Elektra-led Hand. The clan of assassins was a recurring threat during Brian Michael Bendis’ New Avengers run where a new team of Avengers — including Spider-Man, Iron Man, Luke Cage, and Wolverine — formed after Earth’s mightiest heroes disassembled. 2005’s New Avengers #11-12 saw the Hand, affiliated with Hydra, recruit the Japanese mutant known as the Silver Samurai, pitting new ninja Avenger Maya and allies against hundreds of Hand ninjas. Later, during Marvel’s Civil War event in which the Superhuman Registration Act caused a schism in the superhero community, Barton adopted the Ronin mantle and joined the new New Avengers — among them Iron Fist, Doctor Strange, and a black-suited Spider-Man — to rescue a captured Maya from Elektra’s Hand in issues #27-31.
When a black-clad Daredevil is possessed by the Beast, an ancient demon and lord of the Hand, during the five-part Shadowland arc, the Man Without Fear finds himself at odds with allies like Spider-Man, Punisher, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage. In the 2010 one-shot Spider-Man: Shadowland #1, Spider-Man and Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu, faced the corrupting touch of Chinatown crime lord Mister Negative as the villain’s Inner Demons fought the Hand for control of New York’s underworld. The Shadowland limited series culminated in Elektra — once leader of the Hand — assembling Spider-Man and other street-level heroes to defeat the Hand, with Iron Fist channeling his chi to cast out the Beast in Daredevil.
Spider-Man Villains Have Hired the Hand
While not part of the usual Spider-Man rogues’ gallery, the Hand has operated as agents of one of Spider-Man’s main villains: Wilson Fisk. In the aftermath of Shadowland, Kingpin claimed ownership of the Hand and used the ninjas as his enforcers alongside the likes of Montana and the Hobgoblin. During his tenure as Amazing Spider-Man writer, Dan Slott had Spider-Man equip a high-tech stealth suit to battle Hand assassins during the “Big Time” storyline in 2010’s Amazing Spider-Man #650-651, and Hobgoblin and the Hand would recur throughout the remainder of Slott’s run until its conclusion with issue #700 in 2012.
That same year, the Greg Rucka and Mark Waid-penned Avenging Spider-Man #6 kicked off the three-part “Omega Effect” arc crossing over with issues of The Punisher and Daredevil. In that storyline, Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Punisher (begrudgingly abiding by a temporary no-kill rule) formed an uneasy alliance to keep the Omega Drive — a hard drive containing intel on every criminal organization — out of the hands of, well, the Hand and the rest of the underworld. Could such a device be what brings Spider-Man, the Punisher, the Hand, and the rest of Spidey’s brand-new foes together in the new movie?
Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters July 31.
- Release Date
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July 31, 2026
- Director
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Destin Daniel Cretton
- Writers
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Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Steve Ditko, Stan Lee