(Warning: This article contains spoilers for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”)
Something was fitting about seeing Spider-Man: Brand New Day at a packed 7:30 a.m. screening in Brooklyn (yes, I said a.m.). As the lights went down, I wasn’t just watching Peter Parker – I was watching New York. And, unexpectedly, I was watching parts of myself.
Spider-Man has always been my superhero. Like a lot of nerdy kids trying to find where they fit in, I saw something of myself in Peter Parker long before I had the words to explain why. Years later, that childhood fascination led me to write and speak about superheroes, their origins, and what they can teach us about ourselves. I even had the surreal privilege of interviewing Stan Lee.
Early in the film, Peter Parker stops. New York doesn’t. The subway roars beneath him. Sirens bounce off the buildings. Construction rings through the streets. Hundreds of conversations merge into one wall of sound. For a brief moment, Spider-Man isn’t fighting a supervillain – he’s fighting his own nervous system.
Watching that scene, I wasn’t thinking about Marvel. I was thinking about my own family’s journey, about the autistic young people and families I’ve met through my advocacy, and about the numerous conversations I’ve had with people who describe the world as simply feeling… louder.
Marvel never tells us Peter Parker is neurodivergent. It doesn’t need to. Tom Holland has spoken publicly about living with ADHD and dyslexia, but what makes this film resonate isn’t the actor’s biography. It’s that the story never asks us to diagnose Peter Parker – it simply invites us to understand him.
Out of curiosity, I did a quick web search (pun intended). Within hours of the film’s release, neurodivergent viewers across Reddit and social media were sharing a similar reaction: they felt recognized. They weren’t arguing over labels. They were recognizing pieces of themselves. That’s the power of a great story.
Spider-Man has always been New York’s superhero. He’s dodging taxis, squeezing onto packed subway cars, navigating through construction, and trying to survive one of the loudest cities on earth. For many neurodivergent New Yorkers, that opening scene isn’t fantasy. It’s Monday.
The movie also gives us a Peter Parker we’ve rarely seen before. He’s alone. Nobody remembers him. He walks the streets by himself, eats alone, and throws himself into being Spider-Man, almost as if helping everyone else has become easier than letting anyone really know him.
Watching him, I couldn’t help thinking about masking. Not the red-and-blue mask – the invisible one. The version of ourselves we present because it feels easier than explaining what’s really going on.
Later, Bruce Banner offers Peter an inhibitor, a way to quiet everything happening inside him. It made me think about the different ways all of us try to turn the volume down. Sometimes we find healthy ways to cope. Sometimes we reach for whatever brings relief in the moment. That’s a much bigger conversation than this movie, but it stayed with me long after the credits rolled.
Major spoiler alert – comic-book fans can thank me later for the warning – and then comes Jean Grey. The film tells us she has spent time in psychiatric hospitals. Before anyone really tries to understand her, she’s spoken about through the language of danger and instability. That struck a chord.
I’ve met too many neurodivergent young people whose first significant interaction with the mental health system happened in a psychiatric unit. Sometimes sensory overload is mistaken for defiance. Sometimes what looks frightening is someone frightened. Context changes everything.
The most powerful part of Brand New Day isn’t that Peter becomes a better Spider-Man. It’s that he begins accepting that Peter Parker matters too.
For more than twenty years at Pratt Institute, I’ve watched students use comics, films, and storytelling to explore ideas about identity, belonging, and resilience. I’ve seen those same conversations open doors in my work with families, educators, clinicians, and advocates across New York. Stories open doors that statistics never can. Maybe that’s what this movie reminded me of: see the person before the behavior. Not everyone experiences the world the same way. But everyone deserves to belong.
In conversations about disability, we sometimes drift toward extremes. We either talk about neurodiversity as a gift (superpower?) or focus only on the struggles. Real life isn’t that simple. Autism, ADHD, and other forms of neurodiversity can bring creativity and resilience, along with extraordinary ways of seeing the world. They can also bring anxiety, sensory overload, and very real challenges. Both can be true.
Maybe that’s the real message of Brand New Day. We don’t have to hide our challenges to celebrate our strengths. Peter Parker doesn’t become a hero because he stops being different. He becomes a hero because he finally realizes that every part of who he is belongs. Maybe we’re all entitled to a place where we don’t have to wear quite so many masks.
Simcha Weinstein is Community Engagement & Inclusion Coordinator at Families Together in New York State, founder of the Jewish Autism Network, and a member of the New York State Council on Developmental Disabilities (CDD) and the Behavioral Health Crisis Technical Assistance Center (BHCTAC) Advisory Council. He was named the 2026 New York State Office of Mental Health “What’s Great in Our State” Family Advocate of the Year and is a nationally recognized speaker on neurodiversity, mental health, peer support, and the role of superheroes in building resilience and belonging.
I hope this movie brings about a change in society.