If you walked out of Spider-Man: Brand New Day and thought, hang on, where was Betty Brant, you are not alone. Peter Parker’s old Midtown newsroom sidekick, the girl who once read the morning announcements while quietly crushing on Ned, is nowhere in the biggest Spider-Man movie ever made. So what happened to Betty Brant in Brand New Day, and is Angourie Rice really done with the MCU? Let us get into it.
Short version: no, Betty Brant is not in Brand New Day, and Angourie Rice has now explained why in her own words. But the door she leaves open is a lot more interesting than a simple goodbye.
Is Betty Brant in Spider-Man: Brand New Day?
No. Betty Brant does not appear in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Of Peter’s original high-school circle, only MJ and Ned Leeds carry over on screen, and even they are woven into a Peter who has clearly outgrown the Midtown hallways. Destin Daniel Cretton’s film picks Peter up four years after Doctor Strange’s memory spell, anonymous, alone, and dealing with powers that are mutating in genuinely unsettling ways. It is a soft reboot in tone, and a chunk of the teen-comedy supporting cast simply did not make the jump.
That is a big deal when you remember the movie is not some quiet indie. Brand New Day is a phenomenon, smashing through Avatar and into the all-time top three at the global box office, so every absence gets noticed and every missing face becomes a Google search. Betty Brant is one of the biggest.
Who is Betty Brant in the MCU?
For newer fans: Betty Brant, played by Angourie Rice, was Midtown School of Science and Technology’s resident aspiring journalist across the Tom Holland trilogy. She anchored the school news desk in Homecoming, had that sweet, doomed summer fling with Ned in Far From Home, and popped back up in No Way Home before Strange’s spell wiped Peter from everyone’s memory. She was never a lead, but she was part of the furniture, the kind of recurring face that made Peter’s world feel lived in.
In the comics, Betty Brant is a much bigger deal. She started as J. Jonah Jameson’s secretary at the Daily Bugle and was, for a while, Peter Parker’s very first serious love interest, years before Gwen Stacy or Mary Jane. Over the decades she grew into a full-blown investigative reporter. That comic-book DNA is exactly why her MCU absence feels loaded rather than throwaway.
Why did Angourie Rice not return for Brand New Day?
Rice addressed it directly while promoting her film Finding Emily, and she was refreshingly calm about the whole thing. In her telling, Betty was a high-school character, and Brand New Day is deliberately leaving high school behind.
I don’t think it was ever part of the story. He’s on his new journey now. You watch his character grow from high school, and he’s not in high school anymore.
Angourie Rice, to Collider
She also made peace with the idea that her run may have quietly wrapped back in 2021: it feels very special, she said, that she was part of it for five or six years. And when asked where Betty even is during the events of Brand New Day, Rice gave the most on-brand answer imaginable, guessing that Betty is probably practicing ethical journalism, and doing it in style. Honestly? Iconic. That is the most Betty Brant sentence ever spoken.
Could Betty Brant still show up at the Daily Bugle?
Here is where it gets fun. Brand New Day is pushing Peter toward a grittier, more grown-up New York, and the Daily Bugle looms over this era of Spider-Man like a shadow. J. Jonah Jameson is still out there screaming that Spider-Man is a menace. And the single most natural place for an adult Betty Brant to reappear is behind a Bugle desk, notepad in hand, as a working reporter rather than a teenager reading the morning news.
Rice herself has not closed that door, and neither has the character’s comic history, which basically points a giant neon arrow at the Bugle. A future Spider-Man film, or even a Punisher-adjacent street-level story given who else is running around this new corner of the MCU, could reintroduce Betty as a journalist chasing the same vigilantes Peter is tangled up with. It would be a clean, satisfying way to age the character up instead of pretending the Midtown years never happened.
None of that is confirmed, to be clear. But as a piece of setup, it is sitting right there, and Marvel loves a long game. If you are catching up before the next wave of releases, the essential Spider-Man and MCU rewatch is a good reminder of how much runway these supporting players still have.
What happens next
For now, Betty Brant sits on the bench, canonically off somewhere being a better journalist than the rest of us. Angourie Rice sounds at peace with her MCU chapter, which usually means Marvel has the freedom to bring the character back later on its own terms, older and Bugle-ready, without stepping on anyone’s story. Keep an eye on the Daily Bugle in this new Spider-Man era, because that is the address where Betty Brant makes her return, if she makes one at all. For everything on Peter’s new chapter, bookmark our Spider-Man: Brand New Day hub.
So what do you think: should Marvel age Betty Brant up into a proper Daily Bugle reporter, or let her high-school chapter rest in peace? Drop your pitch in the comments.
Sources: Collider, The Direct, Wikipedia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Kevin Paul (CC BY 4.0).
