Status: Confirmed. The first official photo of Florence Pugh’s Black Widow cameo in Spider-Man: Brand New Day is finally out. Nearly three weeks after audiences first cheered Yelena Belova’s surprise bathhouse scene, a production-released HD image of the Florence Pugh Black Widow cameo has surfaced, and it comes from an unexpected corner of the film’s crew: the colorist who graded the movie.
Where does the official cameo photo come from?
The image was shared on Instagram by Tom Poole, senior colorist at Company 3, as part of a post highlighting his work on the film. It is the first properly released still of the scene, which until now had only circulated as blurry cam footage and fan art. The photo shows Yelena soaking in the steaming blue water of a New York bathhouse while Spider-Man, mask still firmly on, hovers awkwardly in the doorway holding a towel.
What happens in the bathhouse scene?
In the film, Peter Parker tracks Yelena down because he needs advice from someone who actually runs a super-team. The bathhouse doubles as her makeshift office, and she initially waves him off, telling him he is “small potatoes” next to her New Avengers responsibilities before warming up and engaging with him properly. It is a short scene, but it does a lot of quiet work: it places the New Avengers in the same New York that Spider-Man protects and makes the MCU feel connected in a way Phase 5 rarely managed.
Small potatoes.
Yelena’s verdict on Spider-Man, before she changes her mind
The scene had already taken on a life of its own online. Florence Pugh herself shared a piece of fan art of the bathhouse moment shortly after release, leaning into how much audiences loved the pairing. That made the absence of an official still all the more conspicuous, until Poole’s post quietly fixed it this week.
Why Yelena is now the MCU’s Black Widow
It has been a long road to this moment. Pugh debuted as Yelena in 2021’s Black Widow, chased Clint Barton through Hawkeye, and finally graduated to team leader in Thunderbolts, the film that rebranded her squad as the New Avengers in its final minutes. Brand New Day is the first project to treat that promotion as settled fact.
Notably, Brand New Day repeatedly refers to Yelena as Black Widow, not as Yelena Belova. The film takes place roughly 14 months after the events of Thunderbolts, sliding neatly into the gap between that movie’s ending and its post-credits scene. The message is deliberate: Florence Pugh’s character has fully stepped into the mantle left behind by her sister Natasha, and the MCU now has a definitive, active Black Widow again heading into the Multiverse Saga’s endgame.
What does the cameo set up for Avengers: Doomsday?
Pugh returns this December in Avengers: Doomsday as a leader of the New Avengers, where she is set to face Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom and, according to marketing materials, tangle with Mystique. The bathhouse scene plants the seed for a New York working relationship between Spider-Man and Black Widow that could pay off across both Doomsday and Secret Wars. It also explains why Thunderbolts was the one project Marvel flagged as essential Doomsday homework, and it sits nicely alongside other connective tissue we have tracked this week, from David Harbour’s Tony Stark tease to the film’s Spider-Man-first strategy.
What happens next
Expect more official stills to trickle out as Brand New Day approaches its digital release, and expect Marvel to lean hard on the Spider-Man and Yelena dynamic once the Avengers: Doomsday press tour begins. If the pair share the screen again in December, this bathhouse scene will retroactively become one of the most important two minutes of the summer.
Sources: The Direct (20 Aug 2026), Tom Poole / Company 3 via Instagram. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Frank Sun (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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