Spider-Man 4 Rumor Teases Tom Holland’s Darkest Peter Parker Yet — Even Grittier Than Tobey Maguire’s

There is a chunky new Spider-Man 4 rumor making the rounds on X, and if any of it is true, Tom Holland’s Peter is about to have an extremely rough time. File this under: sounds cool, also sounds brutal.

The pitch: Peter Parker in his bleakest era

The rumor paints a post-No Way Home Peter trying to survive in a world that doesn’t remember him, already at his lowest when the movie opens. He meets a new love interest played by Sadie Sink, introduced as Gwen Stacy. Twist: she’s not Gwen at all. She’s Shathra — a mystical, manipulative villain from the comics — disguising herself to get close to Peter. The betrayal supposedly wrecks him even harder than anything Tobey Maguire’s Peter went through, which is saying something.

It gets weirder. Shathra allegedly mind-controls something called 'Savage Hulk', setting up a Peter vs. Hulk brawl that presumably ropes in Mark Ruffalo.

Meanwhile, Peter’s finances are in the toilet. He’s driving deliveries to scrape by, loses that job, nearly gets tossed from his tiny apartment for missing rent, and ultimately crawls back to a familiar hustle: shooting photos for the Daily Bugle. Classic Parker spiral.

The rogues, the allies, the extended mess

• AIM is supposedly the puppet master, running mind-control experiments and playing with illegal tech in the shadows.
• They kit out Scorpion with a new nano-suit and allegedly bust him out of prison.
• Jon Bernthal’s Punisher shows up. He and Spidey reportedly clash inside a prison before teaming up.
• The Hand gets involved, attacking Peter and Punisher during that prison stretch.
• Tombstone is positioned as the big street-level boss, running New York’s organized crime and rallying Scorpion, Boomerang, Tarantula, and more to take down Spidey and Frank.
• The tone leans into full-on street chaos — think the kind of collateral you see when vigilantes and mobsters go to war.
• Jean DeWolff (yes, the comics mainstay cop) is rumored to become an ally for Peter.
• Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova may pop in at the end to pitch Peter on the New Avengers. He reportedly turns her down because, in his words or not, he’s got a city to fix first.

So… is Tobey Maguire back for this?

Short version: don’t bet on him in this one. Fans still love Tobey’s original trilogy, and a lot of people credit No Way Home’s mega-moment to bringing Tobey and Andrew Garfield back. But the chatter around Holland’s next movie is that it stays grounded — street-level, not multiverse — and aims to be his thing, not a nostalgia reunion.

"The current insider chatter: street-level, not multiverse."

If that sticks, Tobey would sit out Spider-Man 4. However, a separate thread says we might see him in Avengers: Doomsday instead. Insider Daniel Richtman has claimed Maguire returns there, and a London fan sighting from September 2025 — X user @Curtis1192 posted a photo with Maguire while Doomsday was reportedly filming in the city — poured gasoline on that rumor.

Complication: the same insider previously said Tom Holland might not be in Doomsday (as reported via SuperHeroHype), which some fans think tracks with the end of No Way Home wiping everyone’s memory of Peter. Either way, the reports do not line up neatly.

The label and the date

The rumor frames this movie as Spider-Man: Brand New Day. For now, it’s parked on the calendar for July 31, 2026 in the U.S.