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How Spider-Man: Brand New Day tackles a terrifying truth for Peter Parker’s generation
Even Spider-Man has burnout now.
Sony/Marvel
- Meg Walters
Published: Thursday, 30 July 2026 at 12:01 pm
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About 15 minutes into Brand New Day, the latest instalment of Marvel's Spider-Man films, I leant over to my friend and whispered: "That's literally me."
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While I never thought I'd be comparing myself to a charismatic kid from Queens with arachnid super powers, here we are. Because in the latest Spider-Man movie, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is all grown-up – and, like the rest of us overachieving, overworked and undervalued millennials, he's got a serious case of burnout.
For those need a little refresher on the state of things in the Marvel-verse, Brand New Day picks up after a wild twist at the end of the last film (2021's No Way Home) saw Peter agreeing to a world-saving deal that meant everyone whom he had ever met (as Peter, not as Spider-Man) would forget all about him.
Now, poor Peter is left with nothing and no one but his work. He shores himself up in the attic of an apartment building and spends his days (and nights) glued to his crime tracking system, slinging and flipping between skyscrapers, and taking down baddie after baddie after baddie.
On the rare occasion he stops to breathe for a few minutes, his mind inevitably turns to those who have forgotten him: namely, his lost love MJ (Zendaya) and his one-time bestie Ned (Jacob Batalon). The memories, though, are too painful. So, he pushes down the trauma and slips right back into his protective membrane of lycra. And off he swings.
Soon, people begin to notice something is a little off. Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas), the closest thing he has to a colleague, gently suggests he should slow down. Meanwhile, his AI assistant EV cooly informs him that his workaholic tendencies are taking a real, tangible, physical toll: his arachnid hormones are spiking.
"Have you been stressed lately?" EV asks him. Peter scoffs and, despite all the warning signs, continues to work.
Tom Holland as Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Sony/Marvel
Eventually, the inevitable happens – a full-blown spidery crash out. After a pounding headache and a weird sensation in his wrist, he collapses next to his desk. Upon waking, he finds himself in nothing but his boxers, cocooned in a giant web suspended between two towering apartment blocks. He crashes painfully to the ground and returns to his Spidey headquarters to find the office absolutely dripping in webs.
I couldn't help but think – this web-filled room is exactly what my brain feels like after it simply shuts down after being pushed to its limits.
As diehard Spider-Man fans are probably already thinking, this is, of course, not meant to be a commentary on burnout, but is rather the beginning of Peter Parker's transition to organic webbing. (In earlier films, Peter could only produce webs through his web shooter. However, in other adaptations of the comic books, the character is able to produce natural webbing through glands in his wrists. Holland's Spider-Man is now developing the same ability.)
It takes Peter the rest of the film to realise that he actually wants to accept this new development – and that the only way he can accept and control it is by facing his trauma head-on instead of continually ignoring it and pushing further and further down.
While Spider-Man may not intentionally be about burnout, all of this will likely feel very familiar to anyone who has ever struggled with an unhealthy work-life balance.
After all, it's an all-too common story – especially for those in Peter Parker's generation. According to Mental Health UK's Burnout Report in 2025, only a third of 18-24-year-olds felt that they could "switch off from work when they needed to," compared to almost half of those aged 55 or over.
Eighteen to 24 year olds were also most likely to report high stress due to issues such as having to regularly work unpaid overtime and working more hours because of the increased cost of living. Those aged 25-34 reported high stress due to a high or increased workload or volume of tasks and fears of redundancy or job security.
These are, of course, not the same reasons that lead Peter to become a workaholic in Brand New Day – but the effects are the same nonetheless. The sense that your work persona is the only one that truly matters. The unbreakable addiction to the screen. The impulse to tackle just one more project. The fear that if you stop, something horrible will happen. The feeling that success at work really can save you from all of that tricky trauma you've been storing up (and ignoring) for so many years. The instinct to push that trauma down and to just keep working. The inevitable, brutal, life-changing crash out at the end of it all.
Sadly, we are not superheroes – and finding a way through burnout probably won't lead us to uncover a new, even cooler superpower like, say, organic webbing. However, perhaps there is still a little lesson to be learned. Maybe pushing and pushing ourselves isn't the answer after all.
Maybe actually listening to the tell-tale warning signs when they appear – noticing the rising arachnid – sorry – cortisol hormones when they first appear can help us learn to work in a different way and break those burnout-inducing habits we've all become so fond of.
And we can thank our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man for the reminder.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now showing in UK cinemas.
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Authors
Meg Walters
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