GLASGOW, UNITED KINGDOM - AUGUST 3: (UK OUT) Tom Holland is seen on the set of 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' on August 3, 2025 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by MEGA/GC Images)

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We’re just over a month away from the release of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the fourth movie in the MCU franchise, joining the three films of the Raimi trilogy and two covering Andrew Garfield’s adventures. Spider-Man continues to be the single best, non-Avengers movie earner in the MCU, but its star, Tom Holland, says he isn’t going to play the role forever. He’s already played it longer than he thought, in fact.

In a new interview with Esquire, Tom Holland talks about the “next generation” of Spider-Man, where, at least in this case, he’s not talking about Miles Morales or Spider-Gwen, but rather a new Peter Parker, replacing his actual role. He says he wants to be a mentor to the new kid,, like Robert Downey Jr. was to him, both on and off-screen. He also has a name he throws out as a potential replacement, which you might not normally see actors do:

“Owen Cooper would be awesome,” he says. “Obviously, he’s super-talented and the talk of the town right now.” Holland also thinks it could be a great springboard for a fresh face.”

Owen Cooper was the young star of Netflix’s Adolescence, who not only set a record for the youngest male actor to win an Emmy at 15, he did it as a first-time actor, which was a stunning achievement. He’s now 16 and moving on to new projects like the recent Wuthering Heights.

What Holland is saying is the quiet part out loud, that these current MCU actors probably won’t want or be able to play these roles forever. But this isn’t say, Jeremy Renner retiring as Hawkeye, this is Spider-Man, arguably the most famous superhero in the world in 2026, and you’re not writing him out of the MCU.

Holland is not only talking about a rare recasting in the MCU (Ed Norton to Mark Ruffalo, Terrence Howard to Don Cheadle), but this would be a reversion to a younger Peter. Holland may look young, but he’s now 30. Holland previously said he would have “done something wrong” if he was still playing the role at 30, but he now says the overall point was that he wanted to pass the baton. And now the age is 37, he joked.

Holland is supposed to star in what will now be a second trilogy, so he will hang on to the role for a while, possibly to 37 after all. The Spider-Man movies are some of the highest grossing in the history of the MCU, $880 million for Homecoming, $1.1 billion for Far From Home and an astonishing $1.9 billion for No Way Home. It’s anyone’s guess how Brand New Day will do, but such guesses probably would put it at over a billion yet again. So this is a hard franchise for him to walk away from, and an utterly impossible one for Sony and Disney, still in a somewhat awkward relationship regarding the rights to the hero and his supporting players.

Marvel has shown it can’t quite let go of its top-billed stars yet, whether that’s dragging Chris Evans back to play Steve Rogers for two more Avengers movies or inserting Robert Downey Jr. in the Doctor Doom suit. We know Holland is here for three more movies, so Owen Cooper may be waiting quite a while, it seems.

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