In the ending of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Peter Parker survives being critically wounded after shielding Jean Grey, Jean leaves New York, and Peter shares a handshake with Ned Leeds that rebuilds their friendship.
Here is the sequence. When Castle accidentally fires at Jean on Roosevelt Island, Peter takes the hit, and Jean drops her psionic field and keeps him alive from a distance. Afterward Jean leaves New York, Bill Metzger vanishes, and the Department of Damage Control faces an investigation. Peter reintroduces himself to Ned, and they share their old handshake, which rebuilds one of his key friendships.
The climax is staged in a prison, which matches the production. According to Wikipedia's production notes, HM Prison Dorchester in Dorset stood in for the Roosevelt Island facility, so the frozen room where everyone except Peter is held in place was a real building with real cells. Earlier, Peter's visits to Aunt May's grave were shot at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, which gives the quiet scenes of his isolation a physical anchor before the film turns to the Hand and the psionic field.
How does it compare with the previous film? In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange's spell made the world forget Peter Parker. In this sequel, four years later, Peter is the one who chooses distance, keeping away from MJ and Ned and visiting May's grave alone. The earlier film took his relationships away from him by magic. This one has him remove them himself, and the ending reverses that choice with an act as small as a handshake with Ned.
The structure of the finale also differs from the street level opening. The film starts with a tank chase and the question of collateral damage, and it ends with Peter removing his own inhibitor, the device he built with Banner and Castle to suppress his powers. In the first half he is contained by technology. In the last act he drops it to reach Jean through a shared memory of May, and the fight with the Hand does not resolve until he does.
In my opinion, the film earns its last beat by making that isolation costly from the first scene. The shared memory of May is what reaches Jean when the fight with the Hand has not, and a hero who was kept alive by the person he tried to protect has a hard time arguing that solitude is noble. That reading is mine, not the film's own statement.
The post credit scene teases a Spider-Man sighting in outer space, covered in the next section.
