How bad could this possibly go? First announced as Spider-Man: Freshman Year during 2021’s Disney + Day, Marvel Animation’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man made a hard pivot away from telling the origin story of the MCU’s Peter Parker. Setting the series elsewhere in the Multiverse allowed showrunner Jeff Trammell to tell a story “adjacent to the main continuity” without being constrained by that continuity. The result is an alt-universe take on Spider-Man that will surprise you far more than you might imagine and that you are destined to love.
There’s a reason why we changed the title to Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. It’s about the neighborhood. It’s an ensemble show. Every character is well-defined and has amazing arcs, from Peter and Nico to Lonnie and Pearl.
-Brad Winderbaum
Spider-Man is easy to get right. And make no mistake, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man gets Spider-Man as right as can be imagined. Beyond the THWIPS and quips, the animated series puts the full range of Spidey’s powers on display in ways that have never been brought to bear in animation or live-action. For all the preemptive pishposh about the series’ style, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man delivers a level of web-slinging, wallcrawling action that no Spidey project to date has so much as dared to approach. For every complaint about the still characters in a scene, the animators answer with moments that fans from across all mediums will find themselves rewinding.
It does have a lot of DNA that is very similar to the MCU depiction of the Tom Holland Spider-Man, but it really also draws all the way back to Steve Ditko.
-Brad Winderbaum
Far more difficult than summarizing Spidey is pinning down Peter Parker. The true measure of success for any Spider-Man project should be establishing and reinforcing to the audience who the man behind the Spidey mask is…and who he continues to choose to be against all odds. From beginning to end, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man works incredibly well. It does so not only because it allows Peter time to mature but also because it’s clear that Aunty May has provided him room to grow. The slice-of-life approach to Peter’s story, beginning with the origin of how he became Spidey and following through well until the end of the series, makes this one of Marvel Entertainment’s most successful efforts to date.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is an animated series that follows Peter Parker on his way to becoming a hero, with a journey unlike we’ve ever seen and a style that celebrates the character’s early comic book roots.
-Official Synopsis, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
If the series does have a weak point, it is that everybody is somebody. In a world where someone who can attend school may end up being someone and in a series meant to be exactly what it is, there is no room for error. On an overwhelmingly positive note, however, while Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is Year One for Spidey and Year Zero for Lonnie Lincoln, so, so many of Spidey’s supporting characters are given incredible life. Sure, you’ll hear deserved praise for Colman Domingo‘s Norman Osborn, but everyone’s performance from Hugh Dancy‘s Otto Octavius to Charlie Cox‘s Daredevil to the spectacular surprises meant to surprise the audience add up to something none of us have seen quite yet.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man debuts on Disney Plus at 3:00 AM on January 29th.
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