Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
(2025)

YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN 🕷️

Normally I’d be more amped up to watch a new superhero series, but this looked like it was leaning into after-school cartoon territory, and fair play because each generation deserves a version of their own when it comes to everyone’s favourite web-slinger.

After watching all ten episodes, it’s safe to say I was SO wrong, and this series is SO much better than I thought it would be.

YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN takes place in an alternate universe where a lot of what happens in the MCU has taken place, but rather than Peter being befriended by Tony Stark, he’s instead taken under the wing of Norman Osborn (played by the Oscar-nominated Colman Domingo), who assists him in becoming the hero New York City deserves.

Originally this was titled Spider-Man: Freshman Year, and it was supposed to be a prequel story to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man before we were introduced to him in Captain America: Civil War. After working on the story, the creators felt it would restrict them from utilizing a lot of Spider-Man’s rogue gallery of villains, so they decided to make this a sort of parallel universe where moments like the Sokovia Accords have taken place and the Avengers are fully engaged in the world at large, but in this Peter Parker is on his own trying to figure himself and his powers out, one local criminal at a time.

The familiarity of what we know coming into this series, combined with how well they built up a world we have yet to be exposed to in the Disney era of Spider-Man, was so refreshing to watch. I loved that even though we had some awesome cameos, the story did a great job of making sure that Spider-Man was always the central figure of whatever it is that’s going on.

The Tom Holland Spider-Man movies have been good enough, but there’s an undeniable quality to them that takes away from the character being the focal point in any of his three movies. In the first, there was Tony Stark; the second was too caught up in the post-Endgame of it all, and the third reunited all the live-action Spider-Men. Unlike that trilogy, this balances both the Peter Park aspect of him being a high-school dork and a science prodigy with his coming into his own as YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN. It’s done so smoothly that it genuinely feels like they’re one and the same, where some stories have a habit of investing in one over the other.

This series did an amazing job of not only building this world up, but also in exploring the ancillary characters in a way that heightened Peter’s story as much as it did the side-characters. There’s a symbiotic relationship between Peter and another character (don't want to spoil anything) that powerfully demonstrates how two kids can have the same potential, yet arrive at two completely different destinations which I felt was done spectacularly.

In what I hope will be the first of many seasons, the main two themes of this series are, unfortunately, sometimes it’s as simple as someone being a product of their environment, and great power doesn’t always demand great respect.

The big reveal at the end is something I did not see coming, and though I’ve read a lot of Spider-Man stories, I’m not sure I’ve ever read one that goes in the direction this one seems to be going in. I’m beyond excited to see how they pay that moment off, and I really hope that we get a What If-type release with a season every year.

YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN continues the hot streak of Marvel Animation by bringing us a Spider-Man and Peter Parker that delivers in every way imaginable.  

Enjoy!

8.8/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 20mins
Episodes: 10
Where: New Episodes Stream Wednesdays on Disney+

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Review (2025) The Richmond Reviewer -  January 30th, 2025

#MarvelStudios #DisneyPlus #Spiderman #MCU #Marvel #Animation #Comics #Review #CaptainAmerica #IronMan #DoctorStrange #Daredevil