Matthew Turner | On 16, Mar 2025

Created by Jeff Trammell and produced by Marvel Studios Animation, Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man is a new Disney+ cartoon series about the early days of everyone’s favourite wall-crawling web-slinger. Taking full advantage of Marvel’s introduction of the Multiverse, the show takes place in an alternate timeline to the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), allowing for some significant and intriguing changes to Spider-Man’s well-established origin story and basic set-up.

The series begins with high school student Peter Parker (Hudson Thames, who also voiced Spider-Man in Marvel’s What If…? animated series) gaining his spider-powers via the appearance of a mysterious spider, while Doctor Strange (Robin Atkin Downes) battles an alien symbiote from another dimension, destroying Peter’s intended high school in the process. The revelation of exactly where the spider came from is just one of the series’ inventive touches, eventually revealed in the season finale.

The series presents both a brand new jumping-off point for younger viewers who might not be familiar with the character, and a consistently intriguing shake-up of established Spider-Man mythology for long-time Spider-fans. The key change is that Peter’s mentor figure is not Tony Stark (as in the MCU) but Norman Osborn (Colman Domingo), who discovers Peter’s secret identity and takes him under his wing, giving him an internship at Oscorp and helping him in his crime-fighting by providing costumes and tech support. This, in turn, allows for a particularly striking pay-off, with a literal corruption of the time-honoured “with great power comes great responsibility” mantra that has been a mainstay of Spider-Man’s mythology across multiple iterations.

Similarly, Spider-Man’s supporting cast has had something of a revamp. Aunt May (Kari Wahlgren) is younger, more in line with Marisa Tomei’s version of the character from the MCU, and at least one key figure from Spider-Man’s history is unexpectedly still alive, as revealed at the end of the season. Meanwhile, at high school, Peter has new classmate friends, in the shape of Lonnie Lincoln (Eugene Byrd), who becomes a revamped version of a classic Spider-Man villain; new crush Pearl Pangan (Cathy Ang), an original character created for the show; and Nico Minoru (Grace Song), familiar from the Runaways comics and TV show, a secret sorceress who becomes Peter’s best friend.

The animation is gorgeous throughout, with Trammell opting for a brightly coloured 2D style that deliberately evokes the early Spider-Man comics by Steve Ditko and John Romita Sr. In addition, the action sequences are thrillingly handled – it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into Spider-Man’s zippy fighting style, and the character designs on the villains are a good mix of original and classic, most notably with the Scorpion (Jonathan Medina), a great character who hasn’t yet had his due in the wider MCU, despite the character’s alter-ego having been introduced in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

The voicework in the series is exceptional, particularly Colman Domingo, who brings real personality to Norman and makes him a consistently intriguing character, especially with regard to his ulterior motives (he’s not yet the Green Goblin, as far as we know, but he’s very much a Goblin-in-waiting). Thames is terrific too, sounding very close to Tom Holland’s version of the character, without being an out-and-out imitation, and there’s colourful support from both Grace Song and Zeno Robinson as Harry Osborn, effectively an amalgamation of both the character from the comics and the MCU version of Ned Leeds played by Jacob Batalon.

In short, this is a beautifully animated, refreshingly original spin on Spider-Man that offers something exciting for newcomers and longtime Spidey-fans alike. Highly recommended.

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