Come watch Peter Parker put on the mantle of Spider-Man one more time and Disney’s new animated series, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and our season 1 review.
As always, we break down our reviews into the categories of story, acting, and overall. Let’s swing on into it.
Story 10/10
The story starts off before the events of Spider-Man’s journey In Captain America civil war, with him just starting off his high school career and beginning school at the infamous Midtown Magnet School showcased and enjoyed within the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Spider-Man series. However, before school can start, a portal opens up with a monster and Doctor Strange coming out of it. Their fighting unfortunately destroys Midtown Magnet School.
Additionally, when the portal opens up a spider dangles out from it landing on Peter Parker causing him to be bit and turn into your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
The series continues months later with Peter no longer going to the Midtown Magnet School due to it being destroyed in the attack and instead going to Rockford T. Bales High School. It’s there. He meets new friends like Nico Minoru, Pearl Pangan, and Lonnie Lincoln.
We get to then see his early attempts at prime fighting, which in the original movies caught the eye of Tony Stark when looking for an extra ally to take on Captain America. But in this series the eye he catches is not Tony Stark but Norman Osborne.
In the series, Norman Osborne is helping, fixing, and designing some of the tech and working with Spider-Man so he can figure out how to be the hero that he wants to be. All the while Norman is working with General Ross and trying to set up a hero that can replace the fractured Avengers after the events of the Sokovia Accords.
Through the series we get to see Tony Stark no longer influencing Peter Parker and how even with a “not perfect” role model Peter Parker can still become a hero.
Acting 7/10
This is an animated series so it relies heavily upon its voice actors for its emotional weight in the ground. While I do commend the work of Hudson Thames who voices Peter Parker, but sometimes I feel like his representation comes off of wooden and almost unbelievably, saccharin or thick. On the other side, the vocal work of Colman Domingo who voices Norman Osborne, Zeno Robinson who voices Harry Osborne, and Grace Song who voices Nico Minoru. All doing amazing job can bang multitudes and levels of emotions.
Colman Domingo who voices Norman Osborne specifically does such an amazing job taking a character we know is a villain and making him not only likable but makes us question, can we trust him?
One of the best characters of the season, however, is Lonnie Lincoln, Who is voiced by Eugene Byrd. The character will eventually become the gangster Tombstone, but for now it is voice acted so well that Byrd does a great job showcasing how he’s more than just what he’ll become and why and how he went from a well respected and supportive teen who loves his family and can’t do wrong, to a formidable foe forced into the gang life.
Overall 8/10
The show is fun and I love seeing all the differences that exist in this world and how well it lines up with the world of the MCU, but I will specifically say that the animation style is lacking in a lot of ways.
I don’t know how much of it is actually created by animators, of if it potentially created by AI, but I wonder if some of it, if not more so, is recreated or tweaked via AI. Some characters hands for no apparent reason are massive. This is incredibly true of Pearl Pangan’s hands, as they are almost scene stealing whenever they are in a shot.
Conner’s Final Thoughts
A lot of people are getting upset that Disney has already announced that Gwen Stacy, and Spider-Gwen, are joining next season, as they wish Spider-Gwen would remain a treat that is unique to her one-off elseworlds comic. That being said, in a world where Spider-Man doesn’t exist, you typically have Gwen Stacy. And in this universe without the time-vortex self-propagating ripple that gave Spider-Man his powers, you would not have Spider-Man in this universe. Therefore, it makes sense that there would be a Spider-Gwen.
I’m interested to see how they handle her gaining her powers, and if our theory on that is correct.
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