Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is a new animated series on Disney+ that attempts to offer a fresh take on Peter Parker’s journey as he navigates high school life and his responsibilities as Spider-Man. With Norman Osborn as his mentor, the series explores Peter’s struggles with balancing friendships, school, and crime-fighting.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (S1: E1&2) Review

There are only so many reasons to reboot an IP, and all of them are money. The question becomes, do those who are attempting to make said money care enough about the property to gamble it on creativity, and, if so, how far are they willing to go?

These first two episodes are very much an introduction to the characters and everyday struggles in which Peter finds himself. As such, despite its adequate animation style and above-average vocal performances, each one is little more than the same teenage drama/subplots that we’ve seen time and time again, once more regurgitated on screen, only this time it’s interspersed with incredibly lackluster action scenes. So far, there’s little to suggest that the showrunners have any genuinely “new ideas” other than swapping the races and genders of some legacy characters.

With only two episodes in the can, it’s not possible to say with 100% certainty that Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is a creatively bankrupt retread of an IP that has been mined to exhaustion. Nor would it be fair, this early into the game, to say that the showrunners have substituted all sense of creativity for gender and race-swapping legacy characters. However, with the only truly new elements added to the story thus far being Spider-Man’s nitrous-boosted spiderwebbing, his hockey jersey, and Norman Osborn discovering his secret early on, it’s difficult not to see this as the case.

The voice talent is sufficient, and the pacing is fine. However, at this time, the story is fairly lacking, with far too much time spent on Peter’s social life, contrasted with some incredibly short and unimaginative action sequences.

Furthermore, the animation is a bit of a mixed bag. The 2D broad-lined character style is clearly meant to emulate many modern comic books. It is serviceable, if generic, while the 3D street-swinging sequences look cheap. They feature buildings that look incredibly repetitive and an uncanny perspective that jars the eye.

PARENTAL NOTES

3rd From the Top

• The Lord’s name is used in vain multiple times in both episodes.

Language

• Firstly, I don’t care what the rating is; this is clearly a kid’s program, and they throw around “hell” like a beach ball at a 90s rock concert. At least five instances of this over two episodes, as well as at least one “damn” and “dumbass.”
  • Examples:
    • Who the hell are you?
    • Shut the hell up!
    • You scared the hell out of me.

Teen Drama

• Sure, its main characters are in high school, but there are too many teen scenarios for a kid’s show.
  • Peter’s love interest and her boyfriend kiss on the lips.
  • There’s a high school party in which everyone is hanging out and drinking out of red cups. While it is not explicitly stated that said cups contain alcohol, their existence at the party is implication enough.
  • Half of Peter’s screentime is spent pining over a girl in school
    • His lesbian best friend digs her, too.

WOKE REPORT

Collider

• In a recent interview with Collider, Hudson Thames, who voices Peter Parker/Spider-Man, said that his “biggest fear” was that this new series would be “annoying” and “woke.” In the same interview, he expresses his pleasure at the results. You be the judge.

Miles Morales is Less DEI

• Race and/or Gender Swapped
  • Norman Osborn is now black
  • Harry Osborn is now black
  • Dr. Connors is now a black woman
  • Traditionally, Peter’s best friend has been Harry Osborn. In the “Home” trilogy, it was Ned. Now, it is a blue-haired, black-fingernailed Asian lesbian (no pronouns have been used in reference to her, so we’re going with vanilla lesbian at this time).
• It’s pretty clear that studios use a racial calculus to cast their programs- so many Xs for every Y, etc. However, in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Peter is a white superhero, which means that he counts for about 1,000 pleasant white guys. Therefore, the calculus must be adjusted accordingly, and it is. To start, all of the aforementioned legacy characters have been swapped. Next, aside from a single white male football player who has a single line, a scientist who is an off-the-charts prick, and perhaps a handful of token white pedestrians, every white male who isn’t Peter Parker is a criminal.
• Even the criminals are diverse. One set of criminals consists of a freckle-face pale, red-headed white boy (the leader), a possible Latino, and a light-skinned black boy. The next is a black-and-white pair of nasties on a high-speed chase. The only criminal who isn’t paired with a diverse PIC is a white girl (see below).

Where You Goin’ With That Football, Boy

• Racism is alive and well in the world of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
  • One sequence follows Peter’s friend and romantic rival, Lonnie Lincoln, who is a clean-cut, well-spoken football star with a letterman jacket and brain on his way home. Along the way, an old white woman looking for a seat on the subway pulls what appears to be her grandson away from Lonnie, giving him a wide berth. Immediately after that, Lonnie lowers his head in fear while he walks home because a police car (driven by a white cop) turns on its lights and blurps its siren, slows down, and pulls alongside Lonnie to eyeball him.

Did Michelle Obama Write This

• It’s a tiny moment that only someone like me would catch, but as one scene transitions to another, Peter’s history teacher can be heard attempting to dismantle our history. He says, “Although it has become a cultural reference when discussing him, it’s been proven that Mr. Paul Revere never actually yelled ‘The British are coming.” He then segways into a joke about a test actuating coming soon. By ending it at this point, it makes it sound as though Paul Revere didn’t actually do anything.
  • It is technically true that Revere didn’t yell the specific words for which he is most famous. However, he did lead a secret mission to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that the British were on their way by sea. During his ride from Charleston to Lexington, he covertly warned several locales swarming with those considering themselves to be British citizens about it, who in turn spread the word further.

Catch and Release

• Spider-Man captures a white woman who stole the money from a pizzeria’s tip jar. While returning the money with her in tow, he asks the owner to grant the woman mercy. She then bursts into tears and explains that she recently lost her job, was hungry, and panicked. The owner says ok, and Spider-Man lets her go with a warning.

It’s Not A Children’s Program Without Class Warfare

• When talking about Norman Osborn, Peter’s stereotypical lesbian best friend says, “Nobody gets that rich without doing bad things.”

He Puts His Pantsuit on One Leg At A Time

• If you were among those who saw early clips of Harry Osborn and have been waiting to find out if he is trans, all I can say is that, at this time, it’s impossible to say. His look may simply be poorly done, and he is straight and not a mentally ill man confused by his junk. Then again, the showrunners might intend him to be living in a land of celebrated make-believe. Aside from his overall aesthetic, his single scene wasn’t enough to make a determination.