6 Things We Liked, and 4 We Didn’t, About Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

While the jury is still out on whether or not Marvel is “back” after the mixed reception of the not-so-brave and not-so-new Captain America film, things are continuing on the upswing in the animation department. Marvel Animation’s latest romp, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, has been must-watch weekly television on Disney+. This is saying a lot since it’s been vying for comic book fans’ attention by streaming against the likes of Prime Video’s Invincible season three.

Amid the long-standing discourse over whether superhero fatigue is real or not, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has been a reminder that there are still good stories to tell, even if they’re not entirely new. With a season in the history books and two more on the horizon, here’s everything we fancied—and everything we weren’t too hot on—about the show.

Liked: The banger opening theme

Regardless of our pending reservations about Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, its opening theme is catchy as hell. While it’s not passing the corporate-engineered rap allegations sonically, it’s been a fun time humming along to it week to week. It also doesn’t hurt that the opening title sequence flexes the most captivating imagery in the show while neatly dovetailing into a unique comic book-style cover for every episode.

Liked: The tone

Despite its cel-shaded look, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man felt pitched toward a slightly older audience than recent cartoons featuring (or starring) the character. Sometimes it was the swears peppered throughout episodes; other times, it made clear in no uncertain terms that characters were getting killed or extremely hurt. It’s a small thing, but it helped make the show feel like its own thing tonally, and hopefully means it’ll grow up alongside its cast in future seasons.

Liked: The compelling Spider-friends drama

The show’s onset made it feel like Peter Parker would be navigating a grating rut with his best friend Nico Minoru and new best friend Harry Osborn. To our surprise, the show didn’t dish out the typical drama that often comes with hiding secret identities. Instead, it offered a layered serving of drama that touched on the trio butting heads over preconceived notions about their economic differences—and the hurt that comes with being the last person to be let in on a secret. It also succeeded in weaving believable conflict between the trio while having them act like people you could envision yourself watching a movie and gossiping with.

Liked: It told an actual small-scale Spider-Man story

As soon as Spider-Man got slotted into the MCU, Peter Parker was fast-tracked into world-ending conflict after world-ending conflict. He’s up to the task of handling his own alongside the Avengers, but it’s become the bane of many a Spider-Man fan’s existence to see Parker become Iron Man Jr., with nano-machine technology and other gizmos manufactured by the billionaire philanthropist being the focal point of the hero in place of his own genius.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man acted as a re-do of the MCU by taking a stab at his introduction into the universe while keeping the overall stakes to a more personal, impactful level. Peter gets to figure out the kind of hero he wants to be while gaining a reputation with the everyday folks he saves. If things inevitably escalate to more catastrophic levels, the show has already established its footing as a grounded Spider-Man tale. It’s not a big ask but it’s a welcome change of pace given the multiversal direction the MCU is heading toward.

Liked: Scorpion

Mac Gargan is a Spider-Man villain who pops up pretty regularly, but it still felt like he needed the right arena to really let him shine. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man may be the big break ol’ Scorpion’s been waiting for; reimagining him as a gang leader looking to muscle in on the One-Tenth’s turf gives him a different energy—it immediately makes him threatening to the non-superpowered characters like Lonnie. When he gets his suit and cuts through his enemies, he becomes a pretty effective baddie, and provides more tension in a way the show’s earlier villains didn’t.

Liked: Norman Osborn

The live-action Spider-Man movies haven’t touched the Green Goblin since Willem Dafoe first got harassed by his own mask back in 2002, but the character’s been a key part of Peter’s growth into a hero throughout animation. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is clearly having fun making him Peter’s surrogate dad in a similar way to Tony Stark in the MCU movies, but with a more skeptical stance on how helpful Norman truly is. Seeing Norman try to subtly twist Peter for his own ends or mold him into the son he really wants makes for some of the meatiest character moments for them both. And being voiced by Colman Domingo doesn’t hurt, either.

Didn’t Like: Peter’s spider-quips

It takes a lot of skill to craft a character whose quips annoy his adversaries without splash-damaging viewers in the process, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man never quite nailed it. While it’s easy to chalk Peter’s half-baked quips with him still getting a handle on the whole hero thing, it’s not like the show wasn’t making Peter a funny guy whenever he was barely keeping his identity under wraps from his friends or bemoaning the challenges of balancing an internship and school life. Any time Peter fought any bad guy in the show, it felt like he rattled off a volley of low-hanging fruit of quips, hoping one of them would land. Unfortunately, Parker’s pulled punches hit their mark more often than his comedic chops.

Didn’t like: The animation took some getting used to

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man‘s 3D animation style didn’t quite please the eye as well as the animation seen on X-Men ’97 or Marvel’s What If…? There is a charm to watching a show that looks like a feature-length video game cutscene, but there are also moments where characters in wide shots stood like cardboard cutouts—and a lot of the action sequences in the show failed to live up to the wow factor of the show’s opening sequence. It’s not a bad-looking show, but it’s not exactly spectacular-looking either. Hopefully, subsequent seasons will get more juice by sprucing up the look.

Didn’t like: All the MCU creep

Much of the charm of the ’90s Spider-Man cartoon is that it gave fans time to get to know Parker before other heroes made cameos, introducing their respective quirks into Spider-Man’s world. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man adopted a backward-forward approach to the ’90s show’s modus operandi by positioning Spider-Man as the small fish in the MCU, just like the movies, and it kinda sucked to watch.

While some cheeky appearances like Charlie Cox’s Daredevil created interesting dynamics on screen, the show’s dogmatic attempt to recreate Phase Three of the MCU as the backdrop of the entire story did more to service referential moments to the good old days than service the Spider-Man show. Despite its name, the show desperately wants to expand its lens to the grander MCU, making Parker sometimes feel like a bit player in the first season of his new show.

It’s too short

For the most part, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man juggled its characters well, and it did feel like time was passing with each episode. But the show’s release structure didn’t entirely take this into account: while weeks have passed in-show for Peter and friends, it can feel jarring for the audience to hop from one episode to the next and see relationships have fractured or grown in sizable ways. This is especially true of Lonnie’s arc with the One-Tenth, where he feels trapped into joining them one week and treats them like they’re his new best friends the next.

You can watch all 10 episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man on Disney+.

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