Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: Episodes 1-2 Review

Amazing Fantasy

The series begins with Aunt May waking up Peter Parker for his first day at a new school. He’s waking up late and while he tries to hurry, he misses the bus. Aunt May, expecting this, arrives to drive him to school. As he’s about to begin his first day, a portal opens and an alien comes through, followed quickly by Dr. Strange. The action scenes get jam packed as Dr. Strange fights the alien while trying to protect the school. Eventually, Peter steps in and helps distract the alien, helping Strange get the advantage. Unfortunately, a symbiotic spider traveled through the portal as well biting Peter, setting him up to be Spider-Man.

Weeks later, Peter is still waking up late but using his web and Spider-Man persona to get to school, although he’s still caught by the teacher as being tardy. He has formed a friendship with fellow Freshman, Nico, and demonstrates a crush on an older student, Pearl, who was his babysitter when he was younger. Unfortunately, his spidey escapades prevent him from asking her out and she starts dating the star quarterback, Lonnie Lincoln. Peter and Lonnie become science lab partners at Lonnie’s request, because he has aspirations outside of sports and wants to have a career to fall back on. He may be a foil to Peter’s crush but he’s a well-rounded and likeable character.

Spider-Man saves people around his neighborhood and even appeals to their human side like when he uses one small time crook's guilt to convince her to return the money she stole from a pizzeria. The pizzeria owner forgives her and gives Spider-Man a free pizza. The episode ends with Peter finding a DVD player, walking home, noticing a fancy car outside his building, walking in and realizing the owner of the fancy car is in his apartment. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly how Spider-Man was introduced in Captain America: Civil War when he meets Tony Stark. Except, Tony Stark isn’t in his apartment, it’s Norman Osborne.

The Parker Luck

Episode two picks up with Norman Osborne offering Peter Parker an internship. One of the people Peter saved in episode one, this time from bullies at school, so it was Peter and not Spider-Man who made the save, was Harry Osborne. Peter takes the gig and heads to the internship after school, on the day of the big football game. Peter joins a group of other geniuses as they are placed in their scientific field. Peter wants robotics but loses out to Amadeus Cho (Rock Me Amadeus!). Instead, Dr. Carla Connors chooses Peter for energy development.

While working with Dr. Connors, and showing a bit of aptitude for energy development, the interns meet and watch a little tv on their breaks. A news report reveals a burning building, so Peter leaves in a very odd fashion, changes in an elevator and heads to save the day. After fighting off the pyromaniac and rescuing a dog, Peter receives a text from Dr. Connors asking where he is. Peter returns to get his stern discipline from the head of the internship group in front of Dr. Connors and the rest of the interns. However, a security guard arrives saying Mr. Osborne wants to speak to Peter.

Rating

I wasn’t very excited to see this series when it was first announced years ago as Spider-Man: Freshman Year. The plan at the time was an animated series showing Peter getting his powers and what happened leading up to Civil War. As the series went into production, it changed. It’s loosely related to the MCU but isn’t in the MCU. It feels like it’s meant to be a multi-versal with MCU connections. While that can work, I would prefer they either make it part of the MCU or separate it completely like they did with X-Men 97.

Still, the animation style is sleeker than I expected. I thought it was going to be too anime for my taste for this story, but it’s better balanced. The animation style is leagues ahead of What If…? If not as good as X-Men 97. Also, I’m sure the gender change from Dr. Curt Connors to Dr. Carla Connors is going to bother some people. Instead, they are just writing the character like the doctor who will eventually become the Lizard and neither sex nor gender matter unless the viewer makes it matter. It’s a well done way to change up the character without being insulting to fans of the original material.

Check out Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man streaming exclusively on Disney Plus.