One watch of the opening credits for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and you'll feel like you're reading a vintage comic book. That's the beauty of the Disney Plus series, which serves as Marvel Studios' third animated series, it's a visual love letter to the Steve Ditko era of Spider-Man. But it's also a love letter to Spider-Man in general, delivering an inherently Spidey story through and through.
The series is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Multiverse Saga but it's not specific to the version of Spider-Man in that franchise that Tom Holland plays. Instead, it's set on a parallel Earth, making it MCU-adjacent as it imagines what Peter Parker's early days as the webslinger would look like if Norman Osborn was his mentor instead of Tony Stark.
The result is pretty, well, amazing.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is spectacular
Having viewed all 10 episodes of the series, I can say with delight that Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is everything you could ever want from a Spider-Man show. Trust me, there have been plenty of them. And that's stiff competition for this one to contend with, but the truth is that Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man quickly carves out its own space in a very crowded landscape of Spidey cartoons. Sure, there are tributes to the golden age of Spidey in there, but it uses that nostalgia to its advantage and manages to produce a wholly original take on the character (and his supporting characters too).
The show is extremely fun and light-hearted, entertaining in the way that it hopes to, but there is also a maturity about it that comes into view the longer that its first season runs. The tonal balance is strong, as it knows when to take itself seriously without ever losing the charm of what makes it so endearing. That's Peter Parker's approach to life in a nutshell right there!
Speaking of endearing, Hudson Thames does a great job as the webslinger himself, delivering a voice performance that so effortlessly sounds like the personification of Peter Parker. We knew he was capable of playing the character before due to his previous work on Marvel's What If...?, but he kicks it up a notch here, successfully channelling that early naivety of Tom Holland's performance in 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming while offering up his own, intentionally nerdier take on the character. This is a Peter Parker who is unsure of himself almost all of the time, and Thames hits the nail on the head with his take.
The supporting cast is equally impressive. Zeno Robinson and Grace Song are excellent in their performances as Harry Osborn and Nico Minoru, while Eugene Byrd gives a layered performance as Lonnie Lincoln. It's Colman Domingo, however, that steals the show with his smooth, suave, powerful performance as Norman Osborn himself, making you sit up and pay attention whenever the character walks onto screen.
All of them get their own chances to shine, too, ensuring that no character ever exists without a purpose. And that's one of the great things about Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, it may not be an ensemble-led show as it is a Spider-Man series and Spider-Man should be the focus of it, but all of the characters involved have purpose, furthering the storyline, endearing themselves to us in the process and ensuring that we remain invested in them and their arcs. It's very well-executed.
But again, this is a Spider-Man series and it delivers on that front more than anything. The webslinger gets to have fun before our very eyes and the show leans into that to its own benefit. It's Peter's first chapter as a crime-fighter, so he's not perfect, but he wears that like a badge of honor, always learning and improving. He's also as loud as ever when he's behind the mask, cracking jokes and trash-talking whoever he is fighting in the moment, making sure that every action sequence is packed full of great dialogue - and that's needed, because some of them are extended.
There are high expectations for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and the show manages to exceed all of them. Full of style and substance, it's a thoroughly enjoyable, welcome addition to both the MCU's Multiverse Saga and the long line-up of legendary animated Spider-Man shows, earning its place among both. It's everything a Spider-Man fan could want, and perhaps my favorite thing about it is that it feels like it's just the beginning.
Now that we know it will be back for two more seasons, we can truly experience it as it's meant to be experienced: Just the beginning of a wonderful, wonderful chapter.