Quick Review: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (2025)

A refreshing take on the character

Introduction

I have been a Spider-Man fan for as long as I can remember. The Raimi films bring back a lot of great memories that I will always cherish. While I do love the Raimi series, there was another element that made me appreciate this character and the world behind it which was the 1994 animated series. I remember this would air reruns of Toon Disney/Jetix when it was still a channel and I loved the series also. I surprisingly didn’t watch the other series like Spectacular and Ultimate, but the 94 series has a special place in my heart. I was curious to hear about a new series being made for Disney + back a couple years ago. but with how long the series was taking and the way it changed through development, it did leave me less interested in the project. Well here we are and the series has finally released fully on Disney +. I didn’t know what to expect from this series but you know what, it came out way better than I thought it would.

Positives

You can tell the team behind this has a passion for Spider-Man in this series and it’s shown throughout. It’s essentially a What If scenario if it was made into a series, but honestly, this series does things throughout that I really loved to see. I think Peter is a great example here because he goes through an interesting arc that I feel is right for his character. He goes through the typical things of Spider-Man of being beaten down but still fighting to the very end. It’s satisfying to see moments that you’re waiting for to happen and I think it’s helped with the overall great writing the series had. It’s able to balance some good comedic and serious elements that I appreciated. The side characters also like Nico, Lonnie, Harry and Norman are great characters to follow as well. I especially loved seeing Norman and it’s an interesting way to have this parallel of Tony Stark in the MCU, but still being able to do it’s own spin on things. This is also one of few Marvel shows that actually gets the length of episodes right. I’ve felt a lot of the Marvel shows I’ve seen on Disney + feel too short and never get the full development they need, but this show felt perfect in length and it left me satisfied with the amount of content we got. I was also surprised with how dark some of the elements of the show get. It surprised me, but it felt necessary for telling this story and I really liked that. The style of the show can be really fun as well since it has the comic book feel toward everything and it feels like flipping through a comic book except it’s animated. I have a lot of love toward the MCU Spider-Man and I love seeing that interpretation of that character, but I’m really glad they decided to do something different here and they were able to deliver a story that I quite enjoyed.

Negatives

I think while there’s an interesting and unique style the series has, the animation sometimes doesn’t compliment it well. Some sequences can look impressive, but there’s times when he’s swinging around and it does look a bit iffy. This doesn’t help also that the city of New York itself does feel empty at points and it does make the scope of things feel small.. There’s also a lot of characters that the show does carry and while it can be interesting to see some of these characters, it can be a bit distracting as some come off as quick and go cameos that we usually see in the MCU I think one final element that did distract me is the fact Peter gets his powers after Uncle Bens death. I know people are sick of seeing this event played out, but it is an important event in the development of Spider-Man that shouldn’t left out in the series. It doesn’t affect the overall series, but I think it would come off so much stronger if we saw it play out. Besides those complaints, I did really like this series and it was a nice surprise.

Final Thoughts

Overall: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is a great first season to start off the show. It does a lot well and has a lot of promise to be great in the future. I hope we get to see more of this series soon.

Rating: 8/10