We’ve seen Spider-Man's origin story onscreen countless times – Marvel Studios’ new animated series aims to explore how Peter Parker would have turned out without the usual influences in his life.
Taking place in a different corner of the Multiverse to Tom Holland’s heroYour Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man re-introduces us to Peter (voiced by Hudson Thames) as he’s starting ninth grade and adjusting to life as a budding hero after being bitten by a radioactive Spider. Here, that means balancing fighting crime with high school and a new internship at the laboratory of Norman Osborn (Colman Domingo), who in this iteration, becomes Peter’s mentor, and first person to know his super-secret.
Showrunner and Head Writer Jeff Trammell grew up watching the 90s animated series and hopes his show will effectively pay homage to it. However, he’s quick to stress that despite the retro, comic book style animation and loving nods to the franchise’s history on page and on screen, he wants this series to offer a fresh perspective on a familiar character.
He told Zavvi: “One of the key constants in every take on Spider-Man is that he has an Aunt May, and for us, that’s our only constant, as the rest of Peter’s world changes! He has a different supporting group of friends here, which I think is key to understanding him; he’s a very strong-willed character, but he’s also someone at an impressionable age, who is influenced by the world around him.
“Plucking him away from the people he usually associates with and placing him next to characters like Nico Minorou and Lonnie Lincoln helps him develop in different ways. Our hope is that he still feels reminiscent of the classic Spider-Man but shaped by experiences that make him unique to our show.”
Over the course of the series, we see the very beginning of Lonnie Lincoln’s origin story, as he’s forced away from a bright future on the American football pitch to the criminal underworld, a path that will eventually lead him to become Tombstone. However, the villain from Spidey’s Rogue’s Gallery who gets the most attention here is Norman Osborn, reinvented as a mentor in the same way Tony Stark was to Holland’s Peter Parker – he's even given the same introduction (and music cue!) as the Avenger had when showing up at Peter’s home for the first time in Captain America: Civil War.
“There isn’t a version of Norman Osborn that isn’t complicated,” Trammell added. “Which is very fun; the audience comes into the series initially assuming they can’t trust him as they know where his arc is going, but then they realise that he’s different.
“This Norman presents arguments in a different way, and I gradually want to make viewers question whether this is just a guy doing his best that they’ve been conditioned to distrust. The questions I wanted to ask with all the different versions of familiar characters are whether they are more than our preconceived notions of them; we know their history, but will they always be the same, regardless of context?
“My hope is that this show is a big morality play, which makes you view character actions in a different light. Just having Norman as a mentor makes for a different Spider-Man than we know and love, but is he different, or does he just feel different?”
With no foundational “with great power comes great responsibility” speech to inform him, Peter’s hero’s journey is more compromised by outside influences. As Trammell explained, Spider-Man will always be a hero, but as an impressionable 15-year-old, his origin story will always be shaped by those closest to him.
He explained: “In many of these stories, things can be black and white, but this Spider-Man lives in the grey area; part of his journey is learning that sometimes people do bad things for good reasons. A lot of lessons are dependent on a mentor, who might not see things that way, but anybody can try to tell you how to be a hero, and at the end of the day, it’s only him that can make those decisions.
“We‘re always inside Peter’s head space to understand his judgements throughout his journey, and whether he trusts himself enough to take the biggest risks.”
The series takes place in a different timeline to that of the MCU, but there are still nods here and there; the radioactive spider is brought through one of Doctor Strange’s portals in the opening episode, whilst the events of Civil War occur in news bulletins in the background. Whilst remaining tight-lipped about the direction of the series, Trammell still explained that he felt a tremendous sense of “freedom” despite a familiar narrative looming large over the drama.
“Our show is very New York focused, so we only see those events through his lens. But this is a different Spider-Man, so if audiences are questioning whether they come into play later, we want them to wonder how they would affect Peter, or if it would even rain down on him at all.
“The multiverse angle allowed us to do things we might not have been able to if we were fully tied into the Marvel timeline. Now, we have more influence and wiggle room over the story we’re telling – we can bring in Daredevil or other characters who don’t 100% line up with the era!
“There was a lot of conversation early on about the direction of the series, and there was an iteration slightly more aligned to the MCU which was scrapped early in development, but it was never fully tied in. There was a version that lived for two months that was just us figuring out how to make this approach work – by the time it was announced we were making this, we’d had it long figured out.
“The other day, I opened one of our drafts for episode one, and it is 90% what’s now on the screen. There was never a huge shift in how we’d tell this story beyond the initial figuring it out phase.”
Actor Hudson Thames was previously cast as Spider-Man in a 2021 episode of What If... where he initially assumed he was only required to voice a few lines. Over the course of that process, his role grew, and he gradually moved away from imitating Tom Holland’s performance to putting his own stamp on the iconic character.
Four years later, and he’s now voicing a younger Parker, but did he approach this character as an origin for his zombie-fighting Spidey?
He told Zavvi: “These might be two different iterations within the universe, but it’s fundamentally the same guy. This time, I was leaning more into remembering that feeling of being in high school, of being at that age where I was starting to feel like I understood my responsibilities.
“When I was cast in the What If... episode, I was in a limbo between trying to honour what Tom had done and play into audience expectations, whilst also finding something that felt honest and authentic from me. The biggest sigh of relief here was that I was given the green light to have creative freedom with my choices; I didn’t have to copy anything, I was given the space to make him my own.
“I think the beauty about Spider-Man and each iteration is that he makes the actors remember what it’s like to be young; he’s so hopeful and optimistic, and playing him means finding a new way to channel that energy all the time. The stakes feel high for everything at that age, and your hormones are going crazy, so everything feels like the biggest deal in the world – and that’s just being in ninth grade!”
So, in conclusion, this is a new take on Spider-Man, set elsewhere in the multiverse, with a distinctive animation style? The team are fully aware of the comparisons fans will make to the Spider-Verse movies but are nowhere near as daunted by them as I expected.
As Trammell concluded: “I love those films and I’m inspired by them. I saw the first one in the theater seven times, so, to say I love them is an understatement!
“People were always going to compare the two, but I think once people see this series, they’ll become excited by it in the same way they were for those movies. Because intrinsically, when you get down to it, they’re both defined by their heart – that's the most important thing for any Spider-Man story.”
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man premieres on Disney+ on Wednesday, 29th January.
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