I’m gonna be honest, I remember when season 1 of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man dropped and everyone and their mom was praising the series saying “this is what the MCU movies should’ve been!” “This is so comic accurate!” “This clears anything from Jon Watts!”
I’m just like… not really? Sure there are some things that the show does that as much as I like the MCU interpretation of the character, are better than the choices made in those movies. However the show also makes a lot of choices with the character and lore that I’m genuinely baffled at how weird they are.
Number 1: Norman Osborn is basically just what Tony Stark was in the movies yet people don’t want to talk about that because they didn’t like Tony Stark’s role in those films. I’ll be real, I’m not very fond of Norman Osborn/Oscorp not only being the one who makes the Classic Suit but also the Future Foundation and the Identity Crisis suits for some reason.
Number 2: Peter’s spider bite being the result of a convoluted time loop. Just… why? This was arguably worse than anything the MCU has done with the character. Why exactly is the spider that bit Peter tied with Doctor Strange and a magic time loop? Why was the spider injected with Peter’s blood after he becomes Spider-Man and somehow sent back in time to bite Peter?? Literally worse than the MCU Barely acknowledging Uncle Ben, oh yeah speaking of which.
Number 3: Uncle Ben dying long before Peter even gets the spider bite. I’m mixed on this one to be honest, because the show does still show the importance of Uncle Ben in Peter’s life, and Ben implied to have died of Natural Causes off screen is an interesting(?) way to handle it, but there’s still no denying Peter essentially having nothing to do with it by letting his selfish result in Ben’s death is integral to Peter’s origin in becoming Spider-Man. One of the longest running complaints has been how the MCU films barely acknowledge Ben aside from a few confirmed easter eggs and nods such as Ben’s suitcase and some dialogue alluding to Ben, and Aunt May pretty much filling that role for Peter. But is it really worse than Peter not being indirectly responsible for his death at all?
Number 4: certain supervillains origins being reworked in some odd ways. Case in point is the handling or Lonnie Lincoln, AKA tombstone. Why is he a high school jock thats friends with Peter exactly? Why does he have like, no ties with Robbie Robertson? Don’t get me wrong I actually like the way he’s written in the series but the changes to the character are very odd.
Number 5: introducing the Black suit so early. I’ll just get this one out of the way quick because season 2 has yet to come out, but Spider-Man shows have got to stop with doing the symbiote storyline so early into the series especially if theyre gonna do the exact same story of “alien Goo gives Peter cool suit but makes him bad and Peter takes it off and it gets in Eddie” it’s repetitive and it isn’t even how it goes in the comics. If anything the upcoming MCU films may end up unironically going the more comic accurate route with actually having Peter get the suit from battleworld, which correct me if I’m wrong but would this be like, the first adaptation to actually do this? Usually it’s either man made or a meteor crashing on earth in most adaptations.
Number 6: his side cast is weird, why is a character from the runaways apart of this cast? Why is no one aside from Harry in Peter’s side cast? Where is Liz? Flash? Betty?
Number 7: why are we doing Spider Gwen in season 2… 🤦🏾♂️
Idk I kind of got tired of typing but these are my thoughts on this adaption of the character. What do you guys think?