Review: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man “Secret Identity Crisis; Hitting the Big Time; The Unicorn Unleashed”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Peter is found out by Norman Osborn, who surprisingly wants to invest in his superheroing. Meanwhile, Peter’s upperclassman Lonnie ends up running with the wrong crowd.

OUR TAKE

We’re on week two of four for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and, as expected with releasing this many episodes at once, there is a LOT to discuss and not a lot of time to cover it all. The main things to focus on what’s happening with Peter, namely how his hero life as Spider-Man is getting to the next level with his new partnership with Norman and later Harry Osborn, as well as the ongoing subplot with Lonnie, who avid comic readers will know by the nickname he takes at the end of the fifth episode: Tombstone. As Peter, the social underdog, begins to reach new heights, Lonnie, the guy who was on track to probably do some great things, is sinking into the depths. He started it for good reasons, trying to protect his brother who ended up involved with the 110th Street Gang, but their control over him is continuing to pull him down, and worse yet, he’s beginning to get a taste for it. Since we’re already at the halfway point with five episodes remaining in the season, it’s hard to say whether this is leading to a confrontation between him and Peter within just this season or one of the two that have already been confirmed for later. I guess we’ll find out in two weeks when this season is over!

And as we’re on that subject, and we ARE at the halfway point already, how are we feeling about this season so far? Well, I certainly wish we WEREN’T already halfway so I had time to savor some of these story threads and developing themes more, but that’s how it’s being released so I just have to live with that, I guess. If I put that aside, I can say that I’m pretty interested in where things are going with Lonnie, as well as how one of these episodes reveals that this universe is basically the same timeline as the normal MCU, but things have diverged at around the events of Captain America: Civil War, where Peter was not recruited by Tony, which is what this show was advertised as recently. I feel like that detail should have been revealed earlier on in-story for extra context, but hopefully they’ll make better use of it going forward. As for Peter, he’s hitting the usual beats of finding his social life straining as he tries to balance it with being Spider-Man, so that’s par for the course at the moment. Norman, now that he gets to be a proper character, feels…a bit too chummy? That may be just a mask for all I know, but we’ll know soon enough since we’re almost done with the season! I know I’ve belabored that point a lot already but it’s still kind of hitting me! Please stop doing this, Disney! It’s not good for the shows you do this too!