Maxance Vincent
Warning: The following article contains spoilers for the third, fourth, and fifth episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
The third episode of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, titled Secret Identity Crisis, picks up right after the second left off, with Norman Osborn (Colman Domingo) catching Peter Parker (Hudson Thames) red-handed after he suited up as Spider-Man during his internship at Oscorp. With the words, “We’ll talk soon, but your secret is safe with me,” Parker fears for the worst. However, Osborn is (so far, we’ll see how the show develops) not at all what we knew him to be from the comics, and instead wants to work hand-in-hand with Spider-Man to repay a personal debt.
In the first episode, Parker saved Norman’s son, Harry (Zeno Robinson), from a group of petty thieves. The multi-millionaire used the internship as a ploy to figure out which of the world’s greatest minds could come up with such intricate webbing and believed one of the interns he hired might be a collaborator of Spider-Man. Peter isn’t a collaborator, he is Spider-Man! However, the teenager refuses any help, as he believes it will endanger the lives of his friends Nico Minoru (Grace Song) and Pearl Pangan (Cathy Ang), alongside his Aunt May (Kari Wahlgren), the only remaining member of his family.
I also appreciate that, in the third episode, we see how May is still picking up the pieces in the wake of Uncle Ben’s death, which we sadly never got (or even a slight mention from Marisa Tomei’s version of the character) in the live-action MCU trilogy. Even better, Peter is inspired to take photos of himself as Spider-Man with Ben’s camera, proof that his uncle still lives within him. The rest of the episode is relatively rudimentary, with a nifty fight scene wrapping it up as Peter faces off his first considerable foes, Speed Demon (Roger Craig Smith) and Tarantula (Anairis Quiñones). They’re a bit of a step up from Butane, but not something Spider-Man can’t defeat.
However, what’s more important in this episode isn’t how Peter eventually accepts Norman as his “guy in the corner” but how it sets up Lonnie Lincoln’s (Eugene Byrd) path toward darkness. As he is having lunch with Peter, Pearl, and Nico, Lonnie is urgently called by his mother to return home because the police arrested his brother for hanging out with the 110th Street gang. Upon his return, Lonnie wants to discuss with his brother, but he has escaped his room and headed to the gang, ruled by Big Donovan (Leilani Barrett).
Afraid of the danger he poses to his brother and to save his life, Lonnie proposes an exchange that he works for Donovan instead of his brother. The gang leader accepts, and by shaking his hand, the show sets up his villain arc much faster than I thought it would, especially in how showrunner Jeff Trammell deftly develops a close kinship between him and Peter Parker. His storyline will be interesting to see fleshing out at a more intriguing rate than the usual mentor/mentee relationship we have seen in the MCU with Spider-Man, which hasn’t been too distinct from what we saw in the movies.
In the fourth episode, Hitting the Big Time, director Liza Singer and writer Charlie Neuner parallel cut from Peter’s storyline as he tries out different (and bad) Spider-Man suits that Norman had created, with Lonnie doing his first mission for Big Donovan. The Peter storyline isn’t very impressive, as it’s chock-full of badly-timed comedic situations, even though it climaxes with an incredible action sequence where he finally wears his white suit, something he will likely don for a considerable amount of time in this episode.
What’s most interesting about it has to do with Lonnie’s storyline, as Donovan tasks him to get some food for the gang, only for him to be tagged by a rival gang known as the Scorpions. It’s then revealed that Donovan set him up as leverage to keep him in the 110th Street gang to grant him the protection he and his family need from Mac Gargan, the leader of the Scorpions. Of course, astute comic fans know what that means, and it’ll be interesting to see how this side of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man develops. I also loved Lonnie’s conversation with Pearl, who tries so desperately hard to deflect the honest questions his girlfriend asks her, impervious about the pact he’s just made. But he genuinely thinks he’ll be able to get out of this mess, which makes this exchange all the more heartbreaking if you know his fate in the comics.
There are a few interesting developments away from Lonnie’s storyline that set up things to come, such as Harry accidentally discovering Peter’s secret identity. However, the episode quickly cuts away from that, as we find out the identity of the logo Spider-Man keeps seeing after foiling many antagonists. It turns out none of them belong to Norman at all but to Dr. Otto Octavius (Hugh Dancy), who has been working in the black market, supplying criminals with highly efficient and technologically advanced weapons. Oh oh. That’s not good.
We don’t get much Octavius in the fifth episode, titled The Unicorn Unleashed!, other than a scene where he sells Mila Masaryk (Sarah Natochenny) a helmet that not only shoots lasers but analyzes movement patterns to topple better the people she needs to fight. She uses Otto’s invention to break out criminals Dmitri Smerdyakov (Roger Craig Smith) and Mikhail Sytsevich (Travis Willingham), who were locked up following the fourth episode’s climax.
Director Stu Livingston eventually thrusts them into another action scene with Spider-Man, this time feeling more redundant than exciting. I appreciate Livingston giving movement to the superhero we’ve rarely seen in any piece of media, but the setpiece itself feels like we’ve seen it all before – and we did, an episode ago.
Still, The Unicorn Unleashed! does boast its fair share of strong moments, notably in how it pays off Harry finding out Spider-Man’s identity. Norman believes they can only work around this “issue” if he joins team Spider-Man and replaces his father as “the guy at the desk” when he’s too busy. They form a strong bond with each other, like Peter and Ned Leeds in the live-action movies, which profoundly affects Nico, believing her best friend doesn’t want to spend time with her anymore. I don’t know how this will be fleshed out in the remaining episodes, but it’s certainly a considerable highlight that will further cause tension between the two friends. Or perhaps Nico will warm up to Harry? Time will tell.
Unsurprisingly, Lonnie’s arc has consistently been the best part of the series, and it takes an even darker turn, as Donovan’s control over him is so powerful that he has frequently missed football practice, jeopardizing his academic future. There’s now a turf war between the 110th Street Gang and the Scorpions, leading to a brawl in which Lonnie tries desperately not to be involved. However, when he sees Mac Gargan (Jonathan Medina) about to stab Donovan to death, he tackles the Scropions’ leader and saves Big Donnie’s life. As a result, his place in the gang, which was forced upon by Lonnie, is now respected, and he earns his comic-book moniker of “Tombstone.” His path towards darkness is complete, and what awaits him in further episodes, if it follows what I believe will occur, will not be a pretty sight.
Since Disney+ is releasing episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man in bulk of two or three, we’ve reached the middle of the season. It’s been a relatively enjoyable time seeing the titular character being reinterpreted within the MCU multiverse, though he hasn’t been the most interesting part of his own show. Every time writer Jeff Trammell cuts back to Lonnie, it feels far more involving and superbly written than the by-the-motions, adequate developments we’ve seen from Spider-Man’s side of the story. I am, however, considerably warming up to the animation style, even though it took some time to get used to it. Still, there are plenty more episodes to go, so the bar can only go up from here. Let’s see what happens next.
The third, fourth, and fifth episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man are now available to stream on Disney+.
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