After the first two episodes gave us not one, but two cliffhangers involving Norman Osborn benevolently ebowing his way into Peter Parker’s life, it’s about time we actually got some payoff rather than just having Colman Domingo make lavish, mysterious claims to a gobsmacked teenager. Thankfully, Episode 3 of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man finally starts to pay these moments off – which is nice, because if nothing else, YFNS-M probably has included more set up in its two starter episodes than most Spider-Man series containing within their entire run. However, once again, the name of Spider-Man’s game is to rack up as much plot as it possibly can to give our freshman hero as three dimensional a supporting cast as it can.
Does this continuing plot pile-on still succeed in enriching this new take, or is it starting to bury the wall crawler under a web that’s getting a bit too dense?
After receiving the stomach dropping news that Norman Osborn has figured out that Peter Parker is the fledgling superhero known as Spider-Man, the CEO of Oscorp then decides to leave Parker hanging after announcing that he’ll discuss this new wrinkle between thematic a later date, which can’t be great for the acid levels in Peter’s digestive tract. However, Norman manages to explain himself after inviting Peter to a restaurant that he’s reserved entirely for the two of them in order to guarantee their privacy and the main reason he’s been trying so hard to locate the web shooting vigilante is chiefly because Spider-Man managed to save the life of his son, Harry. Furthermore, the entire internship that Oscorp has created was a way to narrow down his four major suspects as Osborn surmised that Spider-Man had some serious IQ on his side simply with the invention of his webshooters. Simply put, Norman wants to help. He wants to help Peter with his tech, his costume and aid him in his crimefighting abilities; but while Peter is understandably grateful, he’s worried that having a vigilante on the books could put Norman and other Oscorp employees in danger.
Meanwhile, it seems like Lonnie Lincoln’s life is starting to experience some major speedbumps when he discovers that his little brother has joined the 110th Street Gang and in an attempt to get him our, he makes a deal with gang leader, Big Ben Donovan, that could set him on an extremely concerning path.
However, while Spider-Man mulls over Norman’s offer, he finds himself squaring off with a couple who have gotten their hands on some tech that gives one super speed and the other slashing blades – but in the midst of battle a strange voice cuts into his earpiece. It seems that Osborn is incredibly serious about helping Spider-Man and is taking a very hands on approach – but once Spidey and his very different man in the chair are victorious, what does this mean going forward?
So once again I feel I have to lay out my feelings for this latest iteration of Spider-Man as they may come across as somewhat contradictory. You see, there’s an incredible amount to love about this show and it’s gradually increasing with every episode – but while virtually every path the show is going down feels just so painfully right, all this build up comes at a slight cost.
So let’s start with a vast amounts that the goodness the show has racked up and the main one is the path the show is taking to become a slightly twisted version of the central relationship between Peter Parker and Tony Stark in Spider-Man: Homecoming, offering up Norman Osborn instead as a potential father figure and traitor. Of course, this isn’t an Osborn who is whacked out on Goblin juice (at least not yet) and it’s interestingly is taking a cue from modern Spider-Man comics written by Zeb Wells which saw a completely rehabilitated Norman play Q to Spidey’s James Bond. It’s a wonderfully curious feeling watching Peter get utterly seduced, charmed and supported by the man destined to become his most feared enemy, but for now their relationship is a facinating one. While the sight of Robert Downey Jr. enticing Tom Holland to join the Avengers was cleared up in a single scene in Captain America, here we get to enter this relationship at the ground floor and it’s cool to see them size each other up with the occasional surprise. While Osborn manages to stun Peter with springing this all on him out of fucking nowhere, it’s good to see Osborn’s superior facade slip ever so slightly when Pete shows up, dangling upsidedown in his office in his full costume and gives the billionaire something of a scare.
However, as the show builds up the tentative bromance between one of the most heated rivalries in comics history, it’s also playing the long game with a potential supervillan origin story in the form of Lonnie Lincoln’s life starting to take something of an alarming nosedive as he suddenly finds himself joining a gang in order to save his little brother. While we’re still a long, long way from poor Lonnie possibly becoming shark-toothed mobster Tombstone, the fact that this well-loved sports star is seeing his life suddenly spin out of control will no doubt prove to be an emotionally charged thread once it pays off.
But when will it pay off? That’s the slight issue I still have with Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man; that it’s trying to build the to everything bedrock so solidly, neither of the two main threads will manage to reach their emotional zeniths for quite a few episodes yet. So as the twin stories of Peter & Norman and Lonnie build and build, what’s left is the typical kind of Spider-Man shenanigans that sees him slowly work his way up a ladder of progressively more dangerous villains. This episode sees Spidey knuckle up to a loved-up pair of morally questionable thieves who have been jacked-up by some tech and keen Spider-fans will recognise the two as a highly altered Speed Demon and Tarantula as the mechanical leg braces and gauntlets augment their abilities to superhuman levels. The fight is nice and perky and we see Pete and Norman operate as a unit as the billionaire schools the young vigilante on the finer points of crime fighting to a win, however, we’re still very much in the infancy of Pete’s criminal punching career and this crystalises my very strange and frustrating bugbear with the series so far.
Once again, it’s truly wonderful that we have an animated show that’s taking its time with constructing all the major threads and everything the series has done thus far has managed to keep things fresh while steadfastly remaining defiantly Spider-Man with every fiber of their being. But I feel that the show won’t reach its full potential until some of those plots start paying off some genuine emotion. Of course, this might not happen until we get some big villain turns and that might even not occur this season, so it’s down to the stuff that happens in between to put the show over the top.
Still a really good show and still incredibly Spider-Man, I fell like the season just needs that one superlative episode to really push it over the top to help it swing as high as it’s potential suggests.
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We Have Issues 