You have no idea how relieved I am that Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man managed to finally make good on the first three episodes being nothing but solid world building and deliver a dense, vibrant world that gives us a totally new Spider-Man experience while still feeling utterly familiar. For a start, I don’t have to go on about it anymore (except just right then) and secondly, it was important for the show to stand on its own two feet and offer up some prime, Peter Parker experiences to counteract the depressingly familiar accusations of wokeness that seem to occur daily with all modern entertainment.
The joke is of course, that Spider-Man, in all of its many previous incarnations, has tried to be as inclusive as possible and so making Norman Osborn black or making his son Harry a flamboyantly dressed influencer actually doesn’t change a thing when it comes to the most important parts of the show – namely the story, the tone and the basic characters. Something that episode 5 manages to nail with gusto.
Because Peter Parker is still technically new at this whole secret identity thing, he’s still making face palming mistakes that keep putting his civilian life in jeopardy, but while captain of industry Norman Osborn finding out was hardly his fault, the fact that he inadvertently barged into a father/son meeting in full costume is a massive rookie mistake. The good news is that Harry Osborn is something of a Spider-fan after Peter had saved him from a mugging a few episodes ago and after the two hit it off, Norman has quite the wild idea. Seeing as the head of Oscorp can’t monitor Pete’s actions as Spider-Man all the time due to his commitments, he decrees that Harry takes over as Parker’s “dude at the desk” instead, feeding him information and prompting him about any reports coming over the police scanners.
It’s a good thing too, because after her cronies were recently arrested by the NYPD, Russian criminal Mila Masaryk has visted uptight scientist turned weapons dealer, Otto Octavius to grab herself some tech to break her buddies out. After equipping herself with a helmet that can predict the moves of her enemies and shoot lasers from a horn in the forehead, this newly christened “Unicorn” gets to work only to find herself going head to head with Spider-Man.
However, while all this is going on, Lonnie Lincoln is finding himself getting ever deeper and deeper in the gang life after the 110st Gang sees their beef with the Scorpions turn violent as they have a show down. But in the midst of this turf war, Lincoln makes a fateful decision that not only cements his standing within his new buddies, but gifts him with a brand new street moniker: Tombstone.
If you needed any more proof that Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has got its villain community on lock, you needn’t look any further than The Unicorn Unleashed that takes the already parked set up we enjoyed in the previous episode and jacks it up twofold in order to keep this ever growing world moving so incredibly smoothly. The main thing you notice is the completely beautiful job they’ve done with a pre-Octopied Otto Octavius who not only looks perfect compared to his older, comic book incarnations (green and yellow jumpsuit!), the the voice acting from Hannibal’s Hugh Dancy actually captures the priggish, egocentric and paranoid essence of the character almost exactly the way Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created him all those years ago. Similarly, the plot thread that sees the creation of the Unicorn also gives us some more time with Mikhail Sytsevich who is surely destined to become the Rhino any episode now – but instead infuses him with a stubborn, old world sense of nobility that belies his thuggish looks. In fact, while Mila Masaryk is drunk with power at her new, laser shooting headgear, the fact she’s willing to use Spidey’s goodness against him and turn her abilities on civilians and even on Sytsevich himself in order to draw the hero out doesn’t sit well with the hulking career criminal at all. So not only do we get a rather formidable first showing for the Unicorn (a second or third stringer villain at best), but we also get a Rhino that has more of an accomplished arc that his last two movie appearances combined.
To take a quick step back from the villains for a minute (or at least for the time being considering his comic and film history), the show concocts a rather fiendishly clever way to throw Harry Osborn and Peter together and bond in a quick period of time. Of course, there’s been the usual push back on Harry’s new design (not to mention race), but the whole idea to make him a rich kid influencer actually kind of fits the classic Harry profile of a young, privileged man who is trying to please his father despite not fitting the mold of who his father wants him to be. Of course, this aspect of the Osborn’s relationship hasn’t surfaced yet, but as Norman becomes ever more proud of Peter’s accomplishments, it’s bound to rear it’s head. And if nothing else, at least they kept the Osborn hair…
However, swinging back to the villainous end of the spectrum and we find that Lonnie Lincoln’s thread is heating up fast. As the football star has found himself sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of gang life, as he’s now in the middle of a turf war against the soldiers of gang leader Max Gargan, aka. the Scorpion. While it’s also cool to see yet another future super-heavy in waiting, the real story here is that the show is directly contrasting the lives of both Peter and Lonnie as one gradually becomes more heroic and the other seems to be well on the way to villains-ville. After wading in and saving Big Ben by hitting Gargan with a flying tackle, Lonnie ends up with a blade stuck in his arm for his trouble, but the result is the rest of the 110th Street Gang finally accepting him as one of their own, which in turn stirs up the need for acceptance. It seems that a life playing football is rapidly losing ground to a life spent fighting on the streets and the fact that Lonnie’s picked up the nickname Tombstone bodes ill for his future.
So with numerous criminal elements at play that include Mila and Mikhail’s gang of robbers, the 110th Street Gang and their war with the Scorpions and Doctor Octavius supplying lethal tech to anyone with the cash to buy it, Spider-Man is going to have to stick his nose in at some point and seeing as we’re at the halfway point of the season, it’ll probably be soon.
Keeping the energy and momentum of the previous episode going, YFNS-M has now settled into its new, higher, gear nicely and is pumping out a whole host of prospective Spider villains in a way that’s as nuanced as it is rapid. Of course, it may mean that Peter Parker is going to have his sticky hands full for a while – but if you aren’t constantly beating the shit out Spider-Man, can you even call yourself a Spider-Man show in good conscience?
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 