Way back at the Disney+ Day in 2021, a brand new animated series called “Spider-Man: Freshman Year” was announced, which follows Peter Parker on his way to becoming a hero, with a journey unlike we have ever seen and a style that celebrates the character’s early comic book roots.

However, over the last few years, the project has gone through some changes, including a rename to “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man”, and a second season, which was initially called “Spider-Man: Sophomore Year”, was also committed.

There have also been many changes within Marvel, including a reorganisation, the creation of Marvel Animation, and a shift to producing fewer but better projects.  This has resulted in some of the Marvel Animation shows no longer being connected to the main Marvel Cinematic Universe.

During a recent interview on the Phase Hero podcast with Marvel TV head Brad Winderbaum to promote the third season of “What If?”, he confirmed that ” Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” won’t be considered “canon” within the MCU.

“It started out as ‘Okay it’s Spider-Man’s freshman year, he’s going to be a freshman, can we get away with this being entirely in the MCU?’ and very early on in the development process, we realized how locked in that actually made us. We couldn’t really use his rogues gallery, we couldn’t really use his origin. It was not fun, honestly. We would’ve had to put so many limiters on our story to get it to lock into canon.”

In this new adventure, we see some major changes to the MCU timeline. For example, in this story, instead of Tony Stark being a mentor, it’s actually Norman Osborn.

One of the big problems with creating an animated series set years before the events of “Captain America: Civil War” and the other films featuring Spider-Man is that it drastically limits what the creators can do, with Brad adding:

 “Every single project I’ve worked on, they’ve all had a life of their own…. You have to let them live their own lives and go where they want to go.”

There are some advantages to making “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” its own individual story, set in a different multiverse; it allows the creators more freedom, while also incorporating more well-known elements from the classic Spider-Man stories.

“It does have a lot of DNA that is very similar to the MCU depiction of the Tom Holland Spider-Man, but it really also draws all the way back to Steve Ditko.  It’s adjacent to the main continuity but really speaks to what is inheritant about the character.”

Roger’s Take:  The biggest problem with making every show and film part of the larger connected universe is that it also restricts the creative side, and with animation, there are so many other stories that can be told that I’m kinda glad that Marvel is moving beyond the “MCU”.  However, I think this series will be confusing for many, with too many links to the larger MCU, such as having Charlie Cox playing Daredevil, that it would have been better from the start to have rebooted it entirely away from the Tom Holland-era.

The first two episodes of “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” will be released on Disney+ on January 29th, 2025.

Are you looking forward to the debut of our new episode?  Let me know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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