When explaining Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’s placement in the endless web known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, executive producer Dana Vasquez-Eberhardt said something happens in the new Disney+ show that branches it off from the traditional timeline Tom Holland’s Spider-Man occupies. Within the first seven minutes of the series premiere, we find out what that moment is after Doctor Strange (Robin Atkin Downes) makes a surprise appearance that sets in motion a new origin story for Peter Parker (Hudson Thames).
Before Parker steps foot in Midtown High for his first day of high school, a portal opens up in the sky and a terrifying creature infected with the Venom symbiote (seen in the show’s featurette) drops down to wreak havoc. After Doctor Strange sends himself and the creature back to whatever dimension they came from, a strange spider falls out of the portal before it disappears and bites Parker on the neck. While the show skips over depicting just how the teenager too clumsy to be on time for school reacted to having superhuman powers, we do see how Strange’s appearance changed what we know about Spider-Man.
Typically, Parker gains his powers after a radioactive spider bites him while he’s either on a field trip to or just snooping around Oscorp. But the most similar origin story to the one shown in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is actually that of Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, where he’s bitten by a spider from a different dimension.
Another difference from established lore comes at the end of the series’ second episode, when Norman Osborn (Colman Domingo) is the first person to find out that Parker is actually Spider-Man after seeing him change into his costume in the stairwell of Oscorp. Historically, anyone from Gwen Stacy (in The Amazing Spider-Man) to Ned Leeds (in Spider-Man: Homecoming) might figure out his secret identity. The show’s secret identity discovery is most similar to that in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, in which Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) as the Green Goblin discovers who’s under the mask during one of the greatest Spider-Man fights in cinema history.
Another cool deviation from Spider-Man lore in the show is Amadeus Cho (Aleks Le) working alongside Parker at Oscorp instead of them meeting as enemies in World War Hulk comics and as partners battling Doctor Octopus in The Amazing Spider-Man #685. With Parker and Norman Osborn’s connection and Cho’s friendly competition with him both cemented in the foundation of the new series, it’s going to be interesting seeing how else Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man acts as a spiritual successor to What If?… by rewriting everything we know about one of Marvel’s most popular superheroes ever.