Ever since it was first announced as Spider-Man: Freshman Year in 2021, there have been questions about exactly how (what is now) Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man fits into MCU canon. And then late last year, it became apparent that the show had essentially abandoned canon altogether. But according to showrunner, head writer, and executive producer Jeff Trammell, the actual show that made it to the screen has only ever really been part of an alternate timeline from start to finish.
“What’s funny is it was kind of only in the main timeline for the initial two months of development,” Trammell tells GamesRadar+, “and then it was like, ‘Oh, well, this kind of limits us; let’s go another route.’ So the first episode is essentially the first script I ever wrote for the show. Nothing really changed. So it’s not like, ‘Oh, this was this, and then we scrapped it, but we saved this scene,’ like it’s all from its pretty much inception Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, and that has always kind of been the case.”
While the show isn’t what we’d consider canonical to the MCU’s “Sacred Timeline,” it does feature several direct references and remixes – the same story beats, told slightly differently and featuring slightly different people.
“We always wanted the audience to know, this is the Peter you know from Homecoming,” continues Trammell, “but things are different. So I think leaning into that as much as we could of like, ‘Yep, you’ve seen this; you know how this goes, but do you?’
“And that’s the throughline of the show: we are giving you these characters that you know, but we’re changing what you know about them to keep them fresh, keep you on your toes, and always kind of keep you guessing.”
The first two episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man are out now on Disney Plus. And be sure to keep up with each episode using our Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man release schedule and check our verdict by reading our Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man review.