Marvel Studios Spider-Man Freshman Year animated Disney +

[Mikezilla3k]

Well, just finished the show.

Aggressively mediocre at best with some good elements overcome by the same shit that has been plaguing Spidey cartoons for over a decade. Not worth any hype and definitely a lame showcase for what Marvel Studios could do with "creative freedom".

[Show spoiler]First off, let's just get the positives out of the way. The portrayals of Doc Ock, Rhino, and Coleman Domingo's Norman Osborn are all great. NGL, despite his criminal underuse and cribbing from Insomniac, this may be my favorite Otto adaption in the cartoons. And while I wasn't fond of some elements, Coleman performed Norman as the jackass he is especially in confrontational scene with Otto in Episode 9.

And that's it for real positives. Rest are either half-baked ideas that never really come together or more corporate cringe they've been putting Spidey into since 2012.

At first, Lonnie's story is interesting and thought they were actually going to go into deeper territory in terms of social issues, but then it gets pushed to the side halfway through the season and just caps off for next season at the eleventh hour. They have it where he gets blackmailed into the One Tenth Gang and then all of a sudden, acts as if they're family and not even have him be indoctrinated into it? And then suddenly becomes the leader after the current one exited stage left because.......plot reasons. Honestly, they really should have just made him Hobie Brown instead of some weird Tombstone adaption where he has to earn his Albinism.

As for the side cast.....it's been beaten to death that none of them are Peter's actual supporting cast from the comics but that's basically all that can be said about them. None of them really have character beyond the typical characteristics (loyal best friend who has no secrets, significant other for the side character in trouble, comic relief) and I genuinely have no idea why they chose ones like Pearl Pangan as Lonnie's GIF/nothing else and Bentley Wittman/The Wizard as the man who created the spider that gave Peter his powers! Only two that fit really are Harry Osborn who is given nothing to do basically and Amadeus Cho who is really OOC with how he sucks up to OSCORP (seriously what). And the rest of the villains are forgettable too, even the much hyped Scorpion who is all vague hype moments hoping you'll ignore the VA phoning it in all the time.

Now what about Peter himself? Garbage on numerous levels. Putting aside from the fact that his VA is an absolute idiot (as well as just plain awful with that horrendous Tom Holland impersonation), this Peter isn't any different from how Marvel been pushing him to be. And by that I mean a white bread nerdy nerd dork with no real personality that everyone loves/cuddles and just perfect for Marvel/Disney to market to their hearts content. And they never really do anything to change it, not to mention him being a corporate kiss-up to Norman despite him being sleezy. And that only changes when he's twirling his moustache in from of a portal to KLYNTAR (side note, can we stop rushing Venom setups in the first season of EVERY Spidey show, by Crom).

Oh and the easter eggs are key jingling at it's finest, to the Identity Crisis suits being a punchline to pad the running time and a hilarious NWH reference with no setup and not even in character for this Peter to do!!

But hey! Least we FINALLY have a good old street-level Spider-Man where he's making his neighborhood friendly! I sure do hope he'll have GROUNDED future adventures where-

Wait, what? You're having this high school kid get a millionaire's support to build a Temu Future Foundation? That sounds dumb, why are yo-WHAT YOU MEAN IT'S BASICALLY A SET UP FOR THAT LAME DISNEYLAND RIDE.




sigh, if this was Marvel Studios/Kevin Feige's big bold proclamation on how they could do Spider-Man without "muh big bad Sony polluting shit", they failed. MISERABLY. And no ripping off CW's The Flash (complete with past Peter VA Josh Keaton as an imprisoned Richard Parker) is gonna change that.

Overall, 4-5/10 max.