‘Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’ Creator on How the Disney+ Show Connects to the MCU — But Isn’t About Tom Holland’s Peter Parker
When Jeff Trammell landed the job of creating Marvel Studios’ animated series “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” (premiering today), he stepped into the most fertile creative period for the web-slinging superhero in his 63-year history. And yet, even between the multibillion-dollar live-action film series starring Tom Holland, the Oscar-winning animated “Spider-Verse” film series and the bestselling “Spider-Man” video game series, Trammell wasn’t all that fazed by the prospect of somehow making his Spider-Man stand out.
“Now that I think about it, I’m like, well, was I worried?” he says via Zoom from Los Angeles. “Honestly, I think it was just excitement to dig into this world, because I love the character so much.”
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It’s evident from just a quick scan of the framed Spider-Man art adorning Trammell’s home how central the character is to his life. As a kid growing up in the 1990s, he was so insatiable for all things Spidey that he even tracked down copies of the 1960s animated series on VHS. And the depth and breadth of Trammell’s, er, Spidey sense were vital when it came time when the showrunner, executive producer and head writer began assembling a unique origin story for Peter Parker.
To start, Trammell and his writing team made a perhaps counterintuitive decision: While this “Spider-Man” is set in an alternate timeline, it retains many of the narrative touchstones of the main MCU — the story picks up around the events of “Captain America: Civil War,” and the Battle for New York and Sokovia Accords get name-checked. The goal is to keep the wider world rooted in the familiar so audiences can focus on Peter as he starts high school and explores his powers. “If we do something that’s too crazy — like, we cut to the ‘Civil War’ fight, and She-Hulk’s there — it’s going to be like, ‘Wait, I want to follow that story,’” Trammell says.
Instead, Trammell looked to the comics as the key to making the show distinctive, with an animation style that vividly evokes the classic look of early issues of “Spider-Man.” The writers, meanwhile, surrounded Peter with slightly-to-significantly reimagined Marvel characters fans have never seen together before. Aunt May (Kari Wahlgren) remains Peter’s guardian, and he still befriends Harry Osborn (Zeno Robinson), but instead of Tony Stark, he’s mentored by one of Spider-Man’s greatest nemeses, Harry’s father, Norman (Colman Domingo). Rather than Gwen Stacy or Mary Jane Watson, his love interest is now Pearl Pangan (Cathy Ang), who first appeared in the comics as a superhero called Wave. Peter’s best friend is now Nico Minoru (Grace Song), introduced in the popular “Runaways” comics as the daughter of dark wizards. And the high school football star isn’t Flash Thompson; it’s Lonnie Lincoln (Eugene Byrd), known in the comics as the villain Tombstone.
At the outset, it’s unclear how, or even if, this show will employ these characters’ comic mythologies. What matters more to Trammell is that shaking up the usual “Spider-Man” ensemble allows him to explore “how that paints who Peter is.”
“I really wanted to focus on Peter Parker,” he says. “I love Spider-Man — but you don’t have the hero without the life experiences that Peter goes through [and] how those affect his moral compass and not seeing things in black and white. Because a villain might only be a villain of circumstance; a person might be stealing to help their family. [Understanding] those things make Peter unique as a hero.”
The actor Trammell cast as Peter, Hudson Thames (“Mad Men”), exemplifies the show’s delicate balancing act. He first played the character in the animated Marvel Studios series “What If…?” — as a sound-alike for Holland. “I was very much thinking about ‘How do I honor what Tom has done and give people what they’re expecting?’” Thames says. But for “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man,” “this was Hudson playing Spider-Man now.”
“We didn’t want it to be like, ‘Oh, he’s trying to be Tom for a story that is like Tom, but not,’” Trammell says of Thames. “He’s added so much to the character that it’s changed how we write Peter in a lot of ways.”
And, it seems, playing such an exuberant and compassionate teenager had a similar effect on Thames. “Peter Parker is just the quintessential optimist,” he says. “He’s so hopeful. Spending this amount of time being in that head space, just as a guy in the world, is really refreshing. I feel like it’s made me a better person.”
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