The Ending Of ‘Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’ Is Clearly Just the Beginning

There’s a lot going on in Episodes 9 & 10 of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which is to be expected. “Hero or Menace” and “If This Be My Destiny…” have several jobs to do, and it isn’t just tying up the various Season 1 plots into a coherent ending (although that’s part of it.) No, this double-whammy is also about shunting several supporting characters into position to continue their own personal stories, setting up Season 2 (and perhaps Season 3 and 4, depending), and pulling off a few truly unexpected surprises.

All in all, this finale is, like the entire season has been, much better than anyone probably expected. The tie-ins with the MCU have been cool but not overwhelming, the reworking of multiple characters has been smartly handled, and the action has been surprisingly stellar. These things all coalesce into a strong, exciting ending to Season 1 here that brings the whole thing full circle and suggests plenty more for the future.

Norman Is Up to No Good, Scorpion Is Defeated, and Tombstone Gets His Powers

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Episode 9 is largely about tying up various ongoing threads, though dotted with some important character turning points for good measure. After the events of the previous three episodes, Norman visits Otto, who is in prison for violating the Sokovia Accords, and is so smug about having engineered his capture and seized his tech that it’s very clear this isn’t a fully rehabilitated version of the character. He’s up to no good.

But with Otto out of the picture, Spider-Man, now wearing his iconic blue and red suit to symbolize him developing into his own hero independently of Norman, has to focus on Scorpion. This also folds in the subplot with the 110th St. gang, who are trying to raid Otto’s remaining tech before it can be seized.

Notably, Big Donovan reveals himself to be a bit of a coward, forcing Lonnie, newly superpowered thanks to being drenched in Diox-3, to become the new leader of the group. In Episode 9 this mostly manifests as him helping Spidey defeat Scorpion, but Tombstone is historically a villain, and as the new head of a criminal organization, it’s only a matter of time before Lonnie starts slipping down a darker path.

Ironically, it’s Lonnie who convinces Peter not to kill Scorpion. Having taken Norman’s words about great power and respect too seriously, Spider-Man almost takes things too far. It’s in pulling back that he realizes his true worth as a hero – and that with great power comes great responsibility – and he’s also able to patch up his relationship with Nico.

Things Get a Little Paradoxical

It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows though, and it’s in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Episode 10 that things start to go a bit wrong. And, once again, it’s Norman’s fault.

It’s revealed at the end of Episode 9 that Norman is testing Spider-Man’s blood on various different animals in the hopes of creating an army of Spider-Men – which he alluded to jokingly in dialogue – and in Episode 10 it’s explained why. Norman is using the brilliant interns to work on various secret projects all connected to the same end goal of creating a teleportation portal that’ll allow Norman to create, control, and presumably profit from a whole bunch of supplementary superheroes. The Avengers, apparently, aren’t enough.

Doctor Strange in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man | Image via Disney+

But this is where things get a bit weird. Doctor Strange arrives to stop Norman from violating reality, which is kind of his thing, but he claims to have never been at Midtown High back in the premiere, which is alarming since we clearly saw him. Norman turns the gateway on anyway resulting in a bit of chaos and the escape of one of his Spider-Man-replicating test-subject spiders, which turns out to be the one that bit Peter in the first place since it gets thrown back in time by the portal after Strange charges it up with the Time Stone.

So, to recap, this Peter Parker was bitten by a time-traveling spider superpowered with his own future blood. It’s a paradox!

This all gets mostly sorted out after another big fight with that weird symbiote thing from the premiere, but Peter’s trust in Norman is shattered, even if Strange’s trust in Peter is at an all-time high. He – and presumably Uatu, who you can snatch a glimpse of watching the exchange – thinks he’s ready for whatever’s coming next (presumably in Season 2).

Tying Up Loose Ends

There are a flurry of small scenes after Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Episodes 9 & 10 that contain a few major reveals and several key setups for later, so we might as well go over all of those here.

For one thing, on Nico’s suggestion, Harry starts up his own company – the Worldwide Engineering Brigade, which is a terrible name until you realize the acronym is WEB – to essentially mimic what Oscorp was doing for Peter without the moral ambiguity. He invites a bunch of very smart interns to come and work on the project, which will give us a nice framework for progressing a bunch of their individual stories.

Among the invitees are Amadeus Cho, who rejects it, seemingly occupying some kind of higher position at Oscorp now, but also Jean, who is revealed to be Finesse, who was working undercover at Oscorp at the behest of Daredevil and will be returning to do so at WEB, and Lonnie, who is now the fully-fledged leader of the 110th St. gang and is beginning to turn grey after his Diox-3 exposure, continuing his typical comic book arc.

The business with Nico’s amulet is barely touched on, but we do see her using it to speak with her mom, implying she’s going to be getting much more of a grip on these powers in a second season. Likewise, Otto’s future is effectively teased through some sketches in his prison cell that very clearly imply he’ll be developing into Doc Ock sooner rather than later.

But arguably the biggest reveal of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is that in this universe Peter’s father, Richard Parker, is still alive. Aunt May goes to visit him in prison, implying that she has been keeping this a secret from Peter.