Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man S01E05 Review: Future Foundation

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Season 1, Episode 5: The Unicorn, Unleashed!

This episode slows down a bit with the rapid-fire character introductions, but I think it's around this point that the show has basically introduced everyone it wants to. I would still argue that some of them could've benefited from being more drip-fed to us over a couple of episodes, but eh. 

Anyway, realizing that Norman is also part of the "having to juggle many things in his daily routine" club, Harry ends up being drafted into the little Spider-Team, taking over the role as the "dude at the chair desk". Harry is characterized as being bubbly and overly-excitable, but often forgets just how privileged he is and ends up accidentally coming off as being a bit of an ass. But he's actually nice! That's a nice portrayal, and with various newer adaptations writing out Harry (TASM made him a villain almost from the get-go; the PS4 game had him offscreen; and he's the only major Peter Parker supporting cast to not have shown up in the MCU) it's nicely refreshing to see him as 'Peter's best friend' again. 

Our villain of the week is Mila Masaryk from the previous episode's Russian gang, who, despite seemingly abandoning her crew last episode, actually made good on her promise to come back. She gets some supervillain technology from Otto Octavius, who delivers a perfect 180 when he switches from "vendor trying to sell his stuff" to "indignant intellectual being pissed at the plebians". It's a very classic Otto thing to do, and it's a nice set-up for the villain to keep being a major player in the series. And honestly, as much as I adore Alfred Molina's more noble portrayal, this return to the egocentric dipshit of the oldest comics is a nice take on the character. 

Mila goes off to free her teammates from the prison, and her allies christen her the name 'Unicorn' after her helmet's ability to shoot laser beams from her forehead. Unicorn gets to be probably the first minor villain to take up a significant amount of the episode's actual screentime, and she ends up being the villain for the final act of the episode. The fight itself is fine, with the nice little twist at the end that the Unicorn is fully willing to open fire on her teammate Mikhail (the future Rhino) with the justification that Spider-Man is 'too soft' and will jump in the way. Rather predictably, this teammate-endangerment disgusts Mikhail so much that he teams up with Spider-Man, at least to the point that Mila is taken out. A nice little villain-of-the-week, while also building up the Rhino for actually being a character we care about in the future as someone with a much more noble streak of honour within. 

Speaking of building up characters, Nico has been a constant presence over the last couple of episodes, being Peter's perky little friend who just wants her geek best friend to actually show up for geeky stuff. Nico is also extremely distrustful of Oscorp and Harry Osborn, not liking big corporations and whatnot... which throws a huge wrench into Peter's life-juggling. The episode ends with Peter rushing to a movie night with Nico... but brings Harry along. Friend group hijinks ahoy, I suppose. 

Lonnie, meanwhile, gets alienated further and further from the people in his life. Being the star player of the school football team, and being a good boyfriend isn't exactly things that the 110th Gang cares about, especially when they expect Lonnie to be able to answer calls immediately and rush to the gang hideout whenever the boss demands. Again, it's a lot of gaslighting (with one of the 110th, Bulldozer, actually showing up with a car near the school as a none-too-subtle threat) to force Lonnie to participate in the upcoming gang fight against the Scorpions and their leader, Mac Gargan. Who is as much of a lunatic as his comic-book counterpart is! 

And I guess Stockholm Syndrome is starting to set in, because in the chaos of the fight, an overwhelmed Lonnie sees Mac Gargan about to stab Big Ben... and charges in and rescues his boss. This earns him a place within the gang and a new nickname, "Tombstone". Again, I wasn't particularly enthused about this focus on Lonnie initially, but I do really like the honestly quite sinister storytelling as Lonnie finds himself more and more comfortable by what's essentially his abusers. 

Pretty interesting buildup episode, again, while also introducing some nice relationships and dynamics among our characters (Lonnie/Big Ben; Peter/Harry; the Rhino; Doc Ock). Again, I might still have some reservations about the animation style, but this is a pretty solid episode in this season as we reach the halfway point. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Vincent Patilio, Otto's assistant, is the frog-themed supervillain Leapfrog in the comics. He previously appeared in the MCU in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. 
• Dr. Octopus uses his traditional comic book green-and-orange jumpsuit costume, as opposed to the 'modernized' trenchcoat popularized by Spider-Man 2. 
• Harry using the term "dude at the desk" is a riff on MCU Ned constantly using the terminology of "dude in the chair" from Spider-Man: Homecoming. 
• Mikhail briefly notes that Mila looks like a 'rhino' with the horn in her helmet, a nod to his comic-book counterpart's iconic Rhino alter-ego. 
• Nico snarks that Harry would become a politician who can win the election with his father's money, which is depicted in some alternate univreses in the comics.