Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Season 1, Episode 10: If This Be My Destiny...
And so, the first season of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man ends with an... interesting twist. After ignoring the rest of the genius squad for the majority of the season, the final episode of the show takes us off of the gang wars in the street back into Oscorp for one last episode for the season.
The episode does feel like its own coda after the rather heavily-serialized past couple of episodes that dealt primarily with Scorpion and Tombstone, and we start off with a cold open involving Peter Parker's science project. Which is typical Parker luck, as usual... I don't have a whole ton to say about these scenes, but again I do note that these scenes are reasonably important to help build up the world around Peter.
We then cut off to the Oscorp internship group, where Amadeus Cho and the other interns are brought in by Norman to a secret facility where all of their projects have been hooked up to 'Project Monolith', which would make an interdimensional portal. Norman gives a whole speech about how Project Monolith would bring forth the evolution that humanity needs after recent alien threats classified as 'Avengers-level'. It's honestly the kind of thing that someone like Norman Osborn would be afraid of; not too dissimilar to the conceptual background behind Snyder-DC's Lex Luthor or Bruce Wayne.
Most of the interns object to this, and even Professor Connors isn't in the loop, but Norman gives a whole 'for the greater good' speech. Joining in is Dr. Strange, returning after the first episode. Strangely (heh), despite Peter recognizing Dr. Strange from the Midtown incident, Dr. Strange is just confused about Peter's claims.
Norman opens up the portal anyway (and to be fair, a random magician coming out of a portal isn't exactly the most convincing argument) and out of the portal emerges the Symbiote monster from the first episode. As the other supporting characters escape, Peter Parker suits up into Spider-Man and fights the Symbiote alongside Dr. Strange. They try to hold back the Symbiote, which is... not the most interesting fight even by this season's standards. But the Symbiote monster manages to hit Dr. Strange's Time Stone, which ends up causing some timeline shenanigans as Dr. Strange and the Symbiote is transported to Midtown High School several months ago.
Which is to say... we have a stable time loop! It is admittedly a bit annoying because -- through no fault of the show itself -- I wasn't sure if I'm supposed to go "oh, episode 1 Dr. Strange was from another universe in the multiverse" instead of the intended "why would he not remember?" reaction that the writers probably wanted us to have. In any case, it turns out that this explains the whole plot of episode one's origin story, as Dr. Strange and the Symbiote fights and wrecks Midtown High in the past.
While this is going on, the Oscorp genetically-modified spider from the end of last episode also gets warped into the past and, in a scene reminiscent of Into the Spider-Verse, we end up with the spider biting Peter Parker in the past, closing the time loop and retroactively giving him his powers.
After all the past scenes are done, Dr. Strange manages to wrangle the Symbiote back to the present day. Spider-Man fixes the runed machinery, opening a new wormhole. As even more Symbiotes attempt to approach the portal, Dr. Strange and Spider-Man manage to team up and push all the Symbiotes back into space, and destroy the portal for good. Alien threat averted, except, of course, a little sliver of the Symbiote that Norman would pick up later. Because of course there's a little sliver that is left behind.
And... your mileage may vary on how much you like the time loop. It was admittedly well executed, but other than the mystery in the first episode, there really isn't much that I felt was added by it. I'm also unconvinced if the changes made to Peter's backstory -- like removing Uncle Ben's death as part of the Great Power/Great Responsibility thing would make sense. But it's at least standalone and well-done within the context of this show.
What follows is a couple of scenes wrapping up the aftermath. Peter severs ties with Norman, but ends up finding another Osborn to help him -- Harry. Harry and Peter decides to set up their own little startup -- very Gen Z of him -- and try and recruit as many young talented geniuses as he, too, severs ties with Norman. The organization is called W.E.B. and they at the very least get Asha the Wakandan in their ranks, while Amadeus Cho doesn't give a shit and continues to work at Oscorp. Okay.
Meanwhile, Spider-Man gets into a bit of a talk with Dr. Strange, breaking down the Symbiote time-travel things, and Spider-Man thanks Dr. Strange that after all of the destruction caused by the Symbiote (which Strange feels super guilty about) at least something good came out of it -- his powers. There's a nice little superhero speech there, before Dr. Strange leaves Peter a bit more confident as a less toxic mentor figure than Norman is.
Norman, as mentioned before, gets a little piece of the Symbiote that he recovers for his nefarious purposes. Meanwhile, Jeanne Focault is revealed to already be Finesse and is working under Daredevil and had been an undercover agent to spy on Oscorp... which would've been a cooler twist if Focault actually had a proper presence in the show. Also a scene that kind of comes out of nowhere is Nico Minoru using her amulet to perform a magical ritual to talk to her dead mother, which... yeah, I know Nico from Runaways and I know this is where the mysterious 'I'm actually keeping a secret' scenes are leading towards, but it does feel like it comes out of nowhere.
We also check in a bit with Tombstone, who's leading the 110th although presumably in a more friendly-gang direction. Otto Octavius makes sketches of Dr. Octopus tentacles. And May Parker pays a visit to Peter's father Richard in jail, as the episode and season closes on Peter Parker, Spider-Man.
And... overall? I feel the season is all right. I don't necessarily think it's the best Spider-Man cartoon I've ever watched, not by a long shot. I also think I've made my frustrations about the sheer amount of supporting cast and changes-without-any-real-good-reason feel a bit muted, and this episode in particular does have a problem somewhat common to the MCU where a ton of foreshadowing-that-really-makes-sense-if-you-read-the-comics-beforehand is dumped at our foot. Despite that, I do appreciate just how brave and consistent the season has been. I don't think it's going to be the definitive
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- The title, "If This By My Destiny..." is a story arc written by Stan Lee, also known as the 'Master Planner Saga' -- famously remembered for showcasing a four-page scene of Spider-Man conquering his inner demons and lifting a huge chunk of heavy machinery, which has been homaged in various live-action Spider-Man adaptations.
- Across the Spider-Verse made a huge deal about how Miles Morales received his powers from a dimension-hopping spider, and why the Spider Society needed to deal with him. The fact that the spider from the first episode of YFNSM turns out to just be time-displaced instead of multiverse-displaced answers the question as to why Miguel doesn't intervene for this timeline.
- Norman rants about various alien incursions into the world, namely Thor (in Thor), the Chitauri Invasion (in The Avengers), and the symbiote attack on Midtown High, which happened in episode 1 of this series.
- Richard Parker is voiced by Josh Keaton, who previously voiced Spider-Man in the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon.
- Apparently, one of the Symbiote monster's attacks is patterned after "Symbiote Strike" from the PS5 Spider-Man 2 video game. Okay!
- Just like their meeting in the MCU, Spider-Man messes up Dr. Strange's name and gets confused about it. He also almost slips up tells Dr. Strange his real name, something that he does a lot in the MCU.
- The W.E.B. (Worldwide Engineering Brigade) borrows its name from a similar institution from the Disneyland Avengers C.A.M.P.U.S. tie-in fiction.
- Among the W.E.B. candidates on Harry's board are some familiar names from the Marvel comics: Max Dillon (Electro), Ned Leeds (Peter's best friend in the MCU; Hobgoblin in the comics), Tai Miranda and Priya Aggerwal (both allies of the Nadia Van Dyne version of Wasp in the comics), Toni Sandoval (daughter of Iron Man ally Ho Yinsen; and has taken up the mantles of Rescue and Iron Patriot), Tiberius Stone (Iron Man's friend who later founded Alchemax of Spider-Man 2099 fame), Kiden Nixon (an X-23 supporting character), Ripley Ryan (a Captain Marvel supporting character, a.k.a. the superheroine Star), and Diane Jenkins (a minor character who was mistaken as Spider-Woman).
- I can't find anything about the other three candidates -- Lee Ann Dufour, Emmy Choi and Adam Rodney.
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