Peter Parker/Spider-Man in 'Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
(Disney+)

‘He needs to feel like a teenager behind that mask’: ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’ showrunner discusses the great catalog of Spidey characters

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man swung onto Disney+ on January 29 and received glowing reviews from Spidey fans. People are especially impressed by all the characters who’ve been updated for a new generation while maintaining the core traits that made them so popular.

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Showrunner Jeff Trammell loves them all just as much as we do. In a new interview with The Mary Sue, he went into fanboy mode as he discussed Spider-Man and his supporting cast.

He was especially taken with Lonnie Lincoln, one of the standouts of the show’s premiere episodes. This version of Lonnie is a friendly football star, but the seeds are being sown for his transformation into the villain Tombstone. Trammell enjoyed “peeling him back.”

“I really found a newfound love for Lonnie Lincoln,” Trammell shared. He wasn’t the only one!

But of course, Lonnie shares the screen with multiple other Marvel characters, some of them fairly obscure to the casual Spidey fan. “I was almost surprised by how much [Marvel] were like, ‘Yeah, you can do that,’” Trammell said. “We got to a point where I was like, ‘Okay, so it’d be really cool if we could use Daredevil here,’ and they’re like ‘Yeah, you can.’” Trammell never thought he’d actually get Charlie Cox back to voice the character—but even that was possible. Marvel was “super supportive” about everything Trammell wanted to do.

Where’s Uncle Ben?

The Mary Sue’s Rachel Leishman had one question for Trammell that the whole Internet™ wants to know the answer to: What happened to this continuity’s Ben Parker? Unlike in most other takes on the Spider-Man legend, Ben is dead in this story before Peter gets bitten by the spider.

“I think there are little context clues there for what happened to Ben,” Trammell said. “I will also say that I didn’t want it to be a distraction, but I do want it to be a thing that we as the viewer are curious about, and we as the storytellers can really delve into. So I’ll say, you might not know what happened to Uncle Ben, but as the show goes on, there will be many opportunities  to learn more about Ben … and how his role as a character affected Peter’s growth over the years.” He cut himself off before revealing any spoilers.

TMS also asked Trammell about the importance of Spider-Man’s youth. He may be a fairly accomplished hero, but he’s still a teenage boy with teenage boy problems. “That was immensely important to me,” Trammell said, “It’s like when certain things happen to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, I am like ‘Oh no! He’s just a kid!’ … He needs to feel like a teenager behind that mask.”

Trammell mused on how Peter’s young age only adds to his heroics. “At the end of the day, Peter is putting the interests of his community well before the interests of himself. And that’s a heavy burden.”

But without that heavy burden, he just wouldn’t be the Peter Parker we all know and love.


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Author
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Sarah Barrett
Sarah Barrett (she/her) is a freelance writer with The Mary Sue who has been working in journalism since 2014. She loves to write about movies, even the bad ones. (Especially the bad ones.) The Raimi Spider-Man trilogy and the Star Wars prequels changed her life in many interesting ways. She lives in one of the very, very few good parts of England.