Warning: This article contains spoilers for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man episode 1, "Amazing Fantasy."

After the premiere of Spider-Man's origin story in live-action.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man finally gave us a glimpse at Spider-Man's MCU origin story, though this focused on a variant of the wall-crawler, rather than Tom Holland's beloved iteration. After Peter Parker's transformation into Spider-Man, a massive story that has otherwise been omitted from the MCU.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Explored A Brand-New Origin Story For Peter Parker

We Have Finally Seen Peter Parker Get Bitten By A Spider, But It Wasn't Tom Holland

In Marvel Comics' Amazing Fantasy #15 from 1962, Peter Parker was originally bitten by a radioactive spider while attending a demonstration on radioactivity at General Techtronics Laboratories East. In more modern stories, including 2000's Ultimate Spider-Man #1 in Marvel Comics, and the live action movies 2002's Spider-Man and 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man, it's a genetically-modified spider housed inside the Oscorp Industries building that enhances Peter Parker. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, however, tells a wildly different story.

In Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man episode 1, "Amazing Fantasy," we saw Peter Parker's first day at Midtown High School interrupted by Doctor Strange coming through a portal while fighting a Symbiote. Through that same portal came a sinister-looking spider that bit Parker and gifted him his abilities. This story is drastically different from any previous Spider-Man origin story, which I loved, but this just made me more curious about why Marvel Studios couldn't have come up with a new origin story for Tom Holland's Spider-Man back in 2017.

Marvel's New Spider-Man Series Challenges The Reasoning Behind The Hero Never Showing The MCU Hero's Origin Story

Marvel Could Find A New Way To Tell Spider-Man's Origin Story

Prior to the release of 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming, Kevin Feige revealed to Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man explored a very different origin story, so the MCU could have done the same.

[Spider-Man: Homecoming] will not be an origin story. But, with great power comes great responsibility. It is inherent to who [Peter Parker's] character is. But we want to reveal it in different ways and spend much more time focusing on this young high school kid in the MCU dealing with his powers. There is a young kid [already] running around New York City in a homemade version of the Spider-Man costume in the MCU, you just don’t know it yet.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man was originally planned as a prequel series for Tom Holland's Spider-Man, which would have explored his version of Peter Parker being bitten and becoming a superhero. This was soon changed, however, which means we still haven't seen how Tom Holland's Peter Parker became Spider-Man. Marvel could have taken huge creative liberties with this origin story, and didn't have to connect Peter Parker to Oscorp or even have him bitten at a science demonstration. I consider this a massive missed opportunity to tell a much-wanted and unseen MCU story.

1 Huge Missing Piece Of Spider-Man’s MCU Story Would Make His Origin Story Completely Different

Tom Holland's Peter Parker Became Spider-Man Under Very Different Circumstances To His Predecessors

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man could have easily seen Peter Parker bitten by a genetically-modified spider at Oscorp, especially since MCU newcomer Colman Domingo has now made his voice debut as Oscorp's founder, Norman Osborn. Marvel made the choice to go in a different direction, however, and I thought this was brilliant. Even so, it left me wondering why Marvel didn't go in a different direction for Tom Holland's Peter Parker, especially after 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home confirmed a very important detail about the MCU's Oscorp.

That is, it doesn't exist. Willem Dafoe's Norman Osborn was pulled to Earth-616 from Tobey Maguire's timeline in No Way Home and revealed that the MCU's Oscorp has not been established. This means that Marvel Studios wouldn't have been able to tell the same origin story for Spider-Man as previous live-action adaptations anyway, so the reasoning that the story shouldn't be repeated is practically nullified. Oscorp's absence would have forced Marvel to come up with a brand-new origin story for Spider-Man, and I just can't figure out why this opportunity wasn't taken.

I Still Think Tom Holland’s Spider-Man Can Reveal His Origin Story

It's Not Too Late For Marvel To Explore Spider-Man's Origin Story In Live-Action

Tom Holland is expected to return as Peter Parker's Spider-Man in 2026's Avengers: Doomsday and Spider-Man 4, with the latter kicking off a new trilogy of solo Spider-Man movies for the MCU. This will make the wall-crawler one of the MCU's most consistent and long-running characters, which makes me hopeful that more of his backstory might also be explored. It wouldn't take much for Tom Holland to be made to look a decade younger, which means my dream of seeing how Peter Parker became Spider-Man in the MCU could become a reality.

I'm surprised that Marvel's newest Spider-Man got bitten on-screen before the more-beloved version played by Tom Holland, so after Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, I really want the live-action Spidey to also get this honor. While the new animated series did show Parker getting bitten by a spider, him learning about his new powers and his original decision to become Spider-Man were still ignored. This gives me hope that this portion of Tom Holland's Spider-Man's story could be explored to fill in even more of these gaps.

MCU Movies

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  Captain America: Brave New World

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  Thunderbolts*

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  The Fantastic Four: First Steps

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  Avengers: Doomsday (2026)

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  Spider-Man: Brand New Day

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  Avengers: Secret Wars

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