In the MCU, Peter Parker’s group of friends and frenemies has been pretty consistent since 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. Peter’s best friend Ned Leeds, his eventual girlfriend MJ, and his frenemy Flash Thompson were a big part of Peter’s life throughout his trilogy of films. But they are not around in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. True, Marvel did not set the series in the Sacred Timeline of Earth-616. However, it’s an almost identical timeline, except for a few big twists, and with mostly the same characters. Even the “Do a flip!” guy on the street from Homecoming exists on this Earth. So where are Spidey’s best buds? Here’s why we haven’t seen them. At least, not yet.
The answer is (sort of) revealed in the first episode, even before the credits roll. In the MCU, Peter goes to Midtown School of Science and Technology, a special school for genius kids. In Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Peter also gets admitted to Midtown during his freshman year. Before setting foot on campus, however, an alien symbiote being destroys much of the school (and he gets his spider powers at the same time). The episode then flashes forward a few months later, with Peter and his new BFF Nico now enrolled in Rockford T. Bales High School. It’s explained that while Midtown is under repair, the school district enrolls the kids in different local high schools. And it seems like Ned, MJ, and the others simply go to school elsewhere.
This all allows for the creative team of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man to give Peter Parker a whole new supporting cast. This frees them from the constraints of repeating all the same storyline beats as the MCU Peter. But are we ever going to see Ned, MJ, and the rest? It’s still entirely possible. Eventually, Midtown will be rebuilt, and Peter and Nico will presumably be sent back to that school. And one assumes, so will Ned, MJ, and Flash. It’s possible that in the future, the two supporting casts will merge. But it’s also just as likely that the Peter Parker of this universe never meets them. Which we admit, makes us a little sad, as those are pretty great characters.
In Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, it already feels like they are going the Buffy the Vampire Slayer route with the supporting cast. Based on the comics, we know some of these characters will get powers of their own. Peter’s friend Nico Minoru, a character from the comic Runaways, will exhibit supernatural powers at some point. This would make her a take on Buffy’s witchy best friend Willow. And Lonnie Lincoln is the real name of the Spider-Man villain Tombstone in the comics. This suggests he’ll be the schoolmate who goes to the dark side, shades of the Buffy character Faith. If the Buffy template is what they’re working off of, there just might not be room for Ned and MJ. With two more seasons of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man already greenlit, we’ll just have to wait and see if Ned and MJ ever appear.
