Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Showrunner Explains Why (& When) It Was Removed From the Sacred Timeline

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is the latest animated series on Disney+ and there’s been a lot of talk about where the show takes place in the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe. The original plan for the series was that it was going to take place before the events of Captain America: Civil War, wherein Peter Parker / Spider-Man made his grand debut. Initially called Spider-Man: Freshman Year (with the second season titled Spider-Man: Sophomore Year), the show was going to explore Peter’s early days as Spider-Man leading up to his recruitment into the Avengers by Tony Stark. While the series will still chronicle Peter’s formative days as a superhero, it will no longer be set in the “Sacred Timeline,” and instead take place in its own universe.

ComicBook sat down with the series’ showrunner Jeff Trammell who explained the creative team’s decision to set Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man outside of the MCU’s “Sacred Timeline.” Trammell noted that despite the announcement, they quickly decided that this series should be its own thing.

“Very early on (in the process),” Trammell said. “I would say within the first two months of just coming up with the story, we were like, ‘Well, we’re very limited here. Let’s move it over, out of the ‘Sacred Timeline,’ gives us a bit more freedom.”

The showrunner makes a good point; the MCU has become far more expansive since the series was announced, which means that there are now more restrictions on which characters and storylines can be referenced within the series in a way that makes narrative sense. Trammell elaborated on this idea, stating that, “So, if we want to tell a show that’s not only fun and engaging, but not kind of like, ‘Well, this person can’t find out because they find out in Homecoming’ or, ‘We can’t do this grand scale thing because people would have noticed that by now.’ It really freed us up. But also allows us to…pick and choose the moments of the MCU continuity that we do want to address.”

[RELATED: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Almost Included Another Netflix Marvel Character]

However, even though the series takes place in a separate continuity, it will still be informed by the MCU. For example, Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio will reprise their respective characters, Matt Murdock / Daredevil and Wilson Fisk / Kingpin. There are also several other characters who’ve appeared in the MCU who will show up in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, including Doctor Strange, Iron Man, and Mac Gargan / Scorpion.

Trammell told ComicBook that the series will also take some visual cues from the beloved Steve Ditko run from the 1960s while mixing in some elements from the modern MCU style. “We wanted definitely to pay homage to the classic Ditko look and for a lot of the characters – the more Spider-Man-centric characters – we do for the most part do that, and for others, we wanted to find a mixture. So, for example, we want to pull from the movie aesthetic while painting it through our lens a bit.”

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man will be available to watch on Disney+ this week, with new episodes dropping weekly.