Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Just Put a Dark Twist on One of His Best Costumes

This article contains spoilers for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

We all know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. But a recent episode of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man supposes, “What if he wasn’t?”

Throughout “Hitting the Big Time,” the fourth episode of the Disney+ series, Peter’s new mentor Norman Osborn offers a few different costumes for Pete. In one, he dons a golden suit with angled silver accoutrements, adorned with a red cape. Another switches to a more fly-based look, complete with tiny flapping wings and big purple bug-eyes. Finally, he channels his inner Batman for a look so sinister that it makes a little girl cry.

But the big moment comes at the end of the episode, when Norman gives Pete a costume he likes: a white get-up with dark blue highlights that is unmistakably meant to look like his Future Foundation suit from the comics. And that one has serious implications for the rest of the show.

All four of the outfits that Osborn gives Peter come directly from the pages of Marvel Comics. The first three were part of the Identity Crisis storyline that ran across all four Spider-Man comics that Marvel published in 1998. The stories found Spider-Man framed for murdering a low-level criminal, and adopting four new identities to continue doing good and to investigate the crime. As the golden-hued Prodigy, the buzzing Hornet, the amazing Ricochet, and the terrifying Dusk, Peter found the real baddie and cleared Spidey’s name.

Although Peter changed back into his familiar blue and red duds, the concepts proved immensely popular. Marvel quickly applied them to four new people, giving them unique origins to explain how they took on these identities, and then put them together in their own ongoing title, Slingers.

Slingers ran for just 12 issues, but the quartet continues to show up in Marvel Comics. In fact, after the death of the second Hornet Eddie McDonough, longtime Spider-Man supporting character Hobie Brown (you may know his multiversal counterpart Spider-Punk from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) became the next Hornet, finally abandoning the criminal Prowler identity he originated.

The Future Foundation costume has much larger implications, as it’s the suit that Spidey wore when he joined the Fantastic Four to replace his best pal the Human Torch, who died sacrificing himself to save the rest of the team. More than an acknowledgment of his entry into the team, a team Spidey had tried to join since 1963’s The Amazing Spider-Man #1, the suit gave Peter technology designed just for him by Reed Richards, the smartest man in the universe.

As part of the Future Foundation, Peter got to share his knowledge with the young scientists Reed had gathered for the think tank. The role gave Peter the chance to see how much younger heroes respected him, something the perpetually inferior feeling Spider-Man needed. Moreover, it placed him at the center of the Marvel Universe, acknowledging that he’s the guy who inspires everyone else.

In Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, it’s not Reed Richards who gives Peter the Future Foundation suit. It’s another famous genius, Norman Osborn. The show already pulled a similar switcharoo in the premiere, which recreated Peter’s MCU introduction in Captain America: Civil War but put Osborn in the place of Tony Stark.

Clearly, the show is setting up a terrible twist for Peter, in which Norman stabs him in the back. Putting Norman in the place of Tony Stark and now Reed Richards only makes that cut deeper, promising a stand-off between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. We don’t know when it will happen, but we do know that Spidey will have plenty of costumes to choose from.

New episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man stream each Wednesday on Disney+.

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