The Tragedy of The Spectacular Spider-Man

The fact that this show took one of the most shocking and well known comic reveals of all time, in the Green Goblin's true identity, and actually made it shocking again WITHOUT changing the identity is beyond impressive.

I always loved the portrayal of Mary Jane in this cartoon. She’s the closest any of her interpretations gets to the 60s/70s MJ from the comics

Fun Fact: Even though a lot of folk associate Tombstone with Keith David, Keith only voiced him in the very first episode of the show. Every appearance of Tombstone after that was Kevin Michael Richardson doing a Keith David impression. And the man is so good at his job that most fans never noticed it was a different guy.

You know what I really love about Liz? She was the only one to understand that the obsesion of Peter wasn't because he was a jerk, but because he was actually very poor and was trying to suppor hus family. We as an audience understand that he does it to be Spiderman, but only Liz puts herself on his place and decides to support him as he is going through some heavy stuff

Greg Weisman actually said recently that there were never plans to kill Gwen in the show itself. He knows that goes against the mythology. He went on to say that IF they decided that Gwen was going to die, it wouldn’t have happened until the movies set after the end of the show, where Peter and the Gang are in college, because they would be more mature then, and the writers could give the death the gravitas and weight it deserves. Also, Venom would have redeemed himself and possibly gotten his own spin off series. The Hobgoblin would have been the main villain of season 3, and Norman’s plot line wouldn’t have been revisited until season 4. Such a shame that this show can’t be resurrected like young justice. But who knows, maybe Freshman year will carry on the same spirit.

It's still impressive how efficiently this show managed to adapted so much of the Spidey mythos in such a short time. This show is in a special tier.

I liked that this series gave a true reason for Jameson's contempt for Spider-Man and masked heroes. His son was a true hero who saved his crew with no powers. He opted to run that as his front page instead of more Spider-Man stuff and when Peter sold the pictures to the Globe (rival paper) their issue overshadowed his son's story and that upset him. He gave Peter an exclusive deal to photograph Spider-Man only for the Bugle so he could smear his name every chance he got.

This show still has my favorite defeat of the Symbiote, with Peter outplaying it by actually being really smart about what it wants, and how it could exploit it, while also giving us a really great piece of dialogue: "That's what it wants, right? A reunion with its first love..." "The symbiote's found a better partner in me!" "'Me'? Not 'us'?"

There's a reason why Spectacular Spider-Man is praised as one of the greatest Spider-Man adaptations OF ALL TIME, it's such a shame that it was cut short...

The best moment flash had in the show was when he confronted Peter during the symbiote suit arc. The fact that he knew something was up with Peter and that he actually did something to fix it really made me respect him. He is definitely one of my favorite characters in the series.

Honestly, since they brought Spectacular Spiderman back in the spiderverse movie, even for just a quick cameo, theres definitely some hope for a possible continuation of the show

I honestly found Eddy's turn for revenge believable because even though he knew Peter was Spirder-man he still had SO much anger towards Peter and the symbiote focused on that and enhanced it. Making his revenge more believable.

one of my favorite parts you didn’t mention was how captain stacy knew peter was spider-man but just never talked about it he just kept hinting at it and helping peter out in ways especially the detective classes

Are we not gonna talk about eddie's 400IQ play to get back the symbiote suit?

Hobie Brown (the original prowler from the comics) is in this and actually has no lines (he's constantly interrupted in every episode he's in) until the final episode, where he speaks on stage. They definitely had some plans with him! I also LOVED how they integrated Black Cat's father into Peter's origin story, giving them a dynamic moral conflict. This show does every character so much justice, it's spectacular.

"They make me love Liz and Peter together to the point where I was actually upset when they break up", you hit the nail on the head right there with my biggest issue with this show. Not only do Liz and Peter have such great chemistry together that I can't help but want to see them together, but the chemistry between them is so good, I was frequently disappointed when villains would show up and the scenes with Liz would have to stop so that Spider-Man could fight the bad guys. Spectacular Spider-Man could have just been a slice-of-life show about Peter and Liz dating, and it'd still be my favorite Spider-Man cartoon, they're that fun together.

Something I really love about Spider-Man as a whole is Jameson and Peter's relationship. While Jameson hates Spider-Man with a passion, he often views Peter as a sort of son. And the reason I like that dynamic with Jameson is because it makes for great stories. While Jameson is praising Peter for his skills as a photographer in his own way, he's also slandering his alter-ego. I don't read a lot of comics, but I saw a snippet of one where Peter reveals his identity to Jameson and it causes Jameson to rethink his entire view on Spider-Man. Because that's THE best kind of J.J. Jameson.

There were several cameos from future villains before they became villains. We saw Cletus Kasady in a group therapy session at Ravencroft, Morris Bench was a demolitions expert that Spider-Man saved, Miles Warren likely would’ve become Jackal and they might’ve adapted the clone saga in some way, Roderick Kingsley was one of the crime lords in the gang war arc and he probably would’ve become Hobgoblin, We also heard Norman on the phone with Mac Gargan in the season 2 finale. Sony really fumbled the bag with this show HARD and it’s a damn shame these storylines were never followed up on.

You know the cool thing about MJ? The creators talked on a podcast about the show and how MJ, like in the comics, knew Peter was Spidey since day one. They were neighbors, Afterall. She'd see him in his suit crawling to his room window, unmasked even. She just wanted to know the person under the mask before saying anything. It's why out of most people, she's the most understanding when peter up and disappears during anything important, like the Carnival, Homecoming dance, Valentine's dinner, even when Mark was on fire. She certainly knows what she's talking about when she defends him from Eddie, after that "date". She knows his secret, like Captain Stacy Edit: turns out creators didnt talk about it on a podcast my bad 🤦‍♂️ It's only chalked up to a theory The only comic accurate thing they did was give her the same entrance in the show during the homecoming episode, as her first appearance in the comics

My hope is that now that it's on Disney+, they'll see how much it is outperforming every other Spider-man show, they might try to revive the show.