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This article contains mild spoilers for “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.”
From its very first episode, “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” made it clear it would be reimagining some Spidey tenets from the ground up. This Peter Parker (Hudson Thames) still lost his Uncle Ben, but before he became Spider-Man. So, he never learned the lesson about being responsible with his great power. Worse, there’s no Tony Stark swooping in to mentor Spider-Man like in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Nope, this time Peter’s sponsor is Norman Osborn (Colman Domingo).
Domingo is stealing the show as Norman. This Mr. Osborn is more outwardly likable and friendly than usual, but Domingo leaves just a twinge of menace in his performance to make us as suspicious as we probably should be. He hasn’t done anything evil yet, but he’s been using Peter to settle his score with Otto Octavius (Hugh Dancy) and Daredevil (Charlie Cox) claimed Oscorp is hiding something. Plus, there’s a reason Norman’s business suit is green — it’s his destiny to swap it for a goblin costume sooner or later.
In the eighth and latest episode, “Tangled Web,” Peter is still reeling from a brutal battle with Mac Gargan/The Scorpion (Jonathan Medina). Norman pulls a “not angry, just disappointed” attitude with Peter, telling him he needs to push himself to his limits and beyond. Norman condenses his point into six simple words: “With great power comes great … respect.”
Clearly, that’s a spin on the classic lesson that Peter learned from Uncle Ben — you know the one.
Marvel Comics
“With great power comes great responsibility” are easily some of the most enduring words that Stan Lee ever wrote. When the psychic mutant Emma Frost peeled into Peter’s mind, they melted even her diamond-hard heart:
Marvel Comics
Not everyone is so convinced, though. See this unimpressed response from Nico Minoru’s Runaway friend Gertrude Yorkes:
Marvel Comics
Norman, too, clearly has a different take. “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” is of course banking on the viewer knowing the line so that he could twist it. The way Norman flips the sentiment fits his character (a narcissistic capitalist). He does believe in the virtue of responsibility, but for self-betterment, even and especially at the expense of others.
What great responsibility means in Spider-Man
Spider-Man adaptations vary a surprising amount when it comes to depicting Norman Osborn. Sometimes, like the Sam Raimi “Spider-Man” films, Norman (a perfectly-cast Willem Dafoe) is a flawed but decent man and father. The Goblin is a split personality; it’s Norman’s Id doing what he would want to do if not for his conscience.
Other times (including in the original comics), the Green Goblin is a mask only in the literal sense. Norman is a fundamentally evil, power-hungry man who can never be satisfied no matter how much “respect” he gets. Even though he was already a successful businessman, he became the Green Goblin to seize control of New York’s crime rackets — he’d previously conquered the world of legitimate business, so it was time for a new challenge.
Speaking of, Norman screwed over his business partners to make Oscorp into the giant it is. (In “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man,” we haven’t gotten the whole story about his falling out with Otto Octavius, just their two biased recollections of it, but …) When he first became Spider-Man, Peter only wanted to look out for himself — then his uncle died because he couldn’t be bothered stopping a robber. Peter thusly resolved he would only use his powers to help others, while Norman never stopped seeing others as stepping stones.
Norman teaching Peter that he should strive for “great respect” is the latest iteration on Osborn trying to make Peter into his heir, as he has in several past Spider-Man stories. Norman sees Peter as an exceptional young man, one who has the qualities — intelligence, determination, resourcefulness — that Norman proudly holds himself to, and which his true son Harry often lacks.
Why Norman Osborn is Peter Parker’s perfect villain
Going back to Raimi’s first “Spider-Man” film; Norman smiles when he first meets Peter, marveling that the boy has read his research papers and understood them. You can see that Harry (James Franco) has never expressed that sort of interest in Norman’s work. When the Goblin takes over, he tries to convince Spider-Man that he should stop looking out for the little guy:
“Here’s the real truth: there are eight million people in this city. And those teeming masses exist for the sole purpose of lifting the few exceptional people onto their shoulders. You, me? We’re exceptional.”
This is the philosophy of Objectivism, pioneered by Ayn Rand — it’s no surprise that Norman would be a fan of hers. If you know something about the history of Spider-Man, though, this feels extra-pointed. Stan Lee, a Rand fan, introduced her writing to “Amazing Spider-Man” artist Steve Ditko (per the graphic biography “Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko”). Ditko, a recluse and stubborn artist who abruptly quit drawing Spider-Man after #38, doubled down as an objectivist, which preaches that artists should not compromise their work for mediocre managers (see: “The Fountainhead”).
So, both of the men who created Spider-Man saw the “Virtue of Selfishness” — yet “Spider-Man” the movie put those words in the villain’s mouth. It shows how there’s no one way to interpret what “great responsibility” means, and that Spider-Man and the Green Goblin are opposites because they take different readings of it.
“Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” is streaming on Disney+. The Season 1 finale debuts on February 19, 2025.