Let’s be clear: Marvel’s live-action series are sitting there, gathering dust on Disney+, but the really good ones are the animated ones. Particularly X-Men ’97 and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which should be showing the way forward for the rest of Marvel’s slate. In fact, the studio is so happy with what they’ve achieved at a relatively low cost that they’re greenlighting seasons non-stop, prioritizing, as they promised, animated series. They know very well what they’re doing.
Swinging through Disney+
In particular, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which premiered its first season in January of last year, is already lining up its second batch of episodes for January next year. But that’s not all: Marvel has approved season 3 and the team is already working on 4. In other words, they’re going to do everything they can to avoid any more delays.
The series’ creator, Jeff Trammell, said at first that he had a four-season arc in mind, but he wouldn’t mind extending it if the series was a success. Judging by Marvel’s reaction, it has been, and then some. Whether there’ll eventually be a Spider-Man ’97 that continues the classic animated series or whether they’ll settle for not milking the franchise too hard, is anyone’s guess.
Meanwhile, Marvel Studios is continuing with its semi-secret projects: we know they’ll start shooting Avengers: Secret Wars and X-Men very soon, and then Ghost Rider. After that, we have the already confirmed Nova and, according to some, an Avengers Academy TV series. We’ll have to see. For now, and especially after the success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Marvel isn’t going anywhere.
