Marvel Animation Has a Massive Year Ahead of It
Building off of the success of X-Men ’97 and What If…? Season 3, Marvel Animation is set to return in 2025 with three new animated series.
The fun will kick off on January 29, when Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man debuts, and will continue with the release of Eyes of Wakanda on August 6 and, finally, Marel Zombies on October 3. Needless to say, it is going to be a great year for Marvel fans.


Image: Marvel.com
Ahead of the release of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Marvel is sharing a sneak peek at what it has in store for fans.
‘Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man will debut on January 29 on Disney+.
The animated series will follow Peter Parker as he tries to balance his life as a crime fighter with the everyday pressures of being a high school student.


Photo: Marvel
For head writer Jeff Trammell, an avid comic book reader who fell in love with the Spider-Man animated series from the 1990s, working on the new show was a dream come true.
By setting the series outside of the MCU, the Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man team also got to explore other sides of Peter Parker.


Photo: Marvel
“We have the privilege of following the movies and shows, so we pay homage to them as well as the comics,” Trammell said. “And we build on things we’ve seen before but present them in new ways. We use those expectations to our advantage and turn things away from where you might expect. I’m excited for people to see new twists on classic characters, and I’m also excited to introduce characters that aren’t normally featured in Spider-Man stories.”
The upcoming series was initially titled Spider-Man: Freshman Year. However, when the show’s creators realized they were building a wider world, the name was changed.


Photo: Illuminerdi
“There’s a reason why we changed the title to Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. It’s about the neighborhood. It’s an ensemble show. Every character is well-defined and has amazing arcs, from Peter and Nico to Lonnie and Pearl,” Brad Winderbaum, Marvel’s Head of Animation explained.


Photo: Marvel
“You’re going to see some familiar faces — and if you’re a fan of Chameleon, you’re going to see a few of his faces,” Trammell joked. “You’re also going to see Scorpion, as well as a few characters who may seem new, like Speed Demon or Butane. We have a huge rogues gallery to play with, and so we’re looking forward to putting some of them in the forefront.”
‘Eyes of Wakanda’
While Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man will be set outside the MCU, Eyes of Wakanda will occur on the Sacred Timeline.
The four-episode series will tell the story of the Hatut Zaraze, Wakandan warriors who go on global missions to retrieve Vibranium artifacts.
“This has been a long time coming,” showrunner Todd Harris said. “The story has been stewing for a long time in my head. I’m a big believer in what Wakanda represents to mankind as a place that’s untethered by expansion. It has drawn a line — a line it won’t cross and it won’t let anybody else cross.”


Photo: Marvel
Because the Eyes of Wakanda story will take place over centuries and span the globe, animation was the perfect medium for bringing the story to life.
“Animation is the ultimate equalizer of locations,” Harris explained “Egypt costs just as much as New York City, and the moon costs just as much as Ohio. Filming around the globe has inherent limitations that we just don’t have in animation. That freedom allowed us to reimagine an idealized version of an era that’s unaffected by human history.”


Photo: Marvel
Eyes of Wakanda will debut on August 6.
‘Marvel Zombies
Last but not least, we have Marvel Zombies.
A spinoff of What…If?, the upcoming animated series will imagine a world where a few surviving Marvel heros must survive a zombie apocalypse and find a cure to save humanity.
“Brad and Kevin loved the What If…? episode so much. They were like, ‘We need more zombies!’” showrunner Bryan Andrews recalled. “They said, ‘Let’s do a sequel to that episode — but let’s do four episodes, like a mini-movie event.’ So, we’re upping the ante.”


Marvel Zombies. Photo: Marvel
As Marvel Zombies will be the studio’s first animated series to be rated TV-MA, the show’s team was able to flex their muscles.
“It’s TV-MA, so we don’t have to pull punches,” Andrews continued. “We can be a little bit more hardcore. We go for the throat — no pun intended. It’s pretty wild, pretty out there.”


Photo: IMDB
While Marvel Zombies will have plenty of violence, according to Winderbaum, it also has heart.
“In many ways, animation is the most direct access you’ll ever have to a filmmaker’s imagination. If you can conjure it in your mind, you can put it onscreen. Marvel Zombies is proof of that,” Winderbaum said. “It’s not just a zombie story, it’s a sweeping adventure. One with themes of hope and despair, and that’s what you want from a rich zombie story.”

Marvel Zombies. Photo: IMDB
Like What If…?, Marvel Zombies will see many of the MCU’s most prominent stars return. Among those lending their voice talents to the show are Awkwafina, David Harbour, Simu Liu, Elizabeth Olsen, Randall Park, Florence Pugh, Hailee Steinfeld, Dominique Thorne, and Iman Vellani.


Photo: Marvel
Marvel Zombies will arrive on October 3.
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