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Almost 30 years ago, Joss Whedon turned the just-okay movie he wrote — but wasn’t happy with — into an exemplary, game-changing TV show that would influence dozens of sci-fi and fantasy projects to come while also elevating genre TV as a whole. Now Buffy the Vampire Slayer is said to be getting the legacy sequel treatment, with Variety reporting that Sarah Michelle Gellar is in final talks to reprise her role as Buffy Summers in a revival at Hulu.

With this in mind, we’ve decided to revisit the series and pluck out the 15 best episodes of this unexpectedly moving, thrilling, funny, and socially aware series. Debuting on the WB network on March 10, 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed the world that triumphant television could be made from stories featuring a teenage girl battling vampires, demons, and other assorted things that go bump in the night.

The show’s ensemble would help redefine the notion of a ragtag team while giving us teen, and eventually college-age, angst and anxiety amid the backdrop of a perpetually nigh apocalypse.

To celebrate the possible return of this peerless series, we’re looking at the best from the original show. These episodes are the cream of the crop when it comes to Buffy and the “Scooby Gang” traversing absurd comedy, stark drama, and everything in between. Note: We cheated a bit here and did the whole “counting two-parters as one” thing. So here’s the best o’ “beep me, bite me” Buffy!

15. “Doppelgangland” (Season 3, Episode 16)

A ferociously fun follow-up to “The Wish” (which we’ll get to), “Doppelgangland” brings Willow’s depraved, evil vampire double into the real world after ex-vengeance demon Anya dabbles with magic she shouldn’t in a desperate attempt to get her powers back. Considering how dark things get for Willow in later seasons, “Doppelgangland” acts like a jubilant primer.

14. “Chosen” (Season 7, Episode 21)

Buffy’s series finale featured a brawl to win it all, a Slayer squad showdown with the First Evil. Sacrifices were made as bodies fell in this final episode, all leading to a glorious victory for Buffy Summers, who’d become overwhelmed and weary thanks to her thankless world-saving destiny. “Chosen” wasn’t as strong a showing as series spin-off Angel’s finale, with its Hail Mary efforts, but it still made for a strong finish, its pyrrhic triumph offering up more peace and optimism in the face of relentless darkness.

13. “Something Blue” (Season 4, Episode 9)

A rather hilarious episode, “Something Blue” offers up another Willow spell-gone-wrong, this time making every casual snarky thing she says become literally true. As Willow tries to climb out of her depressive shell in the wake of a break up, the Scooby Gang gets thrown into a tailspin as Giles loses his sight, Xander becomes an actual “demon magnet,” and the Buffy/Spike ship gets kicked into high gear with an impromptu (magical) marriage proposal.

12. “Tabula Rasa” (Season 6, Episode 8)

All of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s strengths as a series get a fabulous spotlight in “Tabula Rasa,” as jokes and japes mix with trauma and torment. Another blundered spell casts amnesia on all our heroes in a strikingly silly episode that shines bright in the midst of a season filled with a lot of weight and darkness. It’s a great installment that balances all the characters nicely while also showing how far Willow will go to try to use magic to fix her life — you know, before she goes way too far with it.

11. “Restless” (Season 4, Episode 22)

One of Buffy’s most unique episodes — made even more bizarre by the fact that it’s the Season 4 finale — “Restless” is a trippy, dream-filled chapter that bucks the trend of having a final “Big Bad” battle. It’s a beautiful look at the core characters, filled with both clever callbacks and fun foreshadowing. With its surrealist, self-reflective take, and with super-soldier Adam dispatched the week before, “Restless” focuses on the story’s four central heroes as they dream, confronting their specific fears while also being stalked by the world’s First Slayer.

10. “Conversations With Dead People” (Season 7, Episode 7)

This spectacular entry from the seventh and final season featured several different stories (though none of them containing Xander or Anya) all taking place during one fateful night in Sunnydale. Buffy ran into an old high school chum (and recently sired vampire) in a graveyard, Dawn communicated with her late mother, Spike picked up some “food” at a bar, and Willow received a frightful message from The First.

9. “The Gift” (Season 5, Episode 22)

Season 5’s fierce finale featured an all-out Scooby Gang battle with Hell god Glorificus — AKA Glory — and marked the second time that Buffy, who’d previously learned in a dream state that her “gift was death,” sacrificed herself for the sake of stopping a cataclysm — choosing here to die in the place of her retconned younger sister Dawn. Like her epitaph read, “She Saved the World. A Lot.”

8. “Graduation Day, Parts 1 & 2” (Season 3, Episodes 21 and 22)

For a series that, initially, had a lot to do with “surviving high school,” Sunnydale High surely wasn’t going to survive the graduating class of 1999. Not with Mayor Wilkins having dire designs on turning into a massive snake demon and eating everyone at the commencement ceremony. “Graduation Day” Parts 1 and 2 — whose second half was delayed for two months due to the tragic Columbine massacre — featured Buffy battling and besting Faith, Willow kissing Oz, Wesley kissing Cordelia, Angel drinking from Buffy (to save his life), and a kickass final battle that incorporated Buffy’s besieged classmates.

7. “Passion” (Season 2, Episode 17)

In what would become Buffy’s first unsettlingly traumatic episode (of many to come), evil Angel — in the form of Angelus reborn, playing the role of a demented ex — methodically stalked the Scooby Gang and ultimately took the life of Giles’ love, Jenny Calendar. Giles, out for savage vengeance, then went rogue and took the fight to Angel. “Passion” stands as one of the show’s first ventures into truly dark territory, creating a “you’ll always remember where you were when you watched it” moment for an entire generation.

6. “The Wish” (Season 3, Episode 9)

A spiraling Cordelia experiences an alternate timeline vampire apocalypse after she meets Anya (a stealth vengeance demon) and wishes that Buffy had never arrived in town. After Cordelia is killed mid-way through her own story, it’s then up to Giles to figure out if the reality hellscape he’s in was caused by a spell — a spell that can be undone. “The Wish” took us on a haunting and fun journey filled with evil Sunnydale-2 doppelgängers and a final battle featuring all our main characters killing each other.

5. “Innocence” (Season 2, Episode 14)

In a truly game-changing episode, Buffy receives the ultimate awful birthday gift when she discovers that Angel, having slept with her and experienced a “moment of true happiness,” has reverted back to being a soulless, psycho vampire thanks to an age-old gypsy curse. “Innocence” was a relentless and heart-breaking affair that saw a girl experience the mirrored horror of seeing her boyfriend change and become abusive after sex. Oh, and in the “there was still fun to be had” category, Buffy blew up the supposedly “no weapon forged can kill him” Judge with a freakin’ rocket launcher!

4. “Hush” (Season 4, Episode 10)

In “Hush,” Willow met Tara for the first time — and it’s a good thing she did because their shared-power spells sure came in handy when fending off the TERRIFYING VOICE-STEALING HEART-CARVING GENTLEMEN! Yes, in a mostly dialogue-free episode of Buffy, Joss Whedon gave us a floating, golf-clapping unforgettable quartet of folklore ghouls who magically silence a town before they collect innocent hearts. It isn’t the “heaviest” episode of Buffy, but it’s one of the creepiest and fun outings the show ever produced.

3. “Once More, With Feeling” (Season 6, Episode 7)

In Season 6, with Joyce gone, Buffy being unintentionally ripped out of heaven, and Willow’s obsession with spell-casting crossing certain ethical boundaries, the Scoobies were in a bit of disarray. There was a lot of tension. Many secrets. So what better time to have everyone break into song? Songs that specifically reveal the secrets they were desperately hiding from one another! Well, you can thank Sweet the Songster Demon for this chapter’s magical town takeover in a late-in-the-series-run musical episode that became an insta-classic.

2. “Becoming, Parts 1 & 2” (Season 2, Episodes 21 and 22)

In this one-two gut punch of season finale excellence, Buffy had to choose between restoring Angel’s soul or saving the world from an awakened demon determined to suck everybody into Hell. Peppered with flashbacks to Angel’s early beginnings — from sired vampire to getting cursed with a human soul — that would help set the stage for his own eventual spinoff, “Becoming” solidified Buffy’s second season as arguably its best. Especially the wrenching finish that featured Buffy having to kill her love just as he was cured of his evilness.

1. “The Body” (Season 5, Episode 16)

In a “very special episode”-styled installment, Joss Whedon drew upon some of his own life experiences for the superb, soul-crushing “The Body,” in which Buffy experienced a tragedy of non-supernatural origins. Buffy and her team had experienced death in many ways before, but nothing this random or unpredictable. In other words, nothing this real. “The Body” may be somewhat of an outlier in the Buffy-verse in terms of overall style and tone, but its attempt to capture the shocking and un-romantic nature of mortality was riveting.

What’s your favorite Buffy episode? Vote in our poll and comment below!

IGN Fan Fest is back for it’s fifth year! All next week, we’ll be sharing exclusive reveals, trailers, gameplay, deep dives, and interviews with the people behind your favorite movies, shows, games, comics, and anime.

For 2025, there will be livestreams every day of the week, beginning Monday, February 24 with the ID@Xbox showcase, and concluding on Friday, February 28 with everything movies, shows, and comics. Each showcase will be premiered across IGN platforms, with even more exclusive content publishing on IGN.com. The full schedule and how to watch the reveals live each day, can be found below.

IGN Fan Fest 2025 Daily Schedule

Monday February 24

10am PT – ID@Xbox Showcase including previews of games from studios like:

• 11 Bit
• BigFan
• Critical Reflex
• Daedalic
• Game Source Entertainment
• No More Robots
• Panic
• Playstack
• Raw Fury
• Thunder Lotus
• Cult Games
• Team17
• Curve
• Akupara Games
• Don’t Nod

Plus, looks at new games throughout the day, including:

• Monster Hunter Wilds
• Despelote

Tuesday, February 25

10am PT – Horror Showcase featuring:

• The Monkey
• The Walking Dead: Dead City
• Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches
• In the Lost Lands
• Fear Street: Prom Queen
• Constatine
• The Last Breath
• Until Dawn
• The Alters
• Plus looks at several new unannounced games

Also, later in the day we’ll see exclusive reveals from:

• Sonic the Hedgehog Comics
• Heartworm
• The War of the Worlds: Siberia
• Pathologic 3
• Sonic the Hedgehog Comics Article
• It Was You
• Total Chaos

Wednesday, February 26

10am PT – Anime Showcase featuring:

• Fire Force Season 3
• Ishura
• Medalist
• The Apothecary Diaries
• The Beginning After the End
• Promise Mascot Agency
• The First Berserker: Khazan
• Bleach Rebirth of Souls
• Star of Providence
• Devil May Cry
• A special announcement from J-pop superstar Ado
• And more!

Plus, throughout the day we’ll have even more reveals from:

• Survivor Season 48
• Daredevil: Born Again
• Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus
• The Hidden Ones
• All System Dance
• Starlight Re:Volver

Thursday, February 27

10am PT – A huge Games Showcase featuring:

• Assassin’s Creed Shadows
• WWE 2K25
• Prologue
• Gex Trilogy
• Brawlhalla
• AtomFall
• Alien: Rogue Incursion
• WWE 2K25 Clip
• Frag Punk
• Train Sim World 5
• Trailblazers: Into the March
• Cash Cleaner Simulator
• PlayerUnknown Prologue
• CRKD
• Stern Pinball

Then, later in the day we’ll have even more reveals from:

• Don’t Stop Girlypop!
• Doctor Who: Fifteenth Doctor
• Don’t Wake the Beast
• Lost Odyssey
• And more!

Friday, February 28

10am – We’re celebrating all things entertainment with a grand finale livestream featuring:

• Death Of A Unicorn
• Mickey 17
• The Surfer
• Novocaine
• A Thousand Blows
• Universal Studios Fan Fest Nights
• Survivor
• Mythic Quest
• Side Quest
• TMNT Comics
• McFarlane Toys:
• The White Lotus
• Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza
• DC Dark Legion
• Daredevil: Born Again
• And more surprises!

Plus, we’ll have more exclusive reveals throughout the day, including:

• Sand
• Esoteric Ebb
• Cairn
• The Relic: The First Guardian
• The Arch Project

How to Watch IGN Fan Fest 2025

IGN Fan Fest kicks off each day at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST, from February 24 – 28, 2025. Below, you can find all the places to watch the event, including IGN.com, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, and more:

• IGN.com (homepage)
• IGN’s YouTube Channel
• IGN’s YouTube – ASL version
• IGN’s Twitch Channel
• IGN’s Facebook Channel
• IGN’s Twitter
• Steam Fan Fest Page
• IGN’s iOS App
• IGN’s Android App
• IGN’s PlayStation 4 App
• IGN App for Android TV
• IGN for Amazon Fire TV
• IGN 1 on Amazon Fire TV
• Pluto TV

This is Fan Fest’s biggest year yet, with stars including Keanu Reeves, Jenna Ortega, Paul Rudd, Alexandra Daddario, and Rob McElhenney to George R.R. Martin, Stephen King, Bong Joon-ho, Paul. W. S. Anderson, Ashley Burch, and so many more. Check out our full list of everyone you can expect to see at Fan Fest this year, and let us know who you are most excited for in the comments!

Presidents’ Day might be over, but most of the deals from the Dell Presidents’ Day Sale are still available for a bit longer. This includes products from Dell, Dell Small Business, and Alienware. This is usually one of Dell’s biggest sale events of the entire year, rivalling deals we see during Back to School and Black Friday, both of which are months away. This year, there are better discounts to be found on the gaming laptops over the prebuilt desktops. The best deals right now are on the Alienware m-series and slim x-series gaming laptops.

Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 4090 Gaming PC

Alienware Aurora R16 RTX 4070 Ti Super Gaming PC

Alienware m16 Gaming Laptops

Alienware x16 R2 Gaming Laptops

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Dell G-Series Gaming Laptops

Microsoft has announced a new generative AI model designed for gameplay ideation.

The company detailed what it calls the first World and Human Action Model (WHAM). The WHAM, Katja Hofmann, Senior Principal Research Manager and lead of the Microsoft Research Game Intelligence team, said in a blog post, is a generative AI model of a video game that can generate game visuals, controller actions, or both.

Microsoft calls this generative AI model Muse, which was developed by the Microsoft Research Game Intelligence and Teachable AI Experiences (Tai X) teams in collaboration with Hellblade developer Ninja Theory. It’s open sourcing the weights and sample data and making the executable available for the WHAM Demonstrator — a concept prototype that provides a visual interface for interacting with WHAM models and multiple ways of prompting the models.

The company provided a number of gameplay clips showing what Muse is capable of. Currently, the model can generate “complex gameplay sequences that are consistent over several minutes” just by prompting the model with 10 initial frames (one second) of human gameplay and the controller actions of the whole play sequence.

The game used to train Muse was Ninja Theory’s 2020 multiplayer game Bleeding Edge. “We worked closely with our colleagues at Ninja Theory and with Microsoft compliance teams to ensure that the data was collected ethically and used responsibly for research purposes,” Hofmann insisted.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has ended its 10-episode first season on Disney+. The series started out on an ambitious note, making some often profound changes to Spider-Man’s traditional mythology. That doesn’t change now, with the finale dropping some major bombshells and setting up a very interesting Season 2.

How does Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: Season 1 end? How does it set up a fascinating new conflict for Hudson Thames’ Peter Parker in Season 2? And will there actually be a Season 2? Here’s everything you need to know.

Warning: full spoilers ahead for the Season 1 finale of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man!

Spider-Man’s Time Loop Paradox

The series opened by presenting a decidedly different take on Spider-Man’s origin story. In Episode 1, Peter doesn’t go through the usual motions of attending a laboratory demonstration and being bitten by a radioactive spider. Instead, he’s caught in the middle of a fight between Doctor Strange (Robin Atkin Downes) and a monster that looks a little like Venom (and for good reason, as we’ll get into later). The monster sheds a lone spider which lands on Peter and bites him, sparking his transformation into Spider-Man.

At the time, it seemed as though the series was trying to establish a more mystical or supernatural element to Spidey’s powers, hence the Doctor Strange connection. But now we know the situation is even weirder than it seemed.

Season 1 culminates with Colman Domingo’s Norman Osborn attempting to show off the fruits of his labors with the Oscorp intern team. Osborn harnesses the inventions and research of Peter himself, along with Amadeus Cho (Aleks Le), Jeanne Foucalt (Anjali Kunapaneni), and Asha (Erica Luttrell). Together, their work allows for the creation of a device that can open a gateway to literally anywhere in the universe. Needless to say, Peter isn’t thrilled about being used as a pawn in the creation of a potentially very dangerous piece of equipment.

It almost immediately becomes apparent just how dangerous the device is when Osborn peers into a supposedly empty corner of the universe and accidentally invites a ravenous monster into Oscorp headquarters. And not just any monster, but the same one we saw fighting Doctor Strange in the premiere. And when Strange himself shows up to put a stop to Osborn’s interdimensional meddling, it becomes clear something very fishy is afoot.

During the course of their battle, Strange and the monster are thrust back in time to the very day Midtown High was destroyed and Peter became Spider-Man. It’s here where we learn the true origin of the spider the Venom-like monster shed. The spider isn’t a part of that monster, but was merely a stowaway from Oscorp’s lab. It was created by Osborn’s scientists as part of his research into replicating Spider-Man’s powers. The spider was empowered by Peter’s own radioactive blood. That leads to a real chicken and egg scenario. The spider gave Peter his powers, but it only had those powers to give because it was injected with Peter’s blood. So who came first – the spider or the Spider-Man? That’s time travel for you.

In any case, Spidey and Strange finally succeed in sending the monster back home and sealing off the portal before more Venom-y creatures can pass through. By this point, Peter is thoroughly disillusioned with Osborn, suggesting their mentor/mentee relationship won’t be continuing in Season 2. But he does get a nice pep talk from Strange, who by now is convinced Spider-Man has what it takes to be New York City’s greatest defender.

Will There Be a Season 2?

We’ll delve deeper into how Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man sets up a second season in a minute. But first, it’s worth establishing whether there actually will be a Season 2. Loki aside, Marvel Studios doesn’t have a great track record with revisiting its various Disney+ shows. And when even big-budget Star Wars shows can be canceled due to low ratings, there’s never a guarantee of more.

Fortunately, all signs point to Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man returning for a second and even a third season. Marvel renewed the series for Seasons 2 and 3 before Season 1 even premiered in January 2025.

Work is already well underway on Season 2 at this point, with executive producer Brad Widnerbaum revealing that the animators are halfway through the animatic stage. Winderbaum also revealed that he’ll soon be meeting with showrunner Jeff Trammell to hear Trammell’s pitches for Season 3.

“I’ve fallen so head over heels in love with these characters and I’ve now read all of the scripts for Season 2; we’re halfway through the animatics,” Winderbaum told The Movie Podcast. “What [Trammell] is building brick by brick in this show starts to pay off.”

As for when fans will actually see Season 2, that’s harder to say. Based on X-Men ‘97’s release cadence, it could be a while. X-Men ‘97: Season 1 debuted in March 2024, at which point the second season was already well into production. But X-Men ‘97: Season 2 isn’t on Marvel’s 2025 release calendar. At this point, fans will have to wait two years or more between seasons, and the same may end up holding true for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

Venom and Spider-Man’s Symbiote Costume

From the beginning, we suspected that the monster Strange fought in Episode 1 was connected to Venom, and that theory is proven correct in the finale. Osborn’s machine opens a portal to what appears to be Klyntar, the alien world that serves as home to Venom and his fellow symbiotes. More of those symbiotes attempt to pass through the portal before Strange and Spidey manage to finally shut it down.

That said, the series seems to be directly setting up Spider-Man’s black costume and the eventual rise of Venom. A piece of one of the symbiotes gets left behind when the portal shuts off. It’s surely only a matter of time before it tracks Peter down and bonds with him. And from there, it’s inevitable that Peter will reject his new symbiote companion and someone close to him becomes Venom.

But who will be the Venom of the Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man universe? Will the series borrow a page from the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon and Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2, making Zeno Robinson’s Harry Osborn Venom? Will Eddie Brock be introduced in Season 2? All we know is that it can’t be a good thing that Norman is the one to discover the symbiote.

We’ll also have to see if Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man becomes the first Spider-Man animated series to feature the symbiote god Knull. Knull rules over his symbiotes from the center of Klyntar, and this brief encounter with Earth’s heroes may be all the motivation he needs to leave home and wage a campaign of destructive conquest.

The Scientists of W.E.B.

As mentioned, Peter and Norman’s relationship isn’t in the best state by the end of Season 1. As much as Norman has been a father figure and a much-needed source of moral and technological support for Peter, he ultimately showed his true colors by perverting the work of Peter and his fellow interns.

Most versions of the Spider-Man mythos have Norman eventually succumbing to his inner darkness and becoming the Green Goblin. We assume the same will hold true for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, but the series seems to be taking a more methodical approach and slowly transforming Norman from friend to outright foe to Spidey.

For now, we know that Peter will pivot from being an Oscorp intern to helping Harry spearhead the W.E.B. initiative in Season 2. W.E.B. is designed to bring together the brightest young minds in the Marvel Universe and allow them to pursue their work without interference. We see a shot of a whiteboard full of potential W.E.B. candidates, including all of Peter’s fellow Oscorp interns (though Amadeus makes it pretty clear he’s not interested).

Naturally, that list of names includes quite a few intriguing characters from Marvel lore. Among those name-dropped are future Electro Max Dillon, future Hobgoblin Ned Leeds, mutant runaway Kiden Nixon, and noted super-geniuses Priya Aggarwal, Tiberius Stone, and Tai Miranda.

The Rise of Tombstone and Doctor Octopus

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man sets up a lot of potential villains for future seasons. In addition to the aforementioned Norman Osborn/Green Goblin, it stands to reason that Paul F. Tompkins’ Bentley Whitman will eventually become the techno-villain known as The Wizard, and that Zehra Fazal’s Carla Connors will eventually become The Lizard. But two budding villains in particular seem destined to have major roles in Season 2.

That’s definitely the case for Eugene Byrd’s Lonnie Lincoln, who has all but completed his evolution from All-American football star to supervillain crime boss. Earlier in Season 1, we saw Lonnie exposed to a toxic gas that gave him superhuman strength, allowing him to team up with Spidey and take down the Scorpion (Jonathan Medina). Sadly, Lonnie is now firmly committed to leading the 110th Street gang in his new persona Tombstone. When last we see Lonnie in the finale, it’s clear his body is suffering the lingering effects of the toxic gas, as his skin slowly turns ivory white to match the distinctive appearance of the comic book Tombstone.

It’s also clear Spidey will have plenty to fear from Hugh Dancy’s Doctor Octopus in Season 2. Otto Octavius plays a recurring role in Season 1, where he serves as a weapons master of sorts to various budding villains before venturing out onto his own. He may be in prison currently, but Otto clearly has big plans in mind. We suspect both Peter and Norman alike will be dealing with the rise of Doctor Octopus in Season 2.

Nico Minoru’s Magical Reunion

One of the more notable changes to the traditional Spider-man mythos in this series is the fact that Peter’s best friend isn’t Harry or Ned or Mary Jane Watson, but Grace Song’s Nico Minoru. Season 1 establishes Nico as a counterculture rebel who slowly comes around on Peter’s friendship with Harry and, eventually, discovers his secret identity. But as the finale shows us, Nico has a big secret of her own.

At several points, the series teases the idea that Nico may have some form of protective magic. In the final moments we see just how deep her magical talents lie, as she performs a ritual apparently designed to help her communicate with her birth mother.

All of this ties back to Nico’s rich history in Marvel’s various Runaways comics. There, Nico is one of several teens who runs away from home after discovering their parents are members of a supervillain cabal known as The Pride. As the magical heroine Sister Grimm, Nico wields an artifact known as the Staff of One. It allows her to cast any spell she can imagine, but with the caveat that she can only cast each spell exactly once.

It’s clear the series is giving us a fairly loose adaptation of Nico, and one who seemingly has no ties to the various other Runaways characters. Still, we’d expect Season 2 to delve much deeper into her magical background and the circumstances that caused her to become separated from her birth parents. Does this Marvel Universe have its own version of The Pride?

The Game-Changing Parker Family Secret

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man saves its biggest plot twist for last. We see Kari Wahlgren’s Aunt May leave the apartment to run a seemingly innocuous errand, only for May to travel to a prison to meet with an inmate. That inmate turns out to be none other than Peter’s father, Richard Parker.

One of the few constants with Spider-Man is the fact that he’s an orphan raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. His parents are always killed when he’s a young boy. The comics once toyed with the idea of Richard and Mary Parker still being alive, but that was revealed to be a ruse. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man flips the script by revealing that his father is not only alive, but imprisoned for a mysterious crime.

This raises all sorts of questions for the future of the series. Why is Richard in prison? Is Mary Parker still alive, too? Did Richard have something to do with his wife’s death? And why is May skulking about and hiding the fact that she’s visiting Richard? We assume Peter knows his father is alive (that’s too big a secret to just keep from a child), but does Peter have any sort of relationship with him?

We imagine Season 2 will address those questions and explore exactly what it means for this version of Spider-Man to be a teen with a living, breathing father. Richard clearly has an interest in what Peter has been up to, but does he have Peter’s best interests at heart? And how does he feel about a man like Norman Osborn becoming a father figure to Peter? There’s plenty of juicy drama to mine in Season 2, especially if Richard winds up becoming an antagonistic force in Peter’s life. Heck, for all we know, he’s the one that becomes Venom or Green Goblin.

What do you think about the major changes introduced in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: Season 1? Which iconic Spider-Man villain do you most hope to see in Season 2? Vote in our poll and let us know what you think in the comments below:

For more on Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, check out IGN’s full review of Season 1 and learn why one Spider-Man moment is key to the series’ success.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.