Ned Leeds in the MCU: from guy in the chair to MIT — the journey of Peter’s best friend (Jacob Batalon)

In almost every great superhero story there is the hero, and there is the person who picks up the phone at the worst possible moment to say 'don't worry, I've got this'. With the MCU's Spider-Man, that person is called Ned Leeds. Played by Jacob Batalon since 2017, Ned is far more than comic relief: he is the first human being Peter Parker trusts with his secret, the partner in crime of all his sleepless nights, and the friend whose loyalty withstands even a spell able to wipe a man from the memory of the entire world.

As Spider-Man: Brand New Day approaches, due out on 29 July 2026 in France, the character resurfaces in a way nobody really saw coming: Ned is now a student at MIT, far from New York, without the slightest memory of his best friend. Here is a full look back at the journey of this extraordinary friend, from his beginnings as the 'guy in the chair' to his new university life - and at what his return might be hiding.

Ned Leeds, the friend the MCU reinvented from scratch

Before going into the detail of his journey, one point needs making, because it shapes the whole understanding of the character. The Ned Leeds of the films has almost nothing in common with the Ned Leeds of the comics. On Marvel's pages, Ned is an adult Daily Bugle journalist, Peter's rival in love as much as at work, and above all a tragic figure tied to the Hobgoblin mantle. Jacob Batalon's Ned, by contrast, is almost entirely an invention of the MCU writers: a bright, geeky teenager who loves Lego and Star Wars, and who dreams of building a Death Star with his best friend on a quiet Friday night.

We go into that gap between the two versions further down, but keep the idea in mind from now on: the Ned of the films is a warm, loyal character, designed to be Peter's emotional anchor to a normal life. It is precisely that normality which makes his story so moving when it turns. To place the starting point of this screen Ned properly, we need to go back to his very first appearance, in the film that launched the teenage version of the character: Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Homecoming: the birth of the 'guy in the chair'

It all starts with a scene that has become iconic. Ned walks into Peter's bedroom, catches him in his Spider-Man suit clinging to the ceiling, and drops his Lego Millennium Falcon with a scream that remains one of the film's great comic moments. In a matter of seconds, the best friend goes from secondary school classmate to keeper of the heaviest secret in New York. And where many stories would have made that revelation a source of conflict, Homecoming turns it into instant camaraderie.

Ned then comes up with the concept that will define his role for years: the 'guy in the chair', the man back at base. The idea is simple and borrowed wholesale from spy films: every field hero needs an ally back at headquarters, headset on, hacking systems, disabling protocols and guiding his friend from a distance. Ned embraces that fantasy with disarming seriousness. He switches off the 'Training Wheels Protocol' on the suit designed by Tony Stark, unlocks the 576 hidden combat modes, and literally becomes the voice in Peter's earpiece.

What Homecoming gets right is giving Ned a real dramatic function rather than just one-liners. Without him, Peter would have neither the intelligence nor the moral support to take on the Vulture. This hero-and-technician dynamic belongs to the long tradition of the web-slinger's allies on screen, alongside other founding MCU figures such as Happy Hogan. But where Happy represents Tony Stark's adult legacy, Ned embodies something rarer and more precious: pure friendship, the kind that expects nothing in return.

It is also in that first film that the visual look Ned will always be associated with is born: the unapologetic geek, proud of what he loves, wearing his references like a banner. You will find the same spirit today in the pieces in our Spider-Man T-shirt collection, where you can show your love for the character exactly as Ned would show his.

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Far From Home: the friend handling the chaos behind the scenes

In Spider-Man: Far From Home, the story moves Peter and his class to Europe for a school trip meant to give him a break after the trauma of Avengers: Endgame. Ned has a lighter but still essential place here. The film takes him into new territory: his own love life, with an unlikely holiday romance with Betty Brant that becomes a bittersweet running gag throughout the trip.

What matters, though, is that Ned remains the keeper of the secret. In a film where Peter desperately tries to set his suit aside to tell MJ how he feels, it is Ned who covers for his absences, cobbles together excuses and, for all his clumsiness, protects his friend's double life. The film plays that tension cleverly: Peter would like to be nothing more than a teenager on a trip, but the world and Mysterio catch up with him, and Ned once again finds himself at the heart of the storm, doing his best to play the reliable sidekick.

It is also in Far From Home that the Peter-Ned-MJ trio truly settles as the emotional heart of this trilogy. The portrait of MJ - reserved, brilliant and deadpan - comes fully into its own here. To understand in depth this character who orbits the same world as Ned, our dedicated article on Michelle Jones, the mysterious MJ of the Spider-Man universe sheds perfect light on the place she holds alongside Ned in Peter's life.

No Way Home: when Strange's spell erases Ned too

This is where Ned's journey turns tragic. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter's secret identity is revealed to the whole world, and the young hero watches his life and the lives of those close to him shatter. Ned plays a more active part than ever: it is he who, fiddling with Doctor Strange's sling ring, accidentally opens portals between dimensions and brings in the other Spider-Men of the multiverse. For the space of one film, the 'guy in the chair' becomes the trigger of multiversal chaos.

The spell that spares no one

The ending of No Way Home rests on a heartbreaking choice. To close the cracks in the multiverse and save those he loves, Peter asks Doctor Strange to cast a spell that will erase the memory of Peter Parker from the mind of every person on the planet. No one is spared, not even his two best friends. That sacrifice, one of the heaviest ever placed on an MCU hero, is examined in detail in our breakdown of the impossible choice of Spider-Man in No Way Home.

For Ned, it means something terrible: the boy who shared every secret, every fight and every fit of laughter with Peter no longer remembers ever having had a best friend called Peter Parker. The final scene of the film, where Peter walks into a cafe to find his friends and ultimately gives up on reminding them who he is, breaks your heart precisely because you know how deep that bond with Ned ran. The partner in crime is still there, in the same city, the same life - but an invisible wall now separates them.

MJ, Ned and a shared forgetting

The forgetting hits Ned exactly as it hits MJ, which creates a devastating parallel between the two characters. The big question left hanging at the end of the film - is there a trace left, an echo, an instinct of recognition? - is explored in detail in our article Does MJ remember Peter Parker at the end of No Way Home?. What is true for MJ is true for Ned: is Strange's spell absolute, or does friendship leave a mark that magic cannot entirely erase?

That uncertainty is the real narrative fuel linking No Way Home to what comes next. A bond as strong as Ned and Peter's does not get rubbed out without leaving ghosts behind. To gauge just how much that event redrew the whole saga, our analysis of why No Way Home changed everything for the Spider-Man universe sets the scene perfectly for what now lies ahead of Ned.

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Brand New Day: Ned at MIT, a whole new deal

Here is the big turning point. Spider-Man: Brand New Day takes place roughly four years after the events of No Way Home. Peter is now an adult living entirely on his own, a full-time Spider-Man in a New York that no longer knows his name. And his friends? They have moved on with their lives. Ned Leeds, the boy who dreamed of being his hero's technical brain, has received an offer from one of the most prestigious institutions in the world: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Two brilliant friends, one university, no memory

The most striking detail of this new situation is that Ned did not leave alone. MJ is studying at MIT too, which suggests that Peter's two former best friends have ended up on the same campus, hundreds of kilometres from New York - and therefore from Spider-Man. The irony is both cruel and beautiful: the two people who knew Peter Parker best are building a brilliant life together, with no idea at all that someone is missing. This echoes everything we already know about MJ, whose full portrait is laid out in our article who is the mysterious MJ really?

MIT is no random choice for Ned. It is the logical endpoint of the 'guy in the chair': the boy who hacked the protocols of a high-tech suit from his teenage bedroom has become an engineer in the making at the world's temple of technology. His path makes sense, it holds together - and that is exactly what makes his absence from Peter's life so painful. Ned has succeeded, but he has succeeded without his best friend, in a reality where that best friend never existed for him.

What Ned's return could mean

Having Ned and MJ at MIT rather than in New York sets up a geographical distance that seems to push any reunion further away - but cinema loves that kind of barrier precisely so it can bring it down. Brand New Day, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, shows a Peter under enormous pressure, to the point of going through a surprising physical change that threatens his very existence. In that context, the need to find a human anchor again - a friend, a chosen family - becomes an obvious emotional driver.

The final trailer, released on 21 July 2026, leans heavily on 'the journey of Peter Parker' and shows battle footage involving even the Hulk. And a journey implies reunions, bonds being rebuilt. Ned, with his intelligence, his instinctive loyalty and his status as an MIT student, is the ideal candidate to become, one way or another, Spider-Man's partner in crime once more. So that you miss nothing of what the film is preparing, our guide how to be ready for the Spider-Man event of the year covers the whole question.

Of course, none of this is confirmed, and it would be unwise to over-read it. But one thing is certain: the writers have not reduced Ned to a memory tossed aside. By giving him a precise, prestigious destination and keeping him in MJ's orbit, they are leaving the door wide open. For fans who want to show their impatience, the Brand New Day collection already brings together every piece bearing the imagery of the 2026 event film.

Jacob Batalon, the face and the heart of Ned

It is impossible to talk about Ned Leeds without paying tribute to the actor who brought him to life. Jacob Batalon, born in Honolulu, landed the part while he was still a young and little-known actor, and he immediately made one thing obvious: Ned had to be funny, yes, but above all deeply sincere. What Batalon brings is a human warmth that stops the character from sinking into the comic 'sidekick' cliche. Every reaction of Ned's, from the scream in front of the Millennium Falcon to his silences in No Way Home, rings true.

The chemistry between Batalon and Tom Holland is one of the quiet pillars of the whole trilogy. Their on-screen rapport is not acted: the two actors are friends in real life, and that real friendship runs through every scene they share. It is what makes the separation imposed by Strange's spell so believable and so heartbreaking. Batalon himself has hinted, in several recent interviews, at how attached he is to the character and at his openness to seeing Ned move into darker territory in the future - a nod that comics readers will not fail to pick up.

Batalon's talent belongs to a long gallery of performers who have shaped the Spider-Man universe on screen. To widen the perspective on this casting and on the actors who have left their mark on the franchise, our overview of all the actors who have played Spider-Man gives a complete tour of the subject.

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The comics Ned has (almost) nothing in common

We flagged it in the introduction, and it is time to come back to it in detail, because it is one of the great traps for fans. If you look up 'Ned Leeds' in the history of Marvel comics, you will not find a likeable geeky teenager, but an entirely different character: an adult journalist at the Daily Bugle, a colleague of Peter Parker, a romantic rival for Betty Brant, and above all a central figure in one of the murkiest sagas of the web-slinger. In Marvel's pages, Ned Leeds ends up brainwashed and manipulated into becoming, for a time, the criminal Hobgoblin, before meeting a grim end.

In other words, Jacob Batalon's Ned and the Ned on the page are two radically different characters, joined by nothing more than a name. The MCU took the first name and the surname, then built an entirely new identity on top, in truth much closer to Ganke Lee, Miles Morales's best friend in the modern comics. This distinction matters enormously, and we have covered it in depth in an article devoted entirely to the original version of the character: Ned Leeds, Spider-Man's faithful friend or his overlooked traitor. If the traitor Ned, the Hobgoblin Ned, the Daily Bugle Ned intrigues you, that is where to go - the character is unpacked there from the comics' point of view, with no connection to the MIT student we are talking about here.

Why does this point matter so much? Because Batalon's recent comments about the character possibly evolving towards Hobgoblin have set speculation alight. Could the MCU one day steer its sunny version of Ned towards the dark fate of the original? Nothing is settled, but the mere existence of the rumour shows how far the two versions, long kept apart, might end up talking to each other. In the meantime, it is essential not to confuse the two: the Ned of Brand New Day remains, to this day, the loyal friend we have known since Homecoming.

Ned's journey at a glance

To sum up the character's full trajectory across the four films, here are the main stages of his evolution, from schoolboy accomplice to elite student.

Why Ned matters so much to the saga

Ultimately, what makes Ned Leeds so powerful in the MCU is that he represents what Peter risks losing every time he puts on the suit: a normal life, friends, a shared laugh on a Friday night over a Lego set. Every film uses Ned to remind us that behind the mask there is a young man who needs to be loved for who he is, and not only admired for what he does. He is a human counterpoint that heroism cannot do without, and that is why his erasure in No Way Home hits so hard.

As Brand New Day gets ready for release, Ned also stands for hope. His place at MIT, his continued closeness to MJ, the clues scattered through the trailers: everything suggests the writers have not abandoned him. This character invented from scratch by the MCU has become, film after film, one of the emotional pillars of the saga - proof that a well-written 'sidekick' can carry as much weight as a hero. To get ready for the film's release and keep the passion going, our Spider-Man fancy dress and costume collection, our Spider-Man masks and our Spider-Man figures let you dive into the universe exactly as Ned would dive into his: all in, unselfconscious, and with a smile.

See you on 29 July 2026 in French cinemas to find out what the new chapter really has in store - and to see whether the friend in the chair will one day find his place again alongside the web-slinger.