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’. For the MCU’s Spider-Man, that person is called Ned Leeds. Played by Jacob Batalon since 2017, Ned is far from a simple comic foil: he is the first human being Peter Parker trusts with his secret, the accomplice of all his sleepless nights, and the friend whose loyalty survives even a spell capable of erasing a man from the memory of the entire world.

With Spider-Man: Brand New Day due in cinemas on 29 July 2026, the character resurfaces in a way nobody really saw coming: Ned is now a student at MIT, far from New York, without the faintest memory of his best friend. Here is the full story of this extraordinary friend, from his beginnings as the ‘guy in the chair’ through to his new university life — and what his return might be hiding.

Ned Leeds, the friend the MCU reinvented from scratch

Before we get into the detail of his journey, one point needs making, because it shapes everything you need to understand about 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 a grown-up Daily Bugle journalist, Peter’s rival in love as well as at work, and above all a tragic figure tied to the Hobgoblin mantle. Jacob Batalon’s Ned, on the other hand, is an almost complete invention of the MCU writers: a bright, geeky teenager, mad about Lego and Star Wars, who dreams of building a Death Star with his best friend on a quiet Friday night.

We go into that gulf between the two versions further down, but hold on to the idea from now: the Ned of the films is a warm, loyal character, designed to embody Peter’s emotional anchor in an ordinary life. It is precisely that ordinariness that makes his story so moving when it falls apart. To place the starting point of this cinematic 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 begins 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 yell 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 turned that revelation into a source of conflict, Homecoming turns it into instant complicity.

Ned then invents the concept that will define his role for years to come: the ‘guy in the chair’, the man in the seat. The idea is simple, borrowed wholesale from the world of spy films: every hero out in the field needs an ally back at base, headset on, hacking systems, disabling protocols and guiding his friend from a distance. Ned takes on that fantasy with disarming seriousness. He disables the ‘Training Wheels Protocol’ on the suit designed by Tony Stark, unlocks the 576 hidden combat modes, and quite literally becomes the voice in Peter’s earpiece.

What Homecoming gets right is giving Ned a genuine dramatic function rather than just one-liners. Without him, Peter would have neither the intelligence nor the moral support to take on the Vulture. That hero-and-technician double act sits within 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 grown-up legacy, Ned embodies something rarer and more precious: pure friendship, the kind that expects nothing in return.

It is also in this first film that the visual identity Ned will always be associated with is born: the unapologetic geek, proud of what he loves, who wears his references like a banner. That spirit lives on today in the pieces of the Spider-Man T-shirt collection, where you 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 occupies a lighter but still essential place in it. The film lets him develop on new ground: his own love life, with his unlikely holiday romance with Betty Brant, which 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 is desperately trying to set his suit aside to declare his feelings to MJ, it is Ned who covers his absences, who cobbles together excuses and who, for all his clumsiness, protects his friend’s double life. The film plays cleverly on that tension: Peter would like to be nothing more than a teenager abroad, but the world and Mysterio catch up with him, and Ned finds himself once again at the heart of the storm, doing his best to play the reliable accomplice.

It is also in Far From Home that the Peter–Ned–MJ trio really settles in as the emotional heart of this trilogy. The portrait of MJ — reserved, brilliant and deadpan — comes into its own here. To understand in depth this character who orbits so close to 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 tips into tragedy. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter’s secret identity is revealed to the entire world, and the young hero watches his life and the lives of those close to him shatter. Ned plays a more active role 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 length of one film, the ‘guy in the chair’ becomes a trigger for 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. Nobody is spared, not even his two best friends. That sacrifice, one of the heaviest ever asked of an MCU hero, is examined in detail in our breakdown of the impossible choice Spider-Man makes 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 named Peter Parker. The film’s final scene, where Peter walks into a café 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 runs. The accomplice is still there, in the same city, the same life — but an invisible wall now stands between them.

MJ, Ned and the 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, some 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 as well: 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. Because a bond as strong as Ned and Peter’s cannot be wiped away 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, the new state of play

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 got on with their lives. Ned Leeds, the boy who dreamed of being his hero’s technical brain, has received a letter of admission from one of the most prestigious institutions in the world: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Two brilliant friends, the same university, no memory at all

The most striking detail of this new situation is that Ned did not leave on his own. 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 cruel and beautiful at once: the two people who knew Peter Parker best are building a brilliant life together, without the slightest idea that someone is missing from it. That dynamic echoes everything we already know about MJ, whose full portrait is laid out in our article who is the mysterious MJ really?

Choosing MIT is no accident for Ned. It is the logical culmination of the ‘guy in the chair’: the boy who hacked the protocols of a high-tech suit in his teenage bedroom has become an engineer in the making at the world’s temple of technology. His trajectory 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 rule out any reunion — but cinema loves that kind of barrier precisely so it can knock it down. Brand New Day, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, puts on screen a Peter under enormous pressure, to the point of going through a surprising physical transformation 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 engine.

The final trailer, released on 21 July 2026, leans heavily on ‘Peter Parker’s journey’ 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 accomplice once more. So you miss nothing of what the film is setting up, our guide on how to be ready for the Spider-Man event of the year covers the whole question.

None of this is confirmed, of course, and it pays not to over-read the signs. But one thing is certain: the writers have not turned Ned into 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 badge of the film event of 2026.

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 role while still a little-known young 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 keeps the character from sinking into the comic sidekick cliché. Every reaction of Ned’s, from the yell over the Millennium Falcon to his silences in No Way Home, rings true.

The chemistry between Batalon and Tom Holland is, incidentally, one of the quiet pillars of the whole trilogy. Their closeness on screen is not acted: the two are friends in real life, and that real friendship runs through every scene the pair share. It is what makes the separation imposed by Strange’s spell so believable and so devastating. Batalon himself has hinted, in several recent interviews, at how attached he is to the character and how open he would be to seeing Ned move towards darker territory in future — a nod that comics readers will not fail to pick up on.

Batalon’s talent belongs to a long gallery of performers who have shaped the Spider-Man universe on screen. To widen the perspective on that casting history and on the actors who have left their mark on the franchise, our overview of every actor who has played the web-slinger offers a complete tour.

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The Ned of the comics has (almost) nothing to do with it

We flagged it in the introduction, and now 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 an endearing geeky teenager but an entirely different character: a grown-up Daily Bugle journalist, a colleague of Peter Parker’s, a rival for Betty Brant’s affections, and above all a central figure in one of the murkiest sagas in the web-slinger’s history. In Marvel’s pages, Ned Leeds ends up brainwashed and manipulated into becoming, for a time, the criminal Hobgoblin, before meeting a grim fate.

Which is to say that 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. That distinction matters enormously, and we have covered it in depth in an article devoted entirely to the original version of the character: Ned Leeds, the loyal friend or the overlooked traitor of Spider-Man. 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 at all to the MIT student we are talking about here.

Why does that distinction matter so much? Because Batalon’s recent comments about a possible evolution of the character 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 very existence of the rumour shows how much the two versions, long kept apart, could end up in conversation. In the meantime, it is essential not to confuse them: 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 key stages of his development, 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 pulls 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 merely admired for what he does. He is an indispensable human counterpoint to the heroism, and that is why his erasure in No Way Home lands so hard.

As Brand New Day gets ready to arrive, Ned also embodies 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 prepare properly for the film’s release and keep the passion going, the Spider-Man fancy dress and costume collection, the Spider-Man masks and the Spider-Man figures let you dive into the universe exactly as Ned would dive into his: all in, unselfconscious, and smiling.

See you on 29 July 2026 in 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.