Jacob Batalon

Throughout the MCU’s Spider-Man trilogy, Jacob Batalon’s Ned Leeds has remained Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) best friend, confidant, and most enthusiastic supporter. However, that all changed at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, when Doctor Strange’s spell erased Peter from the memories of everyone who knew him, including Ned.

In Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Peter is forced to observe the people he once loved from a distance as they continue building lives that no longer include him. Ned may not remember their friendship, but he remains recognizably himself. Ned is sincere, curious, and naturally drawn to Spider-Man. So much so that he created a Spider-Tracker app to follow the Webslinger’s movements. The app isn’t designed to expose the masked hero but to thank him for his heroism. As such, Ned’s search raises a deeper question about how much of a connection can survive after the memories that formed it are gone.

Having grown up alongside the franchise, Batalon brings added weight to Ned’s story in the newest film as it explores what it means to rebuild a connection without shared memories. He also reflected on how his Filipino identity has shaped his place within the expanding world of superhero storytelling and films in general.

For Batalon, the challenge of reuniting with Holland for Spider-Man: Brand New Day was not creating chemistry from nothing, but temporarily setting aside the rapport he and Holland had built over the previous decade. As actors, their familiarity remained beneath the surface, but as Ned and Peter, their attempts to understand one another as strangers were new territory. “It is definitely a different exercise as an actor when you’re working with people you’ve known for over a decade and pretending like you don’t know each other,” Batalon said. “It’s really fun, and it definitely works a different muscle.”

That familiarity made the process both easier and more complicated. “I think, for the most part, it’s a fun challenge because it’s easy to get along, but it’s also hard to get along with people that you don’t really know,” he said.

Batalon approached the new dynamic as an act of rediscovery, imagining how Ned might form a connection with someone who had unknowingly been such a significant part of his life. “How do you portray not knowing someone who’s effectively been a big part of your life?” he said.

Of course, trying to portray not knowing someone who has effectively been a big part of your life has its challenges, but for Batalon, he found the process fun. “It was more fun,” Batalon said. “It definitely felt freeing and a little liberating to break out of that same mold and note that we’ve been playing. It gave us a chance to explore different types of emotional connections and watch something new grow organically out of a relationship that Ned doesn’t know.”

Considering how approachable and friendly Ned can be, it is easy to imagine Batalon using food as a similarly welcoming way to forge a new connection. So for him, he’d give some of the most iconic Filipino dishes to someone who may be unfamiliar with the cuisine. “I think the safest one would probably be chicken adobo, just because it has everything that everyone can get used to eating,” Batalon said. “Or pancit. I feel like people love noodles, so I think pancit would be a great one.” He also recommended lumpia as another accessible introduction. “People are kind of used to egg rolls, so I think they can get their heads around that as well,” he said.

That same sense of approachability has been central to Ned from the beginning. While the MCU is filled with gods, superheroes, and threats from the multiverse, Ned reacts to that world with the same excitement, loyalty, and disbelief that many fans would. “I think from the beginning, Jon Watts really wanted Ned to be the fans’ window into the MCU,” Batalon said. “He represents a lot of us as fans because I think he would react the way any of us would if we were best friends with Spider-Man, or with any superhero, and suddenly got the chance to be part of that world.”

Beyond his enthusiasm for superheroes, Batalon believes Ned’s relatability comes from Ned’s desire to support the people he cares about. “He’s a good friend, and he wants to be there for his best friend,” he said. “He’s just so endlessly positive about life and everything that it’s hard not to like him.”

That sense of wonder takes on a different meaning in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. At one point in time in the MCU, Ned once admired Peter as his best friend who just so happens to also be Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Now, he approaches the hero as a fan, without any memory of the history they shared, and goes as far as building a Spider-Tracker app to follow his movements. Not to unmask him or for any malicious reasons, but to find a way to thank him for all the heroic deeds the Webslinger has performed.

“I think this was sort of his conundrum in the first trilogy, when he didn’t know that his best friend was Spider-Man and only knew him as the guy from YouTube,” Batalon said. “Now, as a grown man, he’s had so many experiences with Spider-Man, but he has no idea that was his best friend the whole time.”

Although Ned cannot explain why Spider-Man repeatedly appeared whenever someone was in danger, those encounters leave him with a sincere desire to understand the hero and thank him. “He’s genuinely curious as to why Spider-Man would always come and save him whenever he and his friends were in peril,” Batalon said.

For Batalon, the Spider-Tracker represents more than Ned’s admiration for a superhero. It becomes an unconscious bridge to the friendship he can no longer remember. “In a way, the Spidey Tracker is kind of his missing link to his friend,” he said. “He feels this weird connection to Spider-Man, but he doesn’t know what it fully is. He wants to find him and have some closure with that.”

While the Spider-Tracker suggests that Ned still feels an unexplained connection to Peter, his life is no longer defined by that missing relationship. He remains wholesome, grounded, and uninterested in using his connection to Spider-Man for attention. More importantly, Spider-Man: Brand New Day allows Ned to exist beyond his former role as Peter’s best friend and carry a story of his own. “It was fun to really flesh out these characters that we’ve known for a long time and show what their lives are like without the main person driving their stories,” Batalon said.

For Batalon, that meant giving Ned and MJ the space to become fully realized adults whose identities no longer depended on their relationship with Peter. “They don’t need to hang on to other people’s stories to become full people,” he said. “They’re their own people, and that’s really cool.”

That independence also adds another layer of tragedy to Peter’s sacrifice. Although he lost the people closest to him, Ned and MJ were able to build fulfilling lives in his absence. “It’s poignantly sad that Ned and MJ have had a great time, ironically, without Spider-Man and Peter Parker,” Batalon said. “So it might have been a good thing that he wiped their memories.”

Ned and MJ’s independence gives them more agency within Peter’s story, but Batalon also understands the larger significance of seeing characters like Ned occupy meaningful space in a superhero franchise. For many Asian viewers, mainstream blockbusters historically offered few opportunities to recognize themselves on screen, particularly in characters who were allowed to be more than fleeting background figures.

Batalon said he feels proud to be part of the industry’s gradual shift toward more inclusive storytelling, while emphasizing that the progress did not begin with him. “A lot of people have done way more work than I have to really make that stuff happen,” he said. “People like our director, Destin [Daniel Creton], have really pushed the envelope in terms of representation and storytelling.

Batalon also recalled how inspiring it was to work alongside Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista in The Wrecking Crew, where many members of the behind-the-scenes crew were Polynesian. “To know that we can tell everyone’s story is a very inspiring thing to be part of,” he said. “It sucks that it hasn’t happened the whole time, but it’s a great shift. I feel very honored to be part of that narrative. But again, there have been a lot of people before me who did the work so I could be there.”

With Ned now building a life without any memories of his friendship with Peter Parker, Batalon also has ideas about where the character could go next. His first concern, however, was a practical one. “If he could just get a real job, that’d be nice,” Batalon joked. “New York is expensive.”

Although Ned is attending MIT and has already built a Spider-Tracker app, Batalon would like to see the character expand his place in the superhero world rather than remain connected exclusively to Spider-Man. “I think it would be cool to see him work with other heroes,” he said. “He’s just a big fan of superheroes in general, so I think not just Spider-Man, but everyone, would be great.”

For Batalon, that could allow Ned to finally embrace the role he has been preparing for since the beginning. “Really getting to fulfill his ‘guy in the chair’ role in a more permanent way would be fun,” he said.

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Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened in theaters on July 31, 2026.