The best friend who found out first, and who spent the years after being the one person a secret could be told to.
Ned Leeds is Peter Parker’s best friend, and the first person other than Tony Stark and Happy Hogan to find out that Peter is Spider-Man. Jacob Batalon plays him across six films. He is Filipino-American, and the films never make a point of it, which is its own kind of point.
He is the person the secret can be told to. Every version of Spider-Man has needed one, and these films give the job to a friend rather than a love interest, which changes the shape of the story: Peter has somebody to talk to, and the films are lighter for it.
The Blip takes him in 2018 and returns him in 2023.
Minor spoiler
When Mysterio exposes Peter’s identity, Ned and MJ lose their university places along with him. In the fight over the villains from other universes, Ned accidentally summons two other Spider-Men, the ones the catalogue files as Peter Parker of the Raimi films and Peter Parker of the Amazing films, and they help cure the visitors. Then Stephen Strange casts the spell that makes the world forget Peter, and Ned’s friendship with him goes with it.
Brand New Day picks him up four years later. He and MJ have graduated from MIT and share an apartment in New York. At the housewarming, Peter turns up with flowers, introduces himself as a neighbour called Maynard, and watches Ned demonstrate an invention he calls the Spidey Tracker, built to find out who Spider-Man is so he can thank him. The film ends with Peter recovering from his injuries and reintroducing himself to Ned with their old secret handshake. What that means for Ned’s memory the film does not say, and neither does this catalogue.
Show detailsWhat is not counted
Wikipedia also lists Ned in The Daily Bugle, a web series that is not a title in this catalogue, so it is not in his list.