Harry Osborn is Peter Parker’s best friend, the son of Norman Osborn, and in the modern Spider-Man games he is the man who becomes Venom. For most of his history Harry has been the tragic figure standing between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, a good person pulled apart by his father’s legacy and his own worst impulses. Insomniac’s Marvel‘s Spider-Man 2 gave him the biggest role of his life, making him the host of the symbiote and the emotional core of the whole game, which is a long way from the sidekick he started as.
Who Is Harry Osborn?
Harry Osborn is the heir to Oscorp and the closest friend Peter Parker has. The two met as students and bonded as outsiders, with Harry offering Peter the family money and stability he never had, and Peter offering Harry the loyalty his own father never gave him. That friendship is the thing every Harry Osborn story is built on, because almost every tragedy involving Harry comes from that bond being tested. He is not a natural villain. He is a decent man raised by a monster, and the question of whether he turns out like Norman or breaks away from him is the tension that has followed the character for decades.
Harry Osborn and Norman Osborn
Everything about Harry comes back to his father. Norman Osborn, the original Green Goblin, is a cold and controlling man who saw Harry as a disappointment and lavished the attention Harry craved on Peter Parker instead. That rejection shaped Harry into someone desperate for approval and vulnerable to his father’s influence, even long after Norman was gone. In the comics, Norman’s apparent death at the hands of his own Goblin glider sent Harry spiraling, and he blamed Spider-Man for it, setting up the path that would eventually turn Harry into a villain himself. The father and son relationship is the engine of the character, the shadow Harry can never quite step out of.
Harry Osborn as the Green Goblin
In the comics, Harry does not stay a bystander. After Norman’s death, Harry discovers his father’s secret identity, finds the Goblin equipment, and takes up the mantle himself, becoming the second Green Goblin. Driven by grief, addiction, and a need for revenge against Spider-Man, Harry attacks Peter while knowing his secret identity, which makes the fight brutally personal in a way few Spider-Man villains ever manage. What makes Harry’s Goblin tragic rather than evil is that he never fully wanted it. Even as the villain, part of him is still Peter’s friend, and that conflict tears at him constantly. His story as the Goblin is one long argument between the good man he is and the legacy his father left him.
Harry Osborn in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
For a whole new audience, Harry Osborn is the Venom of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Insomniac set this up carefully. At the end of Marvel’s Spider-Man in 2018, Norman is shown keeping a dying Harry submerged in a tank of black symbiote goo, trying to save him from the same terminal illness that killed Harry’s mother. In Spider-Man 2, Harry is out of the tank and seemingly cured, sharing the symbiote with Peter as the two friends reunite. The catch is that the symbiote is the only thing keeping Harry alive, and when Peter rejects it, the creature returns to Harry and consumes him completely, turning him into Venom. The version of Venom here is not Eddie Brock, it is Harry, and that choice makes the final act land like a punch. Peter is not fighting a stranger in a symbiote, he is fighting his best friend, trying to save him and knowing that pulling the symbiote off Harry might kill him.
How Harry’s Story Ends in Spider-Man 2
The ending of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is bleak for Harry. To stop the symbiote invasion consuming the city, Peter and Miles Morales have to destroy the symbiote entirely, which means tearing away the one thing keeping Harry alive. Harry survives the battle but is left comatose, back where he started, his cure gone. It is a heartbreaking place to leave him, a character who spent the whole game finally getting to be Peter’s friend again only to lose everything, and the quiet hospital scene at the end hit me harder than any of the boss fights did. It also leaves the door wide open, since a comatose Harry Osborn with Green Goblin in his blood is a threat waiting to happen.
Harry Osborn in the Movies
Harry has been a fixture of Spider-Man films too. James Franco played him across Sam Raimi’s trilogy from 2002 to 2007, following his arc from Peter’s friend to a grieving son out for revenge, and finally to the New Goblin who fights alongside Spider-Man in Spider-Man 3. Years later, Dane DeHaan played a very different Harry in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014, a sickly heir who becomes the Green Goblin in a single film. Both versions kept the core of the character intact, the friendship with Peter curdling into something tragic under the weight of the Osborn name.
Who Voices Harry Osborn?
In Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Harry Osborn is voiced by Graham Phillips, who plays both the warm, hopeful Harry of the early game and the anguished figure buried inside Venom later on. The symbiote-driven Venom voice was provided by the late Tony Todd, the legendary horror actor best known as Candyman, whose deep, layered delivery made the game’s Venom feel enormous and frightening. Todd passed away in 2024, and his Venom stands as one of his most memorable performances, to me at least. The two performances together are a big reason Harry’s turn works as well as it does.
Harry Osborn endures because he is the friend who could have been saved. He is not a villain by nature, he is a good man broken by his father, his illness, and the symbiote, and every version of his story is really about Peter Parker trying and failing to hold onto him. Whether he is taking up the Green Goblin mantle in the comics, becoming Venom in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, or lying comatose at the end of it, Harry remains the most personal tragedy in Spider-Man’s life, the enemy Peter never wanted and could never quite give up on.
