Ned Leeds is a fictional character from Marvel Comics. He was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko for a Spider-Man comic book in 1964.
Ned Leeds worked for a newspaper called the Daily Bugle. He and Peter Parker both liked the same girl named Betty Brant with Ned eventually marrying her with Peter Parker as the best man. Then Spider-Man started having to fight a supervillain known as the Hobgoblin who turned out to have Ned Leeds as his secret identity but then it turned out that Ned Leeds was actually being brainwashed all along and he was eventually killed in a comic book from 1986.
Ned Leeds was played by Jacob Batalon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) media franchise in which he’s Peter Parker’s best friend and sidekick.