She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, the eighth television series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), recently wrapped up its fun first season. The sex-positive, feminist satire, headlined by Tatiana Maslany (who plays She-Hulk, aka Jennifer Walters), garnered praise for breaking the MCU fatigue in more ways than one.
This Hulk doesn’t just smash regular things, but the fourth wall crumbles before her too. The fourth-wall-breaking superhero took things up a notch in the season finale of its first innings. She brilliantly called out sexism in the writer’s room, took on incels, and poked fun at Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and MCU’s predictable endings, all while giving us more Matt Murdock awesomeness and introducing a brand new MCU character, Skaar.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
She-Hulk Is the First Marvel Superhero to Break the Fourth Wall
Marvel Studios
We have come to know (and love) Deadpool as the R-rated superhero who regularly breaks the fourth wall in what has become a long-ongoing camaraderie with fans. But in Marvel Comics, it was She-Hulk who did it first. Not only is she one of the strongest superheroes (as most Hulks tend to be) in the Marvel-verse, Shulkie, as she has been referred to sometimes in the comics, has always had the power to interact with her fans directly.
RELATED: Best Movies Where Characters Break the Fourth Wall, Ranked
Stan Lee created She-Hulk in 1980 when she made her debut in The Savage She-Hulk #1. But it was John Byrne who endowed her with her fourth-wall-breaking ability in The Sensational She-Hulk in 1989. In this edition, Shulkie threatened to destroy the X-men comic books of fans if they didn’t read her latest installment. From hereon, Jennifer Walters became the sassy She-Hulk we eventually meet in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
Calling Out Sexism and Predictable Endings
Like in the comics, Maslany’s She-Hulk uses her unique ability to call out sexism in the writer’s room and MCU’s predictable endings in the final episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’s first season. The most epic fourth wall smashing happens in episode nine, “Whose Show Is This?” which is directed by Kat Coiro (who has comedy shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Modern Family, and recently the J-Lo starrer Marry Me under her belt) and written by show creator Jessica Gao (who has previously written for shows like Silicon Valley and Rick and Morty).
Very reminiscent of the comic books, where She-Hulk has even used ad spaces to escape situations on occasions, Maslany’s She-Hulk climbs out of her screen and finds the real world writer’s room through the documentary series Marvel Studios: Assembled through the Disney+ platform. After a very confusing confrontation with Titania, Blonsky in his Abomination avatar, and incel No.1 Todd Phelps, aka HulkKing, who turns into a Hulk in front of a giant congregation of incels, Walters demands answers from the writers. The bemused but absolutely unfazed writers direct her towards “Kevin,” who the audience naturally assumed will be Feige making a cameo.
But Walters actually meets K.E.V.I.N. (Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus), who turns out to be an artificial intelligence bot claiming to be the one running everything at MCU. This is hilariously meta as MCU, and mega-franchise films are often accused of being so formulaic that software could’ve generated the scripts.
As Jennifer Walters begins questioning K.E.V.I.N., she becomes a reel-life stand-in of every fan and critique of MCU. From daddy issues that several Marvel characters strangely seem to have to the lack of romantic and sexual desires the female superheroes have in particular – Shulkie goes all out. She calls out predictable MCU endings where flashy but convoluted things happen just for the shock value of it all, even when it doesn’t quite make a lot of sense (and is sometimes even retconned later. She also curiously asks K.E.V.I.N. when we can actually see the X-Men characters appear side-by-side with the other MCU heroes.
RELATED: She-Hulk: What Can the MCU Learn From the Success of Season One?
Of course, we do not get all the answers, but Walters successfully reclaims a less chaotic ending for her own story.
The Daring Brilliance of She-Hulk
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is the most fun MCU show to watch, even though it doesn’t have the same cinematic satisfaction as WandaVision, and that is exactly how it manages to stand out. She-Hulk dares to take its source material (especially Byrne’s work) seriously enough to play around with its narrative style and form. They get to push the envelope because of how far MCU has come as a franchise.
Kat Coiro, who directed episodes one to four, eight, and nine, mentioned in an interview with TV Line how the leadership of Marvel Studios “were incredibly self-deprecating and incredibly willing to poke fun at themselves.” Coiro added, “Hilariously, I was more nervous about throwing Marvel under the bus than Kevin and the big brass at Marvel was,” while mentioning how Kevin Feige “had a huge hand in the finale.”
Jessica Gao had a classic dilemma that she works right into the show. She talked about writing almost 20 versions of the finale “that went all over the place, and I started feeling like, ‘Well, this is a Marvel show, I better give them the classic Marvel ending. Big villain fight, big finale.’ But it never felt right because I was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.”
Initial plans to cast someone dashing like George Clooney or Jon Hamm as K.E.V.I.N. wouldn’t have worked, as the creators thankfully realized. An actual AI in a baseball cap running a multi-billion dollar franchise that has generated decade’s worth of fanfare (some of them as toxic as the HulkKing followers) and box office extravaganzas plays right into the farcical absurdity of She-Hulk.
