She-Hulk Finale

(Sort of). Instead, almost every character in the series returns, including Mark Ruffalo, for a scene of pure pandemonium. Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) ...

I would argue that there have been [plenty of amazing stories written about Jen as a lawyer who helps people](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a40929917/she-hulk-attorney-at-law-review/), a Hulk who seeks therapy, or a reluctant hero who still saves the day, because that's the right thing to do (with great power, etc.). [presented with the chance to change it](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a41228793/she-hulk-name-episode-5/), giving Jen a sex life but having two out of the three men be assholes (and one a relationship that certainly won't continue come Daredevil: Born Again)—the series made it incredibly tough for Jen, week to week, to tell her story. [Daredevil](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a39474072/daredevil-reboot-rumors-plot-details-charlie-cox/)? Do you want a big [Hulk-sized](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a41019222/incredible-hulk-lou-ferrigno-superhero-criticism/) villain? Marvel—a show that was praised for taking on both Marvel's first Muslim superhero and the history of the partition of India? At no point is she wrong—the show did do all that to her—but it's hard to argue that this is the ending She-Hulk's most contemptuous critics deserve when this is what was planned to happen no matter what.

She-Hulk: Attorney At Law closes out its first season with an episode that takes big swings at Marvel tropes but gets caught up in the constraints of its ...

Amelia Emberwing [Starfield: Performance PreviewBethesda is one of the biggest studios within the Xbox portfolio, with its latest and arguably most anticipated title in Starfield releasing on Xbox Series X, Series S, Xbox One, and PC in 2023. I’ve been a huge proponent for the sitcom format of this series from the jump, and I still think it was successful overall. If your show warrants a longer episode, you can do whatever you want, and a hour would have given the She-Hulk finale the opportunity to bring the laughs while still giving some kind of satisfying end to the extremely severe violation Jen experienced in the penultimate. Did she even want it in the end? The series turns its meta comedy up to 11 in the finale. The penultimate episode of She-Hulk: Attorney At Law dropped a huge bomb on Jennifer Walters’ (Tatiana Maslany) life by having her attackers use revenge porn as a way to get her to Hulk out.

Jen Walters goes straight to the top in the final She-Hulk: Attorney at Law on Disney Plus, which explodes what a Marvel ending should be. (Spoilers!)

Either way, the goal is to "break the story" by mapping out the structure of these beats across three acts before writing a draft of the script. After the credits, Emil is back in the DODC supermax where we first met him at the start of the series. What does this mean for the free will of the characters living in this world? But more importantly, Bruce explains the message that drew him back to the planet Sakaar (where he lived in Thor: Ragnarok). Jen busts into the heart of Marvel Studios (after signing an NDA, naturally) and finds herself facing some kind of robot supercomputer dealio. The season finale is all about endings, but let's not forget the beginning: a retro-styled prologue that imagines what this show would be like if made in the 1970s, in the style of legendary series The Incredible Hulk (which ran from 1978 to 1982, plus a few TV movies). The fashions, the hair, the split screen -- what a great way to start the episode. [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing at college in a video](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-ocasio-cortez-idUSKCN1OY1JQ) which surfaced when she was elected to Congress). At last though the meta commentary pays off hugely in the finale. Titania also shows up, to add to the chaos. After smashing up the Female Lawyer of the Year gala last week, Jen Walters (Tatiana Maslany) finds herself in superpower supermax. Now let's delve into the latest installment, titled Whose Show is This?, complete with a ton of cameos and Easter eggs -- and lots of spoilers!

In its final episode, She-Hulk ramps up the meta. But to what end?

The MCU's lack of sex, another oft-wielded critique of the franchise at large, gets a line ("historically we've been light in that department," K.E.V.I.N. Elsewhere, a friend's wedding was falling apart, with the beleaguered bride seemingly worried that the presence of She-Hulk would steal her limelight (a legitimate concern to grapple with in a world of metahumans). Instead, we get a HAL 9000-style mechanical AI, K.E.V.I.N., housed in the bowels of the Disney offices, his (it's?) narrative ideas dictated by a clinical algorithm — an interpretation that Feige would've presumably signed off on. (Maybe I got out of bed on the wrong side the day I double-billed the eps, but it was giving me Diet Waller-Bridge, with giant green people.) [She-Hulk: Attorney at Law](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/she-hulk-attorney-at-law-marvel) after the first couple of episodes. The titular Ms Hulk was running legal for an immortal super-person with a proclivity for jumping out of windows…

Whatever fans were expecting from the finale of Marvel's She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, it's fair to say those expectations were way off. After being banned from ...

She also requested that [Daredevil (Charlie Cox)](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/she-hulk-just-cleared-up-daredevils-mcu-canon/) return for it, and that Emil accept some accountability for breaking the rules of his parole. After having some strong words for the She-Hulk writers’ room, she then forced her way in to [Kevin Feige](https://www.denofgeek.com/kevin-feige)’s office to confront him. [Disney+](https://www.denofgeek.com/disney-plus/) Marvel menu screen, where she was able to access the She-Hulk production via the studio’s behind the scenes Assembled titles. [She-Hulk](https://www.denofgeek.com/she-hulk/) finale to be more focused on justice, and less on trashy CG smash spectacle. Unfortunately, things immediately got messy after Todd used his infusion of gamma blood to transform into a hulk, and Hulk himself (Mark Ruffalo) suddenly appeared and joined the fray, as did Titania (Jameela Jamil) for reasons. But she was also determined to get to the bottom of the Intelligencia plot to humiliate and discredit her.

"Whose Show Is This?" brings She-Hulk's excellent debut to an end that pulls out all the stops... and may have broken itself along the way.

Whether She-Hulk will continue beyond this is hard to say right now, her future, hinted here jokingly by K.E.V.I.N., already destined for movie support before it is a second season of her own show. It’s a play on a typical trope in superhero fiction—the powered become powerless—but it’s the kind of stakes that feel right for where She-Hulk has been all this season. I’m not saying I expected She-Hulk to completely destroy the way the Marvel machine works going forward; it is, after all, a product of that machine. Just as you begin to wonder if She-Hulk has gone the inevitable way of Marvel’s desire for interconnected scale instead of on the path it paved for itself this season, “Whose Show Is This?” reveals its real game-changer: Jen’s pissed. [Wong’s sudden importance](https://gizmodo.com/she-hulk-ep-4-recap-wong-disney-plus-marvel-studios-1849398655) as a character capable of showing up anywhere in a Marvel product, at any time). We learn quickly that Jen has been jailed, that Intelligencia might get off the hook for its horrific invasion of her privacy, and as part of a plea deal arranged by GLK&H she not only loses her job and her apartment, but has been tagged with a bracelet that seemingly disables her power to transform permanently. But it also champions a fundamental element of She-Hulk’s classic place in Marvel’s comics history—a hero of metatextual fourth-wall breaking that doesn’t just play with in-jokes a la Deadpool, but twists form and structure as well—in order to play a card so risky, it might have actually just changed She-Hulk forever in a way that goes simply beyond what it teases to come in the MCU. It’s the sort of aside you’d expect a show to throw at you to establish that it can be wacky, before getting into a run of the mill “serious” plot... If the faux-Bixby opening was the cute meta-commentary, this is She-Hulk through and through, taking her fourth-wall-breaking tone from her classic comics and applying it beyond to-camera jokes and sly references, but properly twisting She-Hulk’s form and structure. It’s the safe form of meta you’d expect: a little cheese, laughing at itself more than anything else, weird but not too weird, and all aesthetic. [latest Marvel movie/TV show](https://gizmodo.com/marvel-movie-dates-change-ff-deadpool-3-secret-wars-1849643982)/something or other just [changed the Marvel universe forever](https://gizmodo.com/thor-love-thunder-spoilers-burning-questions-end-credit-1849131670)!!!” is a sentiment you hear about practically every Marvel movie/TV show/something or other at this point. She-Hulk joins its Marvel compatriots in doing so, but it comes at it with a suitably askew angle.

With She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters became one of the most fascinating, relatable, and likable characters in the MCU — and one in charge of her own story.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is still in its infancy and this development was exciting for hardcore purists and newcomers to the MCU. She-Hulk, in full superpower regalia, makes her way to the God of the MCU to challenge her formulaic and predictable season finale. Had Jen participated in the retreat war, it would only have been a betrayal of her character, and it is her consistency we've all grown to love this year. After storming into Marvel HQ and berating the writers' room for embracing tired tropes, she finally reaches the man she needs to talk to. It takes guts to take responsibility for your own story and steer it in the direction you need it to go. The ingenuity of the finale episode was on par with something Charlie Kaufman might conjure up if he had a propensity for superheroes, Marvel, and the expansive lore surrounding each individual off-shoot of the MCU. She is finally at ease with the She-Hulk persona and all it entails. Her life is now turned upside down, she loses her job and apartment, and she has to move back in with her overbearing parents. Tatiana Maslany knocked it out of the park, and over the course of 9 episodes Jennifer Walters became one of the most fascinating, relatable, and likable characters in the MCU — and one in charge of her own story. Billionaire douche Todd Phelps (Jon Bass) has been a recurring bit player for a while now, and we discover why he has an interest in She-Hulk — because he is HulkKing, founder of Intelligencia, and is joined by a small army of woman-haters. Oh, and Intelligencia has potentially ruined her life in the painful penultimate episode. To recap: she’s now a hulk, a well-respected lawyer, has a rival in Titania, and has a new love interest in Daredevil.

Abomination, Wong, Bruce Banner, and more rise up for the grand finale, but it's not what Jen deserves. So, it's time to break the fourth wall even more.

• Especially rude of that one troll at the Intelligencia meeting to say that “Lady Thor” sucks when she’s dead, my guy. The story, as she puts it, is that her life fell apart right when she was learning to be She-Hulk and Jen. Jen discovers them and all of a sudden, miraculously even, all of our main characters are in the same place at the same time. She returns to the compound where it’s daylight, Titania is livestreaming, Blonsky’s going back to jail for violating his parole, and Todd is being arrested. Jen breaks the fourth wall to complain about how the convergence of plotlines doesn’t make sense, and then the fourth wall fights back by pretending to kick us out to the Disney+ menu screen. “There are certain things that are supposed to happen in a superhero story,” says fake Zeb. “Is this what you guys want?” She leaves home in the middle of the night to stay at Emil Blonsky’s compound for a bit, where she is greeted by the Wrecker. Meanwhile, Jen is pretty ready to skip to the healing part of her mental-health break. Meanwhile, Nikki posts an embarrassing video of Jen dancing in school that Jen’s mom gave her on the Intelligencia site to gain their trust and access to the inner circle. “This isn’t even a reluctant superhero story,” Jen says to the camera. The episode more or less follows the story beats found in the last 30-ish minutes of a movie, starting with the dark night of the soul. Were you preemptively convinced that She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, like pretty much every other Marvel title, would come to some “inevitable” MCU conclusion, with big-screen cameos engaging in a punch fest that has little to do with the promising season of television you just watched?

A major part of her comic book history has been breaking the fourth wall to battle with her own creators.

Once at the core of the Marvel storytelling apparatus, She-Hulk reverts to human Jennifer Walters form (because, K.E.V.I.N. Surprise!) Once inside, she hassles the writers over the cookie-cutter conclusion, and they send her to Kevin—not Kevin Feige, the iconic producer of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its many-armed episodic spin-offs, but an artificial intelligence robot, K.E.V.I.N., which stands for Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus. I smash fourth walls and bad endings. explains, the green version is expensive) and talks the device into a new ending that doesn't involve her blood being stolen, her cousin Bruce Banner saving the day, or a big knock-down, drag-out fight sequence. She continues her journey, making her way to the She-Hulk production offices. Who didn't reach for the remote, irked by the interruption?

The 'She-Hulk' actor knows Todd is an asshole. If Bass has it his way, it's not the last you'll see of him.

But I also think that if this is it for Todd, if this is it for me in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what a fucking way to go. I get to Hulk out and then I get to peace out. I think my favorite date was the one with the guy who said, "I'm a New Yorker through and through and I make her pay for the bill," that's my favorite one. There's some fun stuff that you'll learn along the way, but I don't think there's much to take from it other than to have a good time. I read that last episode, ran up to my girlfriend, and was like, "I get to Hulk out!" I think it's so much more fun to have people get all pissed at you, So, I think it's going to be amazing and I think people are going to love it. "For the rest of the shoot, I was terrified that they accidentally hired me," Bass says. "I really think you have to be a special type of stupid to get into acting," he muses. "I can tap into an incel type of a guy real easy, but also know that that's wrong." "For a glimmer of a beautiful moment, I get to Hulk out," Bass says, calling the moment "a dream come true." "I think I'm pretty lucky in the fact that I have major beta male energy, but I'm also a pretty good hang," Bass tells me from the park bench. After graduating from Boston University with a theater degree, he moved to New York City and auditioned for The Book of Mormon nine times over the course of a year and a half.

We're asking the important questions: Was that ending clever or a cop-out? What is it teasing about the future of the MCU? And does Marvel read our texts?

This was a major bombshell, and it happened so close to the end that we barely had time to process it. [Thor: Ragnarok](https://www.avclub.com/film/reviews/thor-ragnarok-2017), but in the film, Hulk escapes and eventually returns to Earth as Bruce Banner. A good start would be giving She-Hulk the second season it very much deserves. But boy, was it fun to watch Jen, and by extension the writers, roast Marvel. It didn’t make much logical sense and rendered some of the season’s ongoing plotlines pointless. told Jen earlier that they were going to save Hulk’s space story for the movies, they did ultimately give us a hint of where things might be going with the reveal of his son, Skaar. The show could have found a better balance with the rest, though, as it did in the wedding episode. So it’s refreshing to see a TV series embrace the fact that it’s, well, a TV series. A Marvel show can be ambitious and still be just a TV show While Jen was off having her own adventure at a friend’s wedding, Mallory and Nikki had to deal with a lawsuit against an immortal douchebag back at the office. [WandaVision](https://www.avclub.com/tv/reviews/wandavision), and even that series evolved into a cinematic spectacle by the end. Now that the show is over—at least for now; we’re all still waiting to learn if Marvel and Disney + will move forward with a second season—we have some final thoughts about what turned out to be one of Marvel’s most fun and original series yet.

"She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" revealed both its superpower and Achilles heel in the season finale: It's a TV show for people who watch too much TV in general ...

Designed to test the parameters of how far Marvel could go with this sort of exercise, “She-Hulk” clearly delivered an unabashed out-there comedy. As for She-Hulk, she’s certainly too big and colorful to ignore. [alligator variant of Loki ](https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/07/entertainment/loki-episode-5)and an anthropomorphic hippo in [“Moon Knight,”](https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/29/entertainment/moon-knight-review/index.html) so just being weird doesn’t come as a major surprise. If you There were so many stray nods to other Marvel fare – past, present and possibly future – you’d almost need a scorecard to keep up. “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” revealed both its superpower and Achilles heel in the season finale: It’s a TV show for people who watch too much TV in general and too much of Marvel’s output in particular.

Did meta "She-Hulk" finale go too far with MCU digs? Director Kat Coiro talks about Marvel's reaction, Kevin Feige's input.

[Coiro says that Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige (the human) “had a huge hand in the finale” and its “fourth wall-smashing” elements, which included She-Hulk fleeing the “mess” of a CGI clash between Hulk, Abomination, Titania and Hulk Todd, climbing around the Disney+ menu screen and then strolling across the (actual) Disney lot to grumble to the TV series’ writers. inside the (actual) Marvel offices and requested a series of changes to the finale.](https://tvline.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/she-hulk-finale-kevin.png) They were incredibly self-deprecating and incredibly willing to poke fun at themselves.” (Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus) and called out some of the MCU’s lazier storytelling devices. [after a bit of negotiation](https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-shows/she-hulk-finale-kevin), “he did let us put the little ‘baseball cap’ on the robot,” like Feige himself famously wears, “so that was good.” to task for the MCU’s over-reliance on flashy, final fights (as well as “daddy issues” for its heroes), “Hilariously, I was more nervous about throwing Marvel under the bus than Kevin and the big brass at Marvel was.

To say the season finale of She-Hulk broke the fourth wall is an understatement; instead, it would be more accurate to say it was Hulk-Smashed into a fine ...

Gao reveals a few more fun things about the finale in the article, but I want to say for my money, the She-Hulk finale wonderfully and wisely poked fun at the MCU template and was far more satisfying than any fight scene would have been. [season finale](https://gizmodo.com/she-hulk-finale-recap-mcu-kevin-feige-daredevil-blonsky-1849654327) of [She-Hulk](https://gizmodo.com/she-hulk-episode-1-recap-disney-plus-marvel-studios-1849397172) broke the fourth wall is an understatement; instead, it would be more accurate to say it was Hulk-Smashed into a fine powder. when the X-Men will be showing up (seen above) is easily my favorite MCU moment since Avengers: Endgame, hands down. If you decide to pick up a new Samsung Galaxy S22, you’ll get a cool $50 to put toward the purchase of a tablet, smartwatch, earbuds, and more. Watching Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) be happy—in daylight—was its own delight, but Tatiana Maslany’s facial expression after asking K.E.VI.N. Once it was decided Jen would confront a Kevin, the original plan was apparently to “stunt cast it with like George Clooney or Jon Hamm, a very handsome debonair man in a tuxedo. could have been shown wearing a black baseball cap like the real-life Feige constantly does, but instead it was worked into the robot’s design (which I did not notice when I originally watched). “[He] really opened my mind to the idea that it’s okay to not do that because I was trying to do what I thought was the Marvel expectation of what the show had to be,” Gao explained. Purchasing a Galaxy S22+ will net you $100 in credit with the S22 Ultra giving $150. It’s a fun reveal that pays homage to the She-Hulk comics’ long tradition of fourth-wall smashing, but as showrunner Jessica Gao has revealed, it wasn’t the original plan. is essentially this James Bond-type man in a tux.” Personally, I think the A.I. No one’s telling you to do that, you don’t have to do that, you can do something completely different, we should be doing something completely different because this show is so different from anything that Marvel has done.’ It was getting that permission from him that really made me think, ‘Oh.’ It just changed everything.”

In its extremely meta season finale, 'She-Hulk' steers clear of the typical pitfalls of Marvel last acts by obliterating the fourth wall.

[never really panned out](https://www.theringer.com/marvel-cinematic-universe/2022/9/16/23356334/she-hulk-attorney-at-law-episode-five-titania) as a character—and not every joke landed along the way, yet the series was an entertaining and refreshing 30-minute diversion every week that served as perfect counterprogramming to the deluge of high-stakes MCU projects that are coming faster than ever. [Episode 2](https://www.theringer.com/marvel-cinematic-universe/2022/8/26/23323084/she-hulk-attorney-at-law-episode-two-procedural) to visit Sakaar for the first time since Thor: Ragnarok, but it raises a bunch of questions about what will happen with Hulk and son in the future. (And who knows, with Matt Murdock and Jen getting even cozier with each other in the finale after their courthouse meet-cute last week, maybe She-Hulk will be the one flying out to Hell’s Kitchen in Daredevil: Born Again.) As the Multiverse Saga comes into greater focus and the stakes grow even higher with The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars on the horizon, it would be in K.E.V.I.N.’s best interest to give She-Hulk the chance to grow from here. (Not to mention the status or identity of the brave, alien woman who gave birth to not-so-smart Hulk’s child.) Will there be an upcoming movie that focuses on Hulk and Skaar, or perhaps on Hulk’s lost years as a gladiator on Sakaar? not only that she was in a show, but that she would have opinions about the show, especially since she just was completely betrayed by the makers of this show,” Gao Speaking of a potential second season of She-Hulk: The future of the series remains in question, though the subject was teased several times throughout the finale, even if only in jest. Non-disclosure agreements are signed, a Marvel receptionist and actual members of the writers’ room appear, CGI budget concerns are addressed (as a musical cue informs us, the VFX team has moved on to work on The finale doesn’t linger too long on the Hulk development—this is his cousin’s show, after all—but it comes as a surprise nonetheless, especially after Jen cuts K.E.V.I.N. It’s all just a setup for Jen to return to Emil Blonsky’s retreat, where she stumbles into an Intelligencia gathering—featuring none other than the Abomination as its guest of honor—just as Nikki and Pug discover that Todd is the villainous “HulkKing” after all. In the tradition of She-Hulk, the sequence defies everything we’ve come to expect from MCU finales or third acts, embracing the spirit of She-Hulk comics in the process. “Whose Show Is This?” moves too quickly to spend much time exploring Jen’s emotional response to the incident, as we see her get imprisoned by the DODC, lose her job and her apartment, and move back into her parents’ house in the span of a few scenes. “I think I probably wrote like, 20 versions of a 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,’” Gao

The 'She-Hulk: Attorney at Law' finale on Disney+ surprised us with Jennifer Walter's (and the MCU's) most meta fourth-wall break yet. We break down the ...

[Daredevil, She-Hulk](https://twitter.com/Murdocklorian/status/1580494668907053056?s=20&t=YkSxj7OcoLC-fFP2koCSAw), and more, but the optimist in me would like to think the choices here are clues to the MCU’s future. [an earlier episode of She-Hulk](https://www.vulture.com/article/she-hulk-attorney-at-law-season-1-episode-2-recap-superhuman-law.html), which was to retrieve Skaar (Wil Deusner), his beefed-up Hulkling child with a weird haircut! It’s been rumored to be [adapted for the MCU](https://twitter.com/etnow/status/1559359289348591620?s=20&t=VWEAzwqeBYbadNhJ-6t67Q), and in K.E.V.I.N.’s talk with Jen, he mentions revealing what Hulk was up to during the majority of She-Hulk, though she quickly shuts the robot down, saying, “Save it for the movie.” Is Ruffalo finally getting his solo Marvel movie? The one that has me especially pumped are the multiple (!) [The Scarlet Witch comics by James Robinson](https://twitter.com/616wandaarchive/status/1580550400184184833/photo/1) on display (David Aja’s exquisite cover art is hard to miss). But for comics readers, this fourth-wall break is a direct (and modern) reference to John Byrne’s run of The Sensational She-Hulk comics, specifically when Jennifer [tears through a page](https://twitter.com/JarredTaylor_/status/1412494179352125449?s=20&t=5zo1qAg_b0tCiTYvhkrdSQ) to yell at Byrne himself. [“Whose Show Is This”](https://www.vulture.com/article/she-hulk-attorney-at-law-season-1-episode-9-finale-recap-whose-show-is-this.html) sends Jennifer breaking through the streamer’s Marvel interface to land in a Marvel Assembled documentary to figure out why the hell her finale is going bonkers. [writer Cody Ziglar](https://twitter.com/yayforzig/status/1580566908855758848?s=20&t=WWcN14h2mhgPfjCpyBoIFw) as well as lots of fun show concept art and planning, but my favorite gag is “There’s something attractive about a man’s knees” written on the whiteboard. [complete with a visor](https://twitter.com/_potterjays_/status/1580463825052401664?s=20&t=GG6BPktrEL2sJ3MjdBJypg) meant to mimic Feige’s dedication to wearing every baseball hat on Earth — created to deliver “near-perfect product.” Did that gag me as much as [Wanda breaking the fourth wall in](https://www.vulture.com/article/wandavision-episode-4-recap-we-interrupt-this-program.html) WandaVision? about when we’ll see the X-Men, to which he says, “I cannot tell you that” (classic Kevin). (Good for her!) But [the series finale](https://www.vulture.com/article/she-hulk-attorney-at-law-season-1-episode-9-finale-recap-whose-show-is-this.html) started with She-Hulk Jennifer Walters at a low point after being extremely violated by the show’s main villains, incels known as Intelligencia. [She-Hulk: Attorney at Law](https://www.vulture.com/tv/she-hulk-attorney-at-law/) sure was something. Throughout the Disney+ series’ run, Tatiana Maslany’s eponymous lawyer smashed cases, heads, and even [Charlie Cox’s Daredevil](https://www.vulture.com/article/she-hulk-attorney-at-law-recap-season-1-episode-8-ribbit-and-rip-it.html).

She-Hulk's season one finale “Whose Show Is This?” broke the fourth wall in a tribute to John Byrne's comics, but the episode could and should have gone ...

Though Jen and K.E.V.I.N.’s conversation is all about her wish for She-Hulk’s finale to sidestep all the typical whizbang spectacle and thin plotting that tends to define the final thirds and finales of most of Marvel’s projects, “Whose Show Is This?” still does all of the same things it’s being critical of. But it also would have been nice to see She-Hulk send Jennifer off with a bang that was actually about her as a person rather than the megacorporation that created her. It’s kind of interesting that Jen’s seemingly aware that she’s a character on a streaming series much in the same way that her comic book counterpart was aware that she was being written and illustrated by John Byrne in the late ’80s. Instead, the show used its Intelligencia plot as an opportunity to reflect on the nature of Marvel’s approach to storytelling, and while She-Hulk might have been the ideal character to do that sort of thing, it’s tough to say whether “Whose Show Is This?” was the right place to do it. To She-Hulk’s credit, it’s impressive how swiftly “Whose Show Is This?” moves as it’s detailing how Jennifer loses her job, moves back in with her parents, and sinks into a mild depression after a judge rules that she can no longer transform into She-Hulk without risking jail time. If She-Hulk had the time, “Whose Show Is This?” might have slowed down some to dig deeper into the implications of how Jennifer’s body and her feelings have been policed in ways distinct from Bruce’s experience and how her predicament is complicated by her living as a relatively “normal” person. Just when it was beginning to feel as if “Whose Show Is This?” has found a surprising second wind, the episode starts to falter by once again just telling you what’s going on. What takes a little bit more time to become clear, though, is how unsatisfying She-Hulk’s attempt at substituting meta humor for a big, flashy VFX sequence is, even though the idea to go in that direction is a very good one. It’s completely predictable when Nikki and Pug discover that one of the creepier guys Jen went on a date with in She-Hulk’s first episode is actually Intellgencia’s leader, true. She-Hulk was always meant to be a story about its heroine embracing the newfound duality of her irradiated existence, and the show did a solid job of seeding that idea throughout the season as Jen grappled with what being a superhuman meant to and for her, personally. But what Jen doesn’t quite understand as her former colleagues speak to her through reinforced glass is why it’s so easy for them and virtually everyone else in Los Angeles to see her as an out-of-control monster, even though they all know why she lost her cool. Jen and Bruce’s reputations aren’t exactly the same, and they’ve been operating in the public spotlight for very different amounts of time.

Jennifer Walters just gave Marvel one of television's biggest self-owns, as She-Hulk hits Marvel where it hurts.

The tone in the final three episodes is very different as Jen has to deal with worsening personal issues, including She-Hulk’s strange group of foes. That task was handled by comic book veteran Cody Ziglar, who [wrote in a Matt Murdock that matches Jen](https://gamerant.com/she-hulk-attorney-at-law-matt-murdock-daredevil-jennifer-walters-co-op-game/), without automatically depriving him of his moody nature. The writer's satire is even better if one thinks the show is bad. By mocking itself so blatantly, it not only honors the She-Hulk’s comic book stories, it’s impossible to deny how bold of an experiment it was. This first point of contention came in a year when the working conditions of VFX artists have been brought to the movie industry’s forefront, with Marvel being widely considered one of its biggest offenders. She-Hulk is pretty costly to put out there, every scene where this 6’7” woman shows up can is a logistical nightmare that a legal sitcom normally wouldn’t be able to afford.

Jen has had a pretty rough go of it throughout the series, as herself and as She-Hulk, which is not unusual for a Marvel production, where no one's life is ever ...

[K.E.V.I.N.](https://collider.com/she-hulk-kevin-feige-voice-cameo/) takes up a lot of the half-hour episode that could have been used to more completely tie up her storyline. What else are superheroes for, if not to make us feel better about ourselves and the world — even if only for a moment? [Episode 1, "A Normal Amount of Rage,"](https://collider.com/she-hulk-attorney-at-law-episode-1-easter-eggs/) she took it in stride and carried on with her life. Jen's story is a relatable one (if you ignore the superpowers), and many women have experienced at least some, if not many, aspects of her painful journey. Jen had a moment of fear before she remembered she had superpowers, Hulked out, and kicked their asses. For those of us living in the real world, it would have been nice if we could have seen Jen do something we sometimes wish we could do ourselves — get in a couple of shots (maybe some below the belt) before she rose above it all. But Jen does, and even though she got immediately locked up by the Department of Damage Control, it was nice to see her get angry. This should have been the set-up to Jen's final hero moment where she got back up and kicked some ass (looking at you, Todd and Josh), but it was not to be. A lot of women have heard this a hundred times before, and have been forced to smile through it or ignore it because they don't want to be called emotional and/or they don't have the physical strength to defend themselves. Intelligencia, the community of She-Hulk-hating men and their leader Todd (Jon Bass) — who copied Jen's phone, had her filmed without her permission and then showed that video in public — are unusual villains for the MCU. When she got a gamma blood infusion in an accident caused by a Sakaaran spaceship in the first few minutes of [She-Hulk: Attorney at Law](https://collider.com/tag/she-hulk/), the finale, "Whose Show is This?"

Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Episode 9 of She-Hulk. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been contending with a lot this year: splits in the ...

She-Hulk was already setting itself up to be the MCU’s Fleabag, in a way, but when lassoed by the constraints of Marvel’s style guide, it loses its tact in favor of fitting into a certain kind of box, one that almost feels like it’s getting smaller and smaller the larger the MCU grows. By pulling Jen out of her own story, and putting her up against an AI instead of forcing her to contend with marrying She-Hulk and Jen Walters as one and the same, it posits that she can’t defend herself, either as She-Hulk or as Jennifer. I don’t want to say She-Hulk was setting itself up to fail by incorporating a very serious plotline into a half-hour legal comedy, but the bones of that argument are there. Weaponized sexuality is a painful reality that women of all kinds must contend with every waking moment of their lives, and She-Hulk makes nothing more than a passing nod at it, not even bothering to use comedy to make a commentary on the kinds of men who victimize women by doing such a thing. It feels like a cop-out, quite literally written because the writers couldn’t figure out a tactful way to address the violence and hatred women are faced with every single day that would also align with Marvel’s style guide that demands fan service and an over-the-top ending. As she should; not only is she a woman in law, where she is already likely to be taken less seriously, but she must also contend with the burden of being incredibly visible, as a superhero who has no secret identity and is constantly being subject to the whims of the surrounding media. There is no catharsis in its attempts to be funny because it’s so far out of line with what we’ve experienced up to this point that it doesn’t feel genuine. The show has been carrying on with a lightness and a levity that many other MCU properties lack post-Snap, and was in line to be one of Marvel’s best projects, finally delivering on a female-created and female-led story with promise. Frankly, I would’ve preferred if the writers had gone with what they deemed the cop-out route and just seen the ridiculous final battle through, instead of plucking Jen out of the narrative and having her shatter the fourth wall like a nameless goon (or is it henchman?) through a glass window. She’s quirky, funny, a little off-kilter — and her quite literally ripping through the screen and into Disney+ itself might have been all of those things, had the writers not chosen to combine it with the Intelligencia storyline, something that demands much more tact and thought than meta can offer. They entered an arena that many female viewers thought of as revolutionary: dealing with the kind of cyber-attacks women (particularly those with public-facing careers) are subject to on the Internet, as Jen had a sex tape recorded and published without her consent, resulting in a Hulking-out that landed her in prison. Would it comment on what it means to be a hero as a woman when Jen can’t shamelessly rage the way Bruce can?