There is a first time for everything and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law does just that; taking a Marvel Cinematic Universe series and turning it into an entertaining Legal Comedy…for the most part. This series critiques fans for critiquing the MCU by giving them the predictability of cameos and plot details but also being blunt through fourth wall breaks and cheesy comedy. They made this series a mess on purpose in order to do so. Men (well, boys more or less) don’t like that a female with feminine problems gets to be the hulk. Matter of fact is, this is a very real thing that female presenting individuals go through on a regular basis. She has to constantly prove that a woman can be a hulk; not just in the series, but in the real world too.
This series did well as a stand alone by illustrating these issues of womanhood while continuing to portray these fictional scenarios of balancing a superhero life with a real life. What does it mean to be a female superhero in a world and fandom that is dominated by men. The fanbase has been harsh on these female led movies and shows and by addressing it as a plot mechanism. Jen keeping a regular job as a lawyer that she worked hard for and simultaneously dealing with being a known superhero means that she will have fans and haters that complicate both lives. This means taking a toll on her mentally, and we get to see that. She can’t even find a genuine date because no one likes Jen and She-Hulk is a “specimen.”
This show as of right now has no significance in the MCU as a larger story, and that is okay. This was an enjoyable experience with call backs to Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk and Edward Norton’s Hulk to tie in the overall story with Mark Ruffalo Replacing Norton. It ties the universe together, but we don’t necessarily see what this show does for the future. Will we see a World War Hulk storyline? Will we see a mean green fighting machine in the Young Avengers storyline that is being teased? We don’t know, but just like most Marvel storylines nowadays, we won’t know until it is fleshed out and only K.E.V.I.N. knows what it will be.
We can’t avoid the ending. While it left us confused and left me kind of upset, it does flesh out and answer how it has been critiquing the fanbase after becoming this strategic universal storytelling system. It proves to the fandom that they don’t need to follow that system in order to be entertaining. They just choose to. This ending was a clusterfuck and left a lot of questions being made by Jen’s “fourth wall break” that broke quite a wall. Overall, it gives Jen what she wants and the story what it needs, but I wish we could have seen how a new story would have fleshed out after her “fourth wall break”
Whether you enjoyed this series for being different or liked that it introduced new characters in a silly way, we know that we were caught up in the grand scheme of things. If there is anything we learned from this series we know one thing for sure: Captain America FUCKS!
TJ Bogart is a Junior Film, Photo and Visual Arts major who has convinced themselves that they’re the Hulk. They can be reached at [email protected].