The Short Take:
Episode 3 playfully roasts MCU fans with meta-commentary and media parodies. These shorter episodes whip by, and I want more!
Image Credit: Collider
[SPOILER ALERT. Do not proceed with your case until you’ve watched the episode. Expect some spoilers for WandaVision right at the beginning here too; if you haven’t seen that series, skip to paragraph 3.]
The Long Take:
Ralph Bohner me once, shame on you. Ralph Bohner me twice, shame on me.
WandaVision, as many of you may recall, notoriously faked out Marvel fans when they cast Evan Peters, who had previously played Quicksilver/Peter Maximoff in the Fox X-Men films, like X-Men: Days of Future Past. Fans (including yours truly) were in a tizzy over the idea that Peters could signal an attempt to cross the studio streams and bring X-Men into the MCU. In the end, Evans’ character was actually a regular guy named Ralph Bohner.
Considering this, I should have known better than to go off the Thunderbolts cliff so quickly after hearing Emil Blonsky mention “seven prison pen pals” in last week’s episode of She-Hulk. This week, instead of a more solid Thunderbolts tease, we get confirmation that Emil does in fact have a polyamorous relationship with seven identically-dressed women; they’re lined up behind plexiglass, anxiously awaiting the results of their soulmate’s parole hearing. Not to be rude, but Blair, Ruth, Marta, Sheila, Alejandra, Yvonne, and Nicolette seem more like pastoral groupies than mercenary anti-heroes. Gao must have knowingly set this as a trap for not only MCU fans but the entire industry of podcasts, Youtube videos, message boards, and social media hashtags born from wild speculation. I tip my hat to her and say well played.
I am so confident that head writer Jessica Gao is in on this joke because so much of the fourth wall breaking in this episode pokes fun at the transmedia storytelling juggernaut that is the MCU. As Jen drives back from visiting Blonsky, who has just told her that everyone’s favorite Sorcerer Supreme (sorry, Stephen) forced him out of his cell, she turns to the camera and says, “I know you can’t wait to see Wong. I get it. I just want to make sure that you don’t think that this is one of those cameo every week type of shows. It’s not.” Especially with Tatiana Maslany’s hilarious line delivery, with just a hint of but not too much condescension, this meta-comment calls fans out on what they love about the MCU. That they crave team-ups, crossovers, and cameos of characters they know from the comic books or characters they have come to love in other MCU films or series. I am, of course, 100% guilty of this, as just moments before I had gleefully yelled “Wong!” at my screen. The camera cuts away from Blonsky before he can finish his sentence with Wong’s name, and thens hows Nikki saying Wong’s name in a more puzzled tone because she doesn’t already know who he is like we do. I was tickled by her comment that Wong’s “Internet presence” is “chaotic” because I honestly have never thought about the Sorcerer Supreme leaving a digital footprint.
This self-reflexive moment allows Gao to have her cake and eat it too. She gets to make fun of the MCU’s narrative structure and fan expectations, but at the same time participate in the system that produces them both. Immediately after Jen tries to argue that this isn’t “one of those” cameo per week shows, she says, “Well, except Bruce. And Blonsky… And Wong…Just remember whose show this actually is.” This is a sheepish admission that She-Hulk is guilty of indulging in the same “you’ll enjoy this even more if you’ve seen all the other things” approach that almost every other other Disney+ series has cashed in on. The one exception I can think of is Moon Knight, which, as I recall, had no cameos or references to the rest of the MCU.
Image Credit: ComicBook
While I haven’t conducted a formal count, it seems like Wong has had the most crossover cameos of any character during Phase 4. Before his appearance here, he pops up in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. At some point one of the podcasters I follow called Phase 4 “Phase Wong,” and am but only in agreement with but delighted by this idea. The actor who plays Wong (who is also named Wong) actually said in an interview with Empire Magazine that we entered “Phase Wong” once he became Sorcerer Supreme.
While Wong usually provides dry comic relief and mocks others in Doctor Strange or Avengers films, he’s interestingly the butt of the joke in She-Hulk. He takes himself very seriously, and seems very out of touch with a normal human perspective. He, for example, assumes that Jen is the one who is actually in charge of Emil’s punishment as opposed to the lawyer defending him. And he opens his witness testimony with, “have you heard of kumite?” Kumite is actually not all that obscure: it’s one of the three things you do when you practice karate; it essentially means sparring or practicing with a partner. And yet the show clearly uses this concept to play up the idea that Wong’s daily life is so far afield from the parole board members’ — from ours.
A big theme of the episode, in fact, is how we normies just don’t get it. In between scenes we always go back to news media or social media discourse that has exploded in response to She-Hulk’s arrival on the superhero scene. Gossip and rumors spread like wildfire. For example, when Jen walks into the high security prison, and a flurry of reporters swarm her, one asks her if she was rejected by the Avengers, and then another reporter hears this and says, “That was She-Hulk, rumored to have been rejected by The Avengers.” The reporter, of course, is acknowledging that this is a rumor, which some might argue makes this okay. But the way in which we see the “information” travel very clearly establishes it as suspect because it is quite literally hearsay. Even more toxic (and, unfortunately, accurate) is the montage of social media posts complaining about She-Hulk as a female superhero. Even though this wasn’t the most subtle meta-commentary, I still appreciated it. It needed to be called out. And I hadn’t really thought about how a real superhero would have to deal with the same media circus that fictional ones do.
Thankfully, this pricklier commentary comes with a side of uncomplicated fun lawyer show goodness to lighten the load. In fact, we spend the majority of the episode in lawyer show locales: courtrooms, prison hearings, and the bar that lawyers hang out at when they clock out for the day. The Asgardian Elf/Megan Thee Stallion subplot was a laugh riot because it considers what no other MCU film or series has: what happens when we let beings from other planets, realms, or dimensions run amok among us. They can mingle in humans’ everyday lives, including, apparently, dating sites like “Hollywood Hook-ups.” This episode poses a very serious question: How does the dating landscape change when a shapeshifting elf might be in the swipe rotation?
While connecting back to previous episodes through Jen’s insufferable former colleague, Dennis, (and mercilessly making fun of his entitled arrogance) was a fun way to make the show feel more cohesive, I’m mostly just glad we got to see Pug in action. He had a great but brief introduction with his bathroom map gift basket last week, and seeing him investigate Dennis’ shapeshifter case and argue in court endeared me to him even more. I hope the series doesn’t thrust him into a romantic subplot too quickly, though my cursory knowledge of the comics makes that seem unlikely. I prefer him as the nice guy best friend.
Image Credit: IGN
Since we spend a lot more time in the office this week, that means more time with Jen in She-Hulk form. The CG in the hallway scenes did distract me a little bit, because lawyer She-Hulk had a lot of full body shots walking (look up technical term for shot). Something about the oversized suit combined with the green body CGI didn’t compute. I had no issue with the twerking at all, on the other hand. (If you haven’t seen Tatiana Maslany filming this scene, do yourself a solid and check out these production stills.) That said, I don’t personally care that much about how the CGI looks because, for me, it’s more important to have smart, funny writing. But since it’s been what everyone has been talking about lately, I feel obligated to track my own response as we go along.
Image Credit: Polygon
The writing continues to make me laugh out loud. It’s sharp and, not unlike Jennifer Walters, is not at all embarrassed to be goofy. The twerking end credits scene in of itself was generally very funny, but Jen saying “I will kill for you, Megan Thee Stallion” stands out as CGI-transcending humor.
Unlike Megan Thee Stallion, though, I do not want She-Hulk to dial it back.