She-Hulk finale smashes fourth walls and bad endings.
The go big or go home attitude worked for this MCU nerd.
The Short Take:
A bold and brash finale that made me cackle the whole way. But I can understand how not all Marvel fans may feel the same.
[SPOILER ALERT: It’s a finale. I’m Hulking out with spoilers.]
The Long Take:
A quick scroll through social media will tell you that reactions to the She-Hulk finale mostly fell into one of two buckets: overjoyed or confused. And that’s okay. The legal comedy decided to go full meta and completely halt the progress of its plot halfway through. Jen not only breaks the fourth wall, but breaks into the Disney+ menu. Suffice it to say that despite all the talk of multiverses, no Marvel series has broken reality quite like this before.
For those who fell into the confused bin — and that’s okay because this was a wild and wacky thing to have seen — allow me to catch you up. Amidst an investigation of Intelligencia, HulkKing, and the incels who orchestrated a targeted attack on She-Hulk, an unemployed, inhibitor-wearing Jen decides to take a “mental health break” from living with her parents to talk to Emil Blonsky about how to cope with life on probation. At the same time, Nikki and Pug infiltrate an Intelligencia meetup that also happens to be at the Lodge at Summer Twilights, Emil Blonksy’s retreat. Nearly everyone from the show converges here, mostly coincidentally. Todd gets Hulk powers, Emil is in Abomination form, Titania randomly bursts through a wall Kool-Aid Man style, Bruce drops in from outer space, and everyone starts fighting.
Jen will simply not abide. She takes matters into her own hands, and crosses through the fourth wall into our own world, using a behind-the-scenes documentary for Shang-Chi to transport herself to the Disney lot. She chews out the writer’s room of her own show, only to realize that she needs to take her complaints to the top — “Kevin.” The assumption here is that we’re about to get a cameo of Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, the brains behind the MCU. But “Kevin” turns out to be “K.E.V.I.N,” an AI that can use an algorithm to churn out all the Marvel content we’ve been getting for years. A hilarious negotiation of what I would facetiously call reshoots follows. Wow, just typing all that out makes it sound even more bananas.
I didn’t see this coming. She-Hulk has been breaking the fourth wall all along, so that in of itself was not surprising. Back in my Episode 1 review, I said that the most logical use of fourth wall breaks would be to comment on the MCU — how stories within it work, and what She-Hulk’s relationship to it might be. I think I assumed that the meta commentary would be subtler. More a wink and a nod than a hilarious slap in the face. I didn’t realize that what began as playful references to how much we love Wong would escalate into a full-on admission that sometimes the plots of the end of Marvel films and series don’t make sense. Through Jen’s confrontation with the writers of her show and “K.E.V.I.N.,” through her attempt to rectify what she sees as narrative shortcomings, she openly addresses criticisms of past MCU films and series. It’s brazen, and I respect that the show really went for it. Plus, I outright threw my head back and cackled at every. single. meta. joke.
But…BUT…I’m someone who vigilantly monitors the discourse surrounding the MCU. I listen to all kinds of podcasts, ask all my Marvel-loving friends for their takes, and, yes, I’m one of those people who will actually read an Easter egg listicle or read a Wikipedia page for fun. I like doing research as a routine step in my MCU consumption.
I like hearing critics discuss how Marvel is doing right now. About what’s working and not working and what will happen in the future. I’ve heard highbrow film critics praise 2/3 of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings only to cite Marvel’s “third act problem” as the film’s downfall. I’ve heard television critics blast WandaVision for chickening out on its innovative premise only to devolve into a CGI slugfest. I have heard podcasters debate weekly whether or not She-Hulk’s CGI bothers them, and make fun of how Jen is cheaper than She-Hulk. I’ve read about the ongoing issues with Marvel’s VFX department that inevitably complicate that debate. I have been looking for clues and asking some form of the question “When are we getting the X-Men in the MCU?” in nearly every review I’ve written. Jen’s thumbs up to the camera after she asked K.E.V.I.N. about that, by the way, made me feel so seen and yet personally attacked at the same time.
In short, I feel like everything Jen says to the audience, the writers, and K.E.V.I.N. speak directly to me. What if you’re not me?
Image Credit: Marvel.com
While I can’t relate to the viewer who isn’t into this She-Hulk finale, I can completely understand how someone might think this just diddled away the ending of a promising story and actually deprived us of a satisfying one. And while I found hearing Jen complain about how a lot of the storytelling choices — like giving Todd Hulk powers, deflecting blame to the powers rather than him or having Bruce swoop in to save the day, which undermines Jen’s position as protagonist and power as a female superhero — cathartic and did want the finale to focus more on her own stakes, as she says, I get how the extended pause to discuss that and then sudden resuming of the story after it’s all over feels like it skipped over too much. And I don’t want to live in a world where a meta extravaganza is the only alternative to the flash boom bang we’ve been getting in so many other endings. I think outside of She-Hulk, Marvel writers should take Jen’s notes and make endings that have both the cool action and the narrative integrity. Also, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying what we’ve been getting in other shows, and what critics say should not invalidate any given fan’s enjoyment.
To be fair to She-Hulk, though, the show we’ve been watching this whole time has been trying to tell us this is is a satire of the MCU and other aspects of pop culture more than a sincere participant in the MCU the entire time. That’s how Jamila Jameel explains Titania to fans on Twitter — she’s a spoof, a joke. The show satirizes toxic fans, incels, Internet trolls — whatever you want to call them — by making them the “big bad” of the entire series.
The parodic crown jewel of this episode is the opening credits tribute to the late 70s/early 80s series, The Incredible Hulk. It was absolutely perfect. From the softer look imitating camera lenses back then, to the costuming and use of now ancient technology, to the deep, serious voiceover narrator, to the use of a ridiculous-looking Lou Ferrigno-esque “double.” There was a commendable attention to detail that almost instantly made me think, “Are they doing this? They’re really doing this!”
So this finale, in many ways, is a natural evolution. It’s kind of like playing a Pokemon game; this finale is the most powerful, final form, but some may still prefer the cuter, weaker, less evolved version. Sorry, Raichu. Pikachu is always going to be more popular and iconic than you.
The Wizard of Oz himself, Kevin Feige, (by the way, my head canon is that Feige was hiding behind a curtain and using K.E.V.I.N. to deflect attention from himself) is apparently the one that encouraged Head Writer Jessica Gao to stray from the standard MCU ending. In an interview on Marvel.com, Gao says that she was struggling with the finale because she felt obligated to have a “Big villain fight, big finale. But it never felt right because I was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.” Gao then paraphrases what Feige told her: “He was like, ‘Why? 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.’” Granted, this could all be part of the big Marvel PR machine, but a more idealistic reading of these quotes is that perhaps the perception that Marvel as a corporation just wants to churn out box office cash cows and Disney+ subscriber drivers is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy that creators trap themselves in unnecessarily.
Clearly the main talking point of this review had to be the epic fourth wall break, but I don’t want to finish without acknowledging all the other comedy gold we had in this episode. The spy tag team of Nikki and Pug was so well done. I’m glad the writers were able to maintain Nikki’s status as a skilled investigator queen, and Pug’s struggle with acting like a chauvinistic dude bro warmed my heart. There were many throw-away line gems, but my favorite may have been when Nikki says to Pug, “Does that bitch ever use a door!?” after Titania busts in.
In another unexpected unexpected twist (no, that’s not a typo…I feel like the series knows that unexpected twists are a thing; I think Jen says as much at one point), Jen asks K.E.V.I.N. to bring back Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock because “a woman has needs.” (Emphatic cosign.) The result is a very sweet scene in which Matt joins the Banner/Walters family for a backyard barbecue. Everyone at the table contributes to a group cross-examination; Jen’s dad even makes a comment about how expensive it is to raise kids in L.A. Matt assures them that he’s only visiting for a week. But I say, he’s visiting for a WEEK? He’s meeting her parents? This seems to be more serious than I had hoped last week. Trying not to get those hopes up too high, of course, but I’m very happy to see Jen uncomplicatedly happy, even for a brief moment.
I was happy to see Wongers return in the end-credits scene. Emil calling him out on his TV binge-watching cracked me up. I do think this was a missed opportunity to give us some more Madisynn, but I’d like to think that she’s complicit in Wong’s tardiness here and is with him off-screen. I’d assume that the writers probably didn’t realize what a breakout character they had on their hands with Madisynn; if they had had time to factor in the fan response to her, I’m sure she would have been standing next to Wongers with their matching G & Ts in hand.
Finishing that sentence reminds me of how much unadulterated joy She-Hulk has brought me in these past weeks. That’s truer for some episodes more than others, but I’d say that they stuck the landing here in a way that compensates for any unevenness across the season. This was She-Hulk’s show, and I’m so glad that held true in the end.
Oh, and, to honor the spirit of the show, I’m not going to talk about Bruce’s son Skaar at all. You’re going to have to Google that one on your own.