SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you haven’t seen the season finale of “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” now streaming on Disney+.
Throughout “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” Jennifer Walters, aka She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany), repeatedly breaks the fourth wall by not only addressing the camera directly, but acknowledging that she exists on a show Marvel Studios superhero television. At the end of the season, titled “Whose show is this?” – Jennifer exits the show entirely, jumping on the Disney+ portal to confront the show’s writers about why the finale is so unnecessarily convoluted with weird and nonsensical plots, including one about a group of toxic fanboys trolling Jennifer online about being a superhero who doesn’t deserve her powers.
Finally, Jennifer confronts the person responsible: no, not Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige, but KEVIN (or Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus), a sentient robot armed with “the world’s most advanced entertainment algorithm.”
As Maslany, creator and head writer Jessica Gao, and director and executive producer Kat Coiro explained to Variety, Feige was in the game from the beginning and even helped shape her AI avatar. They also talked about how pleased they were to see real-life online trolls use the exact same criticisms of “She-Hulk,” the show, that the show’s fictional online trolls used against She-Hulk , the character. And Maslany addressed Jennifer’s romance with her lawyer Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil (Charlie Cox), while Gao and Coiro shed some light on the introduction of Skaar (Wil Deusner), the cousin’s surprise son of Jennifer, Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). ).
In addition to breaking the fourth wall, the finale addresses some of the same trolling comments that Marvel fans have been making. How did it feel to watch this while the show was airing, knowing how it would end?
Tatiana Maslany: Jessica Gao is a genius and she knows the culture we live in and her place in it when she writes these stories about a female superhero. She knows what that answer will be. As a cast, it was fun to send each other these troll responses like, “Oh my god, give them a week and then they’ll literally see this pop up on the show and become the villains of the show.” It was exciting.
Did you expect to face trolls when you signed up for the show?
Reading the script, it was very true. There is so much resistance to a woman just existing in this superhero space. There will always be that. As I anticipated. That’s also why I think it’s important. There’s a right to space that certain people have, and even existing as She-Hulk feels like shit, and I love that.
What are you looking forward to seeing from Jen and Matt Murdock’s relationship?
I don’t know what Jen’s life is like now, other than she’s opening up. They definitely have a very real connection. I’m curious how it manifests itself, if it’s just getting together now and then and having fun, or if it’s something more. But I don’t think either of them is thinking about that. They are at the beginning of something.
Which Avenger would Jen get along with best?
Baby Groot would make a great day. Impossible to film, unless we put it in my head or something. There are so many characters that it would be fun to see how Jen and them get along because she’s a little weird and a little outsider. I think any pairing would be interesting.
She and Deadpool would destroy the fourth wall.
They will fight over whose camera is the dominant camera.
Courtesy of Marvel Studios
Did Marvel give you any feedback on the hate comments they get online?
Jessica Gao: This conversation between Jen and KEVIN is very much the relationship I have with Kevin in real life and a lot of it is taken from conversations I’ve had with him. That scene was much longer in the scripts. If they had let me, I probably would have written a 10 minute conversation of my avatar arguing with Kevin. This is probably the tightest version of what could have been. There were a couple of times where Kevin was like, “Okay, this is kind of bad now.”
How did it feel to accurately predict what the trolls would say?
Our writers room opened three years ago. The fact that he was able to predict what the reaction would be, what the trolls’ comments would be, really shows how tired and unoriginal these trolls are. This tickled me because the little troll that lives inside of me loves to troll.
How did you decide to introduce Skaar?
From the beginning, we often talked about whether there would be a cameo at the end or, in typical Marvel fashion, if we’d tease a new character at the end. A great cameo would depend entirely on who was available and willing to do it, and you can’t really count on that at the script stage. We talked a lot about which character we could tease. Ultimately, it was Kevin who decided it had to be Skaar. His look is all Kevin Feige.
In the episode set at the superhero retreat run by Emil Blonsky, aka the Abomination (Tim Roth), you introduced several lesser-known Marvel characters, such as the vampire Saracen. Was that meant as a Blade reference? Were there other obscure comic book characters you wanted to use?
We were working backwards to want to make jokes about blood. We had originally explored a strange and monstrous creature. Originally, we wanted to use Varnae, who is a more bat-like vampire character, so we could have a character that wasn’t completely human and make a lot of jokes about being more animal and wanting to drink blood. That’s how we ended up with the Saracen. There were a lot of characters from the comics that we pulled and thought were such dark and deep scraps or just silly characters that we thought would be really fun to bring into the story. A lot of them we couldn’t do because either there was already a plan for them or there was a rights issue with the character. We also tried to play with them and had no story. At one point, we had come up with a story for Stilt-Man just because he’s such a silly character, but ultimately we didn’t come up with a good story to use him.
Courtesy of Marvel Studios
What was Kevin Feige’s reaction to the finale?
Kat Coiro: Kevin had a big hand in that ending and the character of KEVIN Ironically, I was more squeamish than they were. I said, “Are we going too far? Are we throwing Marvel and the fans under the bus by dropping Marvel movies? They have such a self-deprecating, irreverent sense of themselves and were totally willing to make fun of themselves. Any criticism that you can throw them, they thought.
Did you have to delve into all the Marvel reviews or just scroll through Twitter?
One thing I noticed is that early on in the series I was getting a lot of nasty and mean comments. As it progressed, this has stopped. I think it’s because they now realize that when they target us, they’re playing right into our hands. And we said it, which is quite rewarding. It is so satisfying. Even negative comments, I always interpret as commitment. If people are so angry, they are paying attention. I see everything as positive.
How many of the cameos in the finale, like Daredevil, Skaar, the Hulk, and the Abomination, were just for gags or intentionally placed in for future stories?
Kevin was very specific with Skaar, so I’m sure there is some plan in the future, although I have no idea what it might be. We all knew that Daredevil had to come back because people love him and their chemistry is so good. I just wish Patty Guggenheim as Madisynn was back in the finale. This is my biggest regret.
What repercussions will the ending have on the future of the MCU?
I like it when KEVIN says the problem is fixed, because I don’t want all the characters in the MCU [be able to] confront him about his arguments. So I hope it’s a one time thing. Now we know it exists, but I don’t think we should be checking it all the time.
These interviews have been edited and condensed.