She-Hulk Review

Plot summary:

Jen Walters, the cousin of Bruce Banner, gains the powers of the Hulk after a car accident where she gains some of the Hulk’s blood from Bruce. She tries to balance her life as a lawyer with her media-given name, She-Hulk. As She-Hulk gains popularity on the Internet, Jen is fired from her old job but hired at a law firm to work for their superhuman law division. She then realizes that she has to represent the Hulk’s old enemy, Emil Blonsky, or the Abomination. However, she argues that Emil is a changed man and should be let go. As Jen represents several clients, like an Asgardian shapeshifter, a fake magician, and an immortal, she argues against people like Titania and Matt Murdock (Daredevil). However, she falls in love with Murdock, and as things seem to be going great, the Intelligencia—a group of people who despise She-Hulk, led by “Hulkking ”—exposes her in front of the entire world. Angered, she sets out to expose the Intelligencia; she finds Blonsky speaking for them, and a fight scene between a now Hulk-sized Hulkking, the Abomination, and Hulk is set up when She-Hulk asks the audience, “Is this making sense?”. She-Hulk then breaks the fourth wall and directly confronts the She-Hulk writers and K.E.V.I.N. (a robot canon version of Marvel’s president, Kevin Feige), and rewrites the ending so that Hulkking is arrested and Matt Murdock and She-Hulk have a happy ending.

How She-Hulk is unlike any other Marvel show

Starting from the first episode, She-Hulk speaks and looks directly at the audience, breaking the fourth wall—a first for the MCU but accurate to how She-Hulk is in the comics. Unlike Bruce, Jen doesn’t have an alter-ego and can freely switch back and forth between human and Hulk form. The finale literally breaks the boundaries between our devices and our lives as She-Hulk walks into the real world and confronts K.E.V.I.N. Viewers get a glimpse into the (probably fake, but interesting nonetheless) room where Marvel projects are planned, and She-Hulk literally changes the finale of the show to her own satisfaction, breaking the tradition of having an action-packed Marvel finale.

Why She-Hulk is widely criticized

Because of the unusual style of the show, She-Hulk has many critics questioning its place in the MCU and Marvel’s credibility as a whole. From the very first trailer, She-Hulk’s CGI was criticized because it didn’t live up to Marvel’s standards. Additionally, many viewers lost interest in episodes four through seven when it seemed like there was no direction to the story. Most action scenes were either at the beginning or end of the series, and even then, they were still short. The cameos of Wong and Daredevil, while entertaining, weren’t as relevant to the story as theorists had expected. Additionally, the finale was expected to be intriguing with a rematch between Hulk and Abomination set up, only for it to be cut short as She-Hulk navigated the Disney+ screen. Many viewers argue that this was an unexpected finale, but it doesn’t make the rest of the show any better.

The direction Marvel is headed for its shows and its criticisms can be excused

Ever since the beginning of the year, Marvel has taken a different approach to its Disney+ shows. First, it was Moon Knight, which had an aspect of horror and mystery, quite different from the action genre Marvel projects usually are. Then Ms. Marvel came along, which featured the first Muslim superhero, opening the doors for diversity in Marvel’s TV show cabinet. She-Hulk, who is comedic and has an open personality, appeals to audiences who aren’t into shows exclusively action-oriented. Recently, Marvel has been focusing on stories instead of just throwing in fight scenes to appeal to audiences. Marvel wants to test its projects with different audiences rather than just its own fans. Additionally, She-Hulk herself admitted that Marvel is known for skipping the story and going straight to the action and that her show would be more of the same. K.E.V.I.N. himself tells She-Hulk to switch to Jen off-camera because the CGI is expensive to show her transforming in and out of Hulk form. While this serves a comedic purpose, Marvel essentially criticized itself for adding humor to the show.

Conclusion

She-Hulk is clearly not suited to fit all audiences, and Marvel knows that. The diversity of recent TV shows reveals that Marvel is trying to test out its stories and audiences through TV shows and do what it does best in its movies. While we can all agree that She-Hulk was a below-average type of show for Marvel, Marvel’s quality isn’t necessarily declining. There have been high standards set since Infinity War and Endgame and fans are expecting that each new Marvel project must live up to that hype—this is impossible. Not every story will be a culmination of years’ worth of character arcs, so we can’t expect every Marvel project to live up to that.