The way She-Hulk: Attorney At Law treated its principal character, there was no way it could have delivered a finale where we would take Jen Walters seriously. The episode used its greatest weakness to its credit, doubling down on the absurdity of the season and crafting one of the most memorable (if not best) finales in superhero history.
Everything seems to be going the routine MCU way for the first half of the episode. Jen is forbidden from turning into She-Hulk ever again by law due to her ‘loss of control’ at the award ceremony. She is at her lowest, and hatches a plan to catch the people who framed her. While Pug and Nikki infiltrate an Intelligencia meetup, Jen seeks spiritual help from an AWOL Emil Blonsky. Meanwhile, Blonsky is at the Intelligencia meetup in Abomination form, hired as a life coach by none other than Jen’s most-insecure-date-ever Todd, who also happens to be the founder of Intelligencia.
This is where the metaness begins, as the show improvises Intelligencia’s origins, morphing it into a society of men disgruntled with women’s achievements. This is a fantastic nod to the world we live in, where loud men cite nostalgia as an excuse to scream against diversity and inclusion in comics. To Marvel’s credit, this shows that they aren’t going to stop growing till they accommodate every single community. Even if it’s to sell them merchandise.
All the parties run into each other in a moment of chaotic exposition, where three minutes of dialogue fill episodes’ worth of plot and character development. We prepare for yet another CGI climax where Todd tries to become an ugly green monster with Jen’s blood, and Titania and Bruce arrive to join the fight (How is Abomination’s CGI better than She-Hulk?). And then, something unthinkable happens.
Jen breaks the fourth wall to address how the plot is going all over the place, before the Disney+ homepage comes on, and she randomly climbs into a tile representing the Marvel office. She goes to meet Marvel’s invisible string-puller, Kevin Feige, but finds an AI-powered machine named KEVIN in his place. The metaness approaches Black Mirror levels at this point, as we find that KEVIN curates all the Marvel content based on refined entertainment algorithms. The interaction between Jen and KEVIN gives the vibes of a Comedy Central roast, with the former taking a dig on literally every Marvel trope, including the chaotic CGI fest in every climax, the nagging ‘all-MCU-films-are-the-same’ problem, and the budgeting constraints that interfere with the CGI. Jen also expresses her desire to choose a rational resolution over a spectacular one, where actions have consequences and villains have independent personalities.
The resolution does have a nagging MCU-ness to it nevertheless, which one could argue is a huge inside joke. Every character sits down for a happy brunch in the end, joined by Matt Murdock’s Daredevil (are they a thing now?), Bruce, and his surprise kid. I expected a lot of unpredictable things from him but never neglect around contraception. The post-credit scene is another fantastic inside joke, as Wong makes another cameo and rescues Emil off to Kamar Taj, the land of premium cable TV.
The reason the episode works isn’t for its shock-value. It’s the meta-commentary which astonishingly makes its way past a studio that is far more comprehensive than an AI bot named KEVIN, and more unwilling to try new things than Indian grandparents with a Nokia 3310. It’s also proof that Marvel is listening after all. The fact that this finale actually got green-lit is promising for the direction we are heading in as Phase 4 draws to a close. We are really excited to see where we go next.
