To be completely honest, we’re all still kind of reeling from that bonkers She-Hulk finale, where Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) broke so far through the fourth wall, she ended up in Marvel Studios headquarters, confronting the “real” president of the MCU. It was an appropriately meta ending to a series that poked fun at itself relentlessly and had its lead character commenting on events in real time, like when her cousin Brice Banner (Mark Ruffalo) introduced that new character in the closing moments of the finale. There’s also one moment in the finale that still makes me laugh every time I watch it, and when I got the chance to as Maslany about it, she explained that even THAT moment was a meta reference aimed mostly at the cast and crew.
It goes without saying that Tatiana Maslany was delightful as Jen Walters, and even if all of the humor in She-Hulk didn’t land with me in every episode, I personally adored Maslany’s complete lack of ego and willingness to try anything in search of the punchline. During a pivotal confrontation with K.E.V.I.N. in the finale, Walters played the role of every Marvel fan when she asked the all-knowing brain when we finally were getting the X-Men on screen. Then, she made this incredible face:
It seemed like an unusual choice. But Tatiana Maslany actually had a very specific reason for making that hysterical face when she looked directly into camera after probing K.E.V.I.N. about the future of mutants in the MCU, as she told CinemaBlend:
I love the writing in that (scene), I love it so much. It’s so ‘inside of Jen’s brain.’ But also, that moment for me – Jessica Gao’s husband, Truck (Torrence), is an illustrator who made She-Hulk hats. And one of them is like (makes face) this face. And it just came out in that moment! Because he’d made these hats as… so it was like this nice kind of, again, another meta element of this whole show.
I didn’t even need to know about the She-Hulk hats to get a laugh out of the face that Tatiana Maslany chose to make in the finale. Knowing that it’s a nod to hats made for the cast and crew is the icing on an already funny cake. If you have a Disney+ subscription, but haven’t binged the series yet, at least give the show’s finale a chance. It’s very entertaining, and also features more scenes between Maslany and the excellent Charlie Cox. Damn, do they have incredible chemistry.
We don’t know yet if She-Hulk is going to be renewed for a second season, and head writer Jessica Gao didn’t want to address the topic so soon after the finale. But given the sitcom style of the show, it’d be very easy to come up with more legal cases for Jen Walters to tackle… but also, there are numerous upcoming Marvel movies that could use She-Hulk as a valuable addition. We shall see!
