This article is going to be filled with spoilers for the She-Hulk finale, so stop reading now if you haven’t yet watched, and still want to remain spoiler free.
The She-Hulk series on Disney+ has made solid use of the character’s ability to break the fourth wall and address the audience directly, usually about things that are happening in the episode. Following a hook up with Charlie Cox’s Daredevil, Tatiana Maslany’s Jen Walters will turn to her audience and ask, “Why is this episode still going? We just have a satisfying climax!” Stuff like that. Well, the dial got turned up to 11 in the She-Hulk finale – available to anyone with a Disney+ subscription – when, during a routine finale-level fight sequence, Jen broke through the fourth wall and into the Disney+ app screen so she could find her way to Marvel Studios headquarters. It looks something like this:
Things only got progressively weirder from that point on, as She-Hulk (Maslany) directly addressed the writers in her writing room for the lazy superhero cliches they were working into her plot. She criticized the idea of putting gamma-radiated blood in her ex-boyfriend, Todd (Jon Bass), to create a new Hulk. But when she learned that these decisions are made by Kevin… all Marvel fans likely assumed this meant Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios.
It wasn’t Feige. It was an artificial intelligence robot named K.E.V.I.N., or Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus. And it was wearing a hat!
She-Hulk spent the bulk of its season making fun of the tropes that have established the Marvel Cinematic Universe a powerhouse. It started in the pilot, when Jen rejected her newly acquired Hulk powers and preferred to live her life as an attorney. It found new uses for classic characters such as Wong (Benedict Wong) and The Abomination (Tim Roth). And while some B-plots fell flat, the return of Daredevil was celebrated, and the show deserved credit for truly trying something new within the confines of the MCU.
That being said, She-Hulk wasn’t completely without its surprises and plot developments for major characters. In the closing scene, during a family cookout, Jen’s cousin Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) DOES return from his jaunt to Sakaar, which we covered following an earlier episode. And Hulk wasn’t alone. He was with his son, Skaar.
What? Yes, in the comics – during the Planet Hulk saga – the Hulk had a child with an extraterrestrial named Caiera. So now we can add Hulk to the growing list of original Avengers (after Thor and Tony Stark) to add children in Phases 3 and 4. And in an episode where Jen Walters makes fun of the “Daddy Issues” plaguing the MCU.
This was a wild, yet fitting way for She-Hulk to end its first season, taking the piss out of the machine that allowed it to become a show while cycling in characters new and old. If the joke in the finale holds true, we won’t see She-Hulk in an upcoming Marvel movie, but given her connection to Matt Murdock and origin on a Disney+ series, we could see the character popping up in one of the announced Marvel shows like Echo or Daredevil: Born Again in the near future.
