Stay Tuned #45: She-Hulk Finale

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster

To everyone who's still here after I went back on my promise of a giant-robot-versus-kaiju Anime Spotlight so I could vent on cancel culture and the Bill Murray issue in my last post, thank you for your continued readership. Also, remember to like and comment down below, and check out my previous blurbs on She-Hulk: Attorney At Law in the following links:

She-Hulk Episode 1 & 2,

Defenders reboot speculation: Just the Ticket #114: The Black Phone (& MCU Stuff)

She-Hulk Episode 3: Ticket Stubs #42: Run, Lola, Run

Abomination, Leader, and Red Hulk speculation: Theoretical Tuesday: D23 Piece Offerings

More Red Hulk speculation: Stay Tuned #44: Marvel's Werewolf By Night

Also, Spoilers if you live under a rock, in an Amish community, or are an ostrich in a sandy area, because it's coarse and rough, and it gets everywhere.

Oh, and go watch the series on Disney+. Here's the image break:

Through the rest of its run, She-Hulk: Attorney At Law continued to be no less unfocused or entertaining than it was in its first three episodes.

Episode 4 has Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk defend Wong in a copyright suit against "Donny Blaze" (a hack magician straight out of Leprechaun 3 who is both a riff on Criss Angel and a nominal insult to the original Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze) for endangering civilian lives while using a Sling Ring in his act. Meanwhile, she must navigate the Earth-bound Hell dimension that is the dating world, which progresses as you might expect a speed-dating sequence in a comedy to go. Wong is having...better?...luck, though, as he befriends (maybe more?) a ditzy blonde named Madison.

"That's with one 'd,' one 's,' two 'n's, and a y...."

Sorry, Madysonn.

"...but it's not where you think!"

Myadisonn? Maydisonn? Madiysonn?

Ah, that's right. Madisynn.

Thanks; I forgot what I had for breakfast until I saw that spelling, and now I reminded myself in my mouth a little bit.

But seriously, as annoying as she is, Madisynn's relationship with "Wongers" is the best part of the episode, and it's a shame we didn't get more of it. Also, her deal with a goat demon to get herself out of a hell dimension got the fandom talking about Mephisto again, so yay!?

Jen's dates from Hell help her win a trademark suit against Titania (who is peddling her own, She-Hulk-branded cosmetics after somehow getting out of prison) in the next episode, and her co-workers help her get a new superhero wardrobe from a Marc Jacobs-inspired character with a "The Weekend" haircut.

Then, for no reason other than to establish a villain plot that goes nowhere, Jen meets "the perfect guy" at her Bridezilla BFF's wedding (where she also has to contend with Titania crashing the party).

Then, for no other reason than how Marvel writes women, Jen becomes obsessed when "the perfect guy" from the last episode seemingly ghosts her for no other reason than to continue a villain plot that goes nowhere. This lands her at Blonsky's tax shelter/hippie commune/sweat lodge, where she befriends Wrecker (one of the guys with Asgardian construction equipment from Episode Three who attacked her to get her blood for no other reason than to also contribute to that one villain plot that goes nowhere, and to make fun of the Wrecking Crew) and the obscure villains, Porcupine, El Aguila, and Man-Bull, and learns to get over her stereotypically written male dependency...in a support group that is mostly comprised of men. Oh, and there's an obscure vampire villain there, too, because we need to complete the Red Herring Conspiracy Syndicate for who the anti-She-Hulk online incel group is and why they want her blood.

The highlight of the series (because we haven't gotten to discussing the finale yet) is the penultimate episode of the series, in which Jen defends a frog-themed Iron Man wannabe in a defective product suit (a defective suit suit?) against her designer from Episode Five, who has Matt Murdock as his lawyer. Frog-Man turns out to be a villain, She-Hulk and Daredevil clash ideals, Matt gives Jen double identity advice, we get to see what Daredevil's classic (and apparently extremely hated) costume looks like in live action (hilarious and not very good), and the online incels cause Jen to She-Hulk out and lose control of her rage at a "female lawyer of the year" gala (a token event where dozens of female lawyers of the year are recognized at once because Marvel writing women again).

Then, the finale hits, and his name is...

Kidding.

Jen is imprisoned in a Damage Control facility (you know, those incompetents who destroyed a family grocery store and shot up a high school at the end of Ms. Marvel?) and having her dreams narrated like an episode of the Lou Ferrigno Incredible Hulk show. Upon release, she goes back to Blonsky's self-help retreat in hopes of getting his help with her unaddressed rage issues, seeing as how he had a similar imprisonment/parole experience. Meanwhile, her friends and co-workers infiltrate a meeting of Intelligencia, the anti-She-Hulk incel group serving as the shoehorned-in villain organization for the series. As it turns out, one of the slimy guys she dated who kept asking about her weaknesses and powers and fetishized the thought of dissecting her, named Todd (because aren't all villains in comedies named Todd?) was the real villain all along! Who could have guessed? In the most contrived of coincidences (and wasting a perfectly superior, equally obvious, criminally absent plot twist), the Intelligencia meeting is being held on Blonsky's property, and Blonsky (in full Abomination form and violating his parole conditions) has a speaking engagement at the meeting. In a more serious Marvel series, this would have been a great opportunity to showcase Blonsky's tactical genius (or at least hint at a heirarchy with the Leader pulling his strings from the shadows) by revealing that Todd wasn't the main villain. That Blonsky conned his way out of prison by using his wives' financial contributions to fund GLK&H's (which I just realized would look like a Jekyll & Hyde reference--one of Marvel's inspirations for the Hulk character--with a different billing order) Superhuman Law Division and securing Jennifer Walters as his lawyer, hired the Wrecking Crew (led by one of his therapy group members) to steal her blood, hired Titania to be a constant nuisance in Jen's life, and hired Todd Phelps to create Intelligencia and get Jen discredited and sent to the same supervillain containment facility (and maybe the same cell?) that he was in, all as convoluted revenge against the Hulk. Wouldn't that be more in line with Marvel's previous, "5D Chess" villain schemes? Wouldn't that have been cooler than doing the subversive but predictable thing where the guy you expect to be the real villain doesn't know what kind of event he's speaking at, and the heroine walks in on him making generic, empowering statements to the group that ruined her life? Wouldn't it have been cooler than doing the generic mirror villain thing where a guy named Todd uses angry internet virgins to get himself the heroine's powers? Wouldn't a knock-down, drag-out brawl between She-Hulk and the Abomination (a man she helped free from prison, befriended, and sought solace from despite being her cousin's first and greatest enemy, whom would have subsequently and circuitously betrayed her in a better written script) have been better than having Hulk, Daredevil, and Titania do Kool-Aid Man entrances out of nowhere so everyone could start punching each other in a chaotic mess of CGI? Probably. But we got Todd Hulk, ignorant Abomination, and incongruous "everyone is here!" fanservice instead, and Jen didn't like it any better than I did. I didn't get the "Deadpool was watching it all on TV" ending that I wanted, but thanks to She-Hulk's fourth wall breaks, my jaw did hit the floor and shit itself when the finale went all Spaceballs/Blazing Saddles/Monty Python & the Holy Grail at the end.

If you watch nothing else of this show or this episode, you must watch this part because the meta is too good!

REAL SPOILERS start here.

Fed up with the direction "her show" has taken in its finale, Jen rips off her power dampener (possible hint at an MCU Genosha later on?), transforms, and physically breaks into Disney Plus to access the MCU making-of series, Assembled, where she intimidates her way into a meeting with Kevin Feige...who is, in the finale, the Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus (there's that "Nexus" word again...), an artificial intelligence that curates content and dictates all creative decisions regarding the MCU. Calling out K.E.V.I.N. on the formulaic nature of MCU content (the daddy issues, poorly-written female characters, over-reliance on dark mirror villains and convoluted, overly convenient, circumstance-based schemes, the shift to speculator-teasing, not doing anything with the X-Men, the legal reluctance to do another solo Hulk film, etc.) and providing her own ideas for a better ending (Abomination serving time for his parole violation, Hulk's sudden arrival making sense, Todd not having Hulk powers, She-Hulk getting to "smash" Daredevil), Jen (because She-Hulk's CGI is too expensive to animate in this scene, K.E.V.I.N. says) uses her lawyering skills to convince her...creator?...to approve a better ending to her story. And because Marvel Studios: Assembled is also a Disney Plus show, She-Hulk can also break the fourth wall from beyond the fourth wall (the fifth wall?), which K.E.V.I.N. calls an error in designating the scope of her powers. This meta part of the episode raises all kinds of continuity-breaking questions that require less analysis and more fun-having, but this is a comedy, and I love the zero shifudamns ballsiness it must have taken to go there.

So in the end, Jen gets the ending she wanted. Everything that would have sensibly led up to it (read: a big, final fight) is jumped over because K.E.V.I.N. wants to keep She-Hulk: Attorney At Law under budget, but Todd gets hauled away, Intelligencia is disbanded, Blonsky agrees to serve more time, She-Hulk smash Daredevil, and I got a prediction right!

Instead of showing up to the final fight out of nowhere, Hulk comes back from Sakaar out of nowhere...and introduces everyone to his son, Skaar. It would have been nice to see the circumstances behind this explored in a movie first, but I'm just going to take the "W" for some of my minuscule comic book knowledge (not relying on Bob Chipman or other sources for theory content like I usually do) leading to a correct prediction on my own merits.

The She-Hulk series has thus far been emblematic of the unfocused nature of Phase Four, features numerous TVSinnable moments, LegalEagle inaccuracies, and instances of bad CGI, and does almost nothing for the greater MCU as we are now presented with it. But it's a fun watch with tons of personality and charm, and that meta-swerve at the end deserves all the credit and more that it is due.

The toxic fandom can eat my hyper-elastic purple shorts.

Ticketmaster,

Inserted obligatory Simpsons meme

(that hasn't been obligatory for quite awhile now, but I dye grass...)

(and, yes, I know it's "digress;" I'm supposed to be the grammar officiator here, anyway...)

(and don't forget to like and comment down below...)

(and stay tuned for more content as I decide whether to skip the Anime Spotlight this week, post my thoughts on RWBY that I already have written somewhere offline, or bite the bullet and do the SSSS anime double review from scratch, but I'll probably opt to skip so I can write it little by little throughout the week, because I'm...),

Out.