Some time ago, Marvel announced at this year’s San Diego International Comic-Con, the episode ‘She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’ and the movie ‘Black Panther : Wakanda Forever’ as the last two works of the MCU Phase IV.
Last Thursday, ‘She-Hulk’ went live on Disney+, premiering an episode that attracted many fans around.
Like the MCU’s Phase 4 debut film ‘Black Widow’ (2021), the creative team for ‘She-Hulk’ is predominantly female.
One of the directors, Kat Coiro, has directed the musical comedy film ‘Marry Me’ and writer Jessica Gao has written such highly rated episodes as ‘Rick and Morty’ and ‘Silicon Valley’.
Canadian actress Tatiana Maslany, who plays She-Hulk, has played 13 roles in the sci-fi series ‘Orphan Black’ and won the Emmy Awards for Best Actress.
Before playing “She-Hulk”, Maslany had auditioned for the role of ‘She-Venom’ but was not considered by Marvel at the time.
In addition to the newcomers, the cast of ‘She-Hulk’ still has many familiar faces. In addition to “Hulk” Mark Ruffalo, “Abomination” Tim Roth, Benedict Wong, ‘Daredevil’ Charlie Cox also appeared. Their appearance all indicate that ‘She-Hulk’ and past Marvel movies and shows have a lot of linkage.
But unlike most shows in the Marvel universe that rely on visual effects and action scenes, ‘She-Hulk’ is defined by its creators as a “female legal drama”, like a superhero version of ‘Legally Blonde’.
This is a kind of subversion of the traditional style of Marvel, and therefore triggered polarized evaluation.
Among the media outlets in Los Angeles that saw the first four episodes of the premiere, ‘Megalopolis’ women’s magazine praised the show as “the interesting breath of fresh air the MCU has long needed,” while The Daily Beast website criticized the show as a ” The Daily Beast criticized the show as a “grand but useless charade.
After the episode was officially launched, Rotten Tomatoes freshness reached 86%, but IMDb only 5.9 points, which in the comic book series works belong to the lack of word of mouth.
So far, ‘She-Hulk’ has only been online for one episode, but the information given is quite a lot. The first episode explains the origin of She-Hulk, a Los Angeles lawyer named Jennifer Walters, who is the cousin of Hulk Bruce Banner.
The two were on a road trip when they suddenly ran into a spaceship and were involved in a tragic car accident. Both were injured, and Banner’s blood flowed into Jennifer’s wound, causing Jennifer to transform into She-Hulk.
This is different from the setting in the comics. In the original comic, Jennifer was attacked by gangsters and was about to bleed to death, Banner transfused blood to Jennifer before she turned into She-Hulk.
This change should be mainly to draw out the spaceship to pave the way for subsequent episodes.
As a side note, the ship is named Sakaar messenger ship.’ In ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ (2017), Hulk had been a gladiator in Sakaar. In the manga, Hulk also had a son with the Sakaar warrior woman, named Skaar.
According to the US website The Direct, Skaar is likely to appear in ‘She-Hulk’.
Back to the origin of She-Hulk.
After Jennifer’s transformation, Banner took her to a beach bar, which began a variety of training for She-Hulk, training around “how to control the transformation and the power of the transformation” to start.
You can feel from the training that She-Hulk may be stronger than Hulk.
Previously we knew that Banner and Hulk were two different personalities that didn’t mesh well together, but Jennifer and She-Hulk were the same personality from the beginning. In addition, Hulk used She-Hulk’s blood to heal his arm.
Hulk wanted to continue training She-Hulk, but She-Hulk insisted on returning to Los Angeles and going back to his law practice.
The episode also enters the main line, that is, She-Hulk becomes the face of the superhuman legal department, there will be a number of comic book characters to seek her advice on legal issues.
This shows that the current phase of Marvel tries to make its superhero world more human and normative, and ‘She-Hulk’ will be an important work in this process.
In order to emphasize the show’s workplace and legal attributes, on the eve of the episode’s release, Comic-Con president Kevin Feige also suddenly informed the cast that the show’s title was changed from ‘She-Hulk’ to ‘She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’.
Relying on legal means, She-Hulk may resolve some of the MCU’s previous legacy issues, such as the ‘Sokovia Accords’ that sparked a civil war among Avengers members in ‘Captain America: Civil War’.
So here’s the question: where does ‘She-Hulk’ fit into the MCU’s timeline?
Previously, screenwriter Jessica Gao revealed in an interview with TV Line that ‘She-Hulk’ takes place after ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’.
In the ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ post-credits egg, Dr. Banner’s arm is in a damaged state, and in ‘She-Hulk’, his arm changes from damaged to healed, which proves what the writers said.
Disney+ has just updated the official MCU timeline to further pinpoint the time of the ‘She-Hulk’ story.
In the released movie series, ‘She-Hulk’ takes place between ‘Moon Knight’ (2022) and ‘Ms. Marvel’ (2022), while ‘Ms. Marvel’ is currently the latest MCU production in time.
In addition to wrapping up the fourth phase of the MCU, the role of “She-Hulk” is likely to transition directly to the fifth and sixth phases of the future.
Some time ago, Mark Ruffalo half-joked in an interview that “there wouldn’t be a next ‘The Avengers’ without She-Hulk”, and in the comic book ‘Secret Wars’ spinoff story ‘A-Force’ She-Hulk is one of the core members of the “female version of Avengers” in the comic book ‘Secret Wars’ spinoff story “A-Force”.
The SDCC mentioned at the beginning of this article, Marvel announced the release plans for ‘The Avengers: The Kang Dynasty’ and ‘The Avengers: Secret Wars’, of which ‘The Avengers: Secret Wars’ is about the story of the secret war of the multiverse, which shows that She- Hulk is very likely to appear in the Avengers movie after.
She-Hulk’ also laid a lot of nostalgic eggs in the first episode, which is called the first generation of Avengers large-scale memory killing scene.
For example, Hulk told She-Hulk that he transformed between Hulk and Banner, and usually had to fall out of the plane or be knocked out by a robot, or Natasha sang lullabies to himself.
This is the plot in ‘Avengers’ and ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’.
In particular, the “lullaby” refers to ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ in which Black Widow says to Hulk, “Hey, big guy, the sun’s going down,” in order to soothe him. Hulk will be able to change back to Banner form (later Thor tried to similarly appease Hulk, but did not succeed).
When it comes to the beach bar where they live, Hulk said the bar was built by him and Tony, and there are many traces of Tony left in the bar.
For example, the Iron Man helmet on the wooden bench, and the words “Stark Industries” on the saw teeth of She-Hulk’s training.
In the first episode of the end credits egg, Hulk also broke a comedic fierce news – Captain America lost his virginity back in 1943 when the United Labor Organization tour.
Chris Evans tweeted his mixed feelings, and the ‘She-Hulk’ star and writers interacted with him, lamenting Captain America’s “social death scene”.
Some viewers even inferred that Captain America’s first time went to Star-Lord’s grandmother by comparing the actors. But back in 2019, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ series director James Gunn has already debunked this rumor.
This shows that ‘She-Hulk’ is not a Marvel regular sense of visual effects action type episodes, but it is very closely linked to the Marvel universe.
The next update of the episode, She-Hulk will collide with other Marvel characters what kind of sparks, I believe it is still a major point of interest.
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