Beginning with a hilarious tribute to Lou Ferrigno’s “The Incredible Hulk” series and then quickly shifting into serious repercussions for Jen’s understandable outburst at the end of last week’s episode, “She-Hulk’s” season finale manages to marry these two tones together to create something truly special.
This is truly a finale unlike any other, getting insanely meta and going places I thought it was impossible for a Marvel project to go. It’s insanely fun, very funny and has a hell of a lot to spoil, so I suggest you watch Whose Show is This? before proceeding any further.
The finale, Whose Show is This?, finds She-Hulk at the lowest point of her life following her public embarrassment during the lawyer awards show last week. She’s struggling to find out who she is and what she has left; this causes her to seek guidance at Emil Blonsky’s retreat, not knowing what awaits her.
The remainder of this review will contain spoilers for the “She-Hulk” season finale.
What starts off as fun, quickly becomes something more serious than the series has ever attempted before now. While this was initially offputting, the series addressed it in the most unique way the MCU can, by addressing the issues with the MCU itself. Using She-Hulk, a known fourth-wall breaker, to come into our world and criticize the MCU’s common shortcomings is genius and completely unexpected.
I was expecting a pretty paint-by-numbers finale, which is what the series actively makes fun of and avoids in the real-world segment. It’s both hilarious and intelligent; the clear standout of real-world scenes is the appearance of K.E.V.I.N., a purposely misleading robotic stand-in for Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. They even managed to give K.E.V.I.N. a little baseball cap, much like his real-life counterpart proudly rocks, a detail I found hilarious. Honestly, the vast majority of the scene between the robot and She-Hulk is self-referential comedy gold.
While I don’t think this is the best MCU finale we’ve had, that honor still goes to “Loki,” it’s still a blast from start to finish and caught me totally off guard, something I thought impossible after nearly forty MCU projects in the last 15 years. The main issue with the episode is that it actively disregards the subplots it’s been building for the past eight episodes in favor of the unpredictable misdirect. I get that this was the point of the finale, throwing away the cliche crap of the usual MCU season finale, but it just left me feeling unfulfilled knowing that this season essentially built up to nothing of note.
Sure, there are some cool things to look forward to that the finale teases, mainly Hulk’s son Skaar and the possible relationship between Matt Murdock and Jen Walters. On the latter, I don’t expect this relationship to last, as Daredevil is pretty notorious for sleeping around in the comics, but their chemistry is just too good to ignore.
Skaar is a pretty cool addition too, even if his design is pretty underwhelming. To be fair, he’s on screen for about a second and we likely won’t see him again for a while, which gives them ample time to correct and perfect his design. Skaar’s appearance gives credence to recent rumors that Marvel is prepping for a Hulk solo film, and if the rumors are accurate in it adapting the “World War Hulk” storyline, then Skaar will play a prominent role going forward.
Regardless of all the nerdy details, “She-Hulk” managed to mostly stick the landing, even if the landing was a bit shaky. I’m hopeful that we get a season two, but there’s no official word on that at the time of writing. I just want to see more of this show’s characters, especially its side characters that will probably never appear in another project. There’s plenty of room in the MCU for an LA-based legal comedy, so I really hope we get to see this distinct corner of the universe developed further in another season.
