‘She-Hulk’ director offers a reasonable explanation for Bruce’s disappearance

Warning: Spoilers for the second episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law to follow.

We’ll be a third of the way through She-Hulk: Attorney at Law next week, and the release of episode two, despite sticking to its promises as a low-stakes comedy, is turning out to be a bit less skippable than we first assumed as far as keeping up with the MCU meta-narrative goes. By way of Easter eggs, we’ve been granted what appears to be the first mention of the MCU’s Wolverine, as well as the acknowledgment of Tiamut’s corpse taking up a good chunk of the Indian Ocean.

But perhaps the most grounded example of She-Hulk‘s MCU setup game was Bruce Banner flying off into the galaxy aboard the Sakaaran spaceship that was effectively responsible for the accident that granted Jennifer Walters her new powers. As Jennifer phones Bruce to tell him about the new case she’s taking on with client Emil Blonsky, the conversation wraps up just as the ship goes into hyperspeed, ending the call and presumably throwing Bruce into his own adventure.

We could ruminate forever on where the spaceship is taking him, but the plot point served a more artistic purpose as well. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, series head writer Jessica Gao noted that Bruce’s intergalactic leave helped to emphasize Jennifer as the uncontested protagonist of the show.

“As far as Bruce leaving, we really were just looking for a convenient way to make sure that everybody knew this is Jen’s show, and it’s not going to be about Bruce. And we just wanted to make sure people weren’t expecting to see Bruce every single episode hanging out with her, because frankly, we can’t afford it.”

The first two episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law are available to stream on Disney Plus. New episodes will release every Thursday until October 13.