Say what you like about She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, but the show really went all out with its insane season finale. Our Jade Giantess Jennifer Walters had been poking through the fourth wall all along, but she positively smashed it into bits in this week’s last episode when she broke through the boundaries of Disney Plus to demand the staff of Marvel Studios make her a better ending.
For those who’ve been vibing with the show’s tongue-in-cheek approach to the MCU this whole time, it was the perfect way to wrap it up, although other, more critical, viewers didn’t care for the mountain of meta-humor. Given how divisive the ending was to the fans, then, it shouldn’t be surprising that the finale was just as divisive behind the scenes as various endings were conceived before the one we saw was ultimately chosen.
Star Tatiana Maslany revealed to Entertainment Weekly that she and showrunner Jessica Gao tossed around “20 versions” of the ending. While the actress “never saw 18 of those versions,” she did get to see the penultimate one to be shot, which she described as “very different, a little more serious and less like Jen’s version of it.” She continued:
“It was [more of] She-Hulk, so it was way too expensive, first off. And it had a different strategy to it. The thing that I love about this one is that we get back to Jen feeling like K.E.V.I.N.’s her collaborator and like an equal, and that her ideas deserve respect. Even sitting down on the ground and asking about the X-Men is like, ‘We’re buddies now,’ you know what I mean? Something about that feels very Jen, and feels very funny.”
As Maslany reminds us, in the ending we got, Jen balks at a big multi-Hulk brawl that breaks out between Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Abomination (Tim Roth), Hulk-Todd (Jon Bass), and Titania (Jameela Jamil), causing her to go AWOL and get Kevin Feige’s A.I. counterpart to construct a new third act. By the sounds of it, that 19th version of the finale may have been a bit more of a straight-up Hulk fight, resulting in more action, sure, but less of that distinctive She-Hulk sense of fun.
Obviously, there will be those who wish we got that Hulk vs. Blonsky rematch in full, but just remember that, if we did, we would have had to trade those tantalizing X-Men, Black Panther 2, and Scarlet Witch teases.
All of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is streaming on Disney Plus now. A decision has yet to be made on a second season.
