‘She-Hulk’ Just Broke The 4th Wall Off The Entire MCU — But Did It Work?

She-Hulk is one of those shows where you can see how, with just a little gentle nudge in the right direction, it could have been really good. But the show’s creators were explicitly out to make a statement about toxic masculinity and let that guiding political agenda drive the work—rather than tell a good story that incorporates that theme into the narrative.

As I noted when I first wrote about this show, the heavy-handedness of the message takes center stage, and makes even its lead character, Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) a secondary figure—perhaps even a prop—in service of an agenda.

Art should not necessarily be devoid of politics, but nor should it exist in service of politics. Then it becomes propaganda. Great art can convey political themes and ideas, obviously. From Schindler’s List to Mississippi Burning to The Mission, many incredible films have grappled with political and cultural ideas in intelligent, profound and often disquieting ways. But She-Hulk has placed the proverbial cart before the horse, and it weakens its impact.

Over the course of nine episodes several ideas are hammered into our heads:

• All men are pigs and the few exceptions are either dopey, bumbling simpletons or jokes (like the D-list superheroes Walters meets at Abomination’s retreat).
• The few nice guys she meets will end up being terrible and the terrible men she meets are really terrible.
• Apparently writing a strong female character requires the entire show to revolve around men and dating. When the show introduces a character who acts really sorry and patronizing when she discovers Jen isn’t dating anyone, it fails to realize how the show itself is pushing this same notion.
• Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) is the lone exception to the Rule Of Terrible Men Pigs. Oh, and Benedict Wong, though he’s a cameo character that sits outside of the dating storyline, whereas Murdock falls right into Walters’ bed.

In She-Hulk, all men are terrible with very few exceptions but many women are as well, including the celebrity Tatiana. She-Hulk’s boss is a jerk. The guy who introduces the Best Female Lawyer awards is condescending. It’s a long, exhausting parade of bad men, hammered over our heads from start to finish.

The problem is simple: Not only does this make us a bit numb, it also posits that the only way to make She-Hulk look strong is to surround her with weak, sexist men and catty women. This is never a good way to make your protagonist look better than everyone. If you want a strong character—male or female—make them real and give them real stakes and trials to overcome.

You don’t write a smart character by making everyone around them stupid. That’s a cop-out, and so is everything in She-Hulk.

This includes the addition of Intelligentsia, an 8chan-like group of misogynistic trolls who really really hate She-Hulk just because. It’s supposed to be meta-commentary on how people will invariably hate She-Hulk the show (and perhaps the kind of smug self-fulfilling prophecy that’s fanning the pop culture wars online) and how a certain toxic corner of fandom seems to just hate women in general, but it fails because of how outlandish they make the group.

Anonymous online groups don’t hire people to seduce and tape women, nor do they meet IRL and hire motivational speakers. This is all silly and immersion-breaking. Make your antagonists believable or they start to feel like cheap tricks rather than something truly dangerous. The buffoonish leader of the group is neither frightening nor a surprise.

This reminds me a bit of the Riddler in The Batman. I liked the villain himself, but his group of followers—also an online group of radicalized trolls—seemed extremely implausible. Then again, I found the final act of that movie entirely extraneous and think the entire thing would have been much better with that whole section cut.

In any case, when it comes to She-Hulk’s constant messaging, I have to give it a solid two thumbs down. The story is paper thin and the talents of the cast are wasted on pithy conflicts and endless hand-wringing over boys. She-Hulk spends one episode obsessed over her phone waiting for her recent lover to text her back, as though she’s some lovesick 19-year-old and not a grown woman and a professional. It’s insulting to her character.

What I did enjoy was the 4th wall breaking that punctuates the show, though I think it’s also wasted here on a story with no meat on its bones. In the final episode, She-Hulk finds herself face-to-face with the Intelligentsia and then Hulk breaks into the room and Tatiana shows up and it’s all headed for an epic showdown when She-Hulk turns to the camera and basically says “Wait, this isn’t right. None of this makes sense.”

She then hops out of the show, appearing in the Disney+ UI and then hops from the She-Hulk icon down through a blank space and into the “real world” where she first confronts the writer’s room and then pays a visit to Kevin Feige—though it’s not Kevin Feige, the boss of all things MCU: It’s K.E.V.I.N. a robot who is the real mastermind behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She confronts him about the MCU’s formulaic approach to ending pretty much all of its shows and movies and demands he makes some changes.

As meta-commentary it’s kind of clever, though I’m not sure it works perfectly here, especially since She-Hulk’s ending is, itself, pretty hokey. But I like the idea of it and I like that they had the guts to take it there at the very least. It’s not perfect, but it’s never bad to have a little self-reflection, especially in a project as complex—and formulaic—as Marvel’s massive project.

What did you think of She-Hulk? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

Watch my video review below:

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