She-Hulk’s season finale premiered last Thursday with what seems to be an unconventional happy ending. Jen/She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) became the writer to her own story as she broke the fourth wall and confronted Marvel Studios — including the She-Hulk writers’ room and K.E.V.I.N. (Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus), an AI responsible for creating all of the MCU programs. Though the conclusion was very true to the comic book character, many were left wondering about the impact of the invasion of privacy and trauma that Jen went through in the last episode.
The episode prior to the finale ended with Jen raging as She-Hulk after her privacy was invaded and shared with the world — as well as being slut-shamed and left with so much mental trauma. Maslany tells The Nerds of Color that the topic of that was left out intentionally because for many women, they do not have the opportunity to always address those situations and the pain is buried deep inside.
“I think that moment is a huge invasion of her privacy and her autonomy and everything,” Maslany says. “And the thing that it elicits, which is a response of rage, is interesting [to me because] Hulk can rage out and destroy a city, [but] Jen gets justifiably angry for this horrible thing that’s happened to her publicly and she doesn’t even get to have that anger. That cut off of that anger — the fact that we don’t explore that is also telling. How close to a woman’s anger are we comfortable getting?”
If the series was given more episodes or time, Maslany believes they would have explored Jen’s mindset regarding that situation,”We could have gotten very deep into it, but I think, ultimately, it was about touching on something that was very real, very visceral, [and] very painful and then being basically imprisoned for having a real normal human response to [it].”
Maslany is satisfied with how the season ended and with the series overall. “I always think back to the very first day on set when it was just me and Ginger [Gonazaga] who plays Nicki. We were both in the booth in the bar and she was trying to help me swipe dates and we were just playing and it felt so joyful and so feminine and so fun. I just was like, oh, this feels like a different show. This feels like a different thing than we’ve seen before.”
As for a potential second season, Maslany would like to see more cameos, especially since Marvel Studios can afford big names like BTS and The Rock. When Timothee Chalamet was mentioned, Maslany burst into laughter wondering what kind of character he would play. “I’d be so fascinated with [what] character [he’d play]. He can play like a freaky character of some kind that I’m defending in court or fighting against. That would be super fun.” Maslany also mentioned she’d love to work with comedian/actor Paul F. Tompkins – “Don’t you think he would fit [in] perfectly?”
Check out the full interview below:
The entire first season of Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is available now on Disney+.
