Spoilers for the She-Hulk finale ahead.
Since its premiere, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has been a different type of Marvel show than the rest of the MCU lineup. The show's head writer and EP, Jessica Gao, and her team embraced the character's long history of hilariously breaking the fourth wall to deliver a fun-filled season culminating in a perfectly bonkers season finale. However, one of the goofy details in the season finale wasn't fully appreciated by Kevin Feige.
If you've watched Marvel's projects in order you'll know that most superhero shows would take the well-trodden path of ending their season with a CGI-rendered slugfest between villains and heroes. However, She-Hulk opted for breaking through the fourth wall entirely. In the middle of a battle, Jen Walters leaves and enters the Disney+ interface. She then ends up at Marvel Studios where she confronts the writers of the show, chastizing them for their lazy and predictable writing. Things get even weird when the green heroin comes face to face with a sentient A.I. named K.E.V.I.N., or Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus, an apparent and comical jab at Marvel head honcho and producer Kevin Feige. One minor detail in the finale didn't sit well with Feige tough, and almost caused a rift between him and Gao. This near rift was over his trademark baseball cap on the robot. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Gao admitted, now laughing about the situation, that she was "incensed" that the producer took issue with the gag. She said:
I was incensed, and in this big meeting, in front of like 20 people, I said, 'Kevin, if you don't let me put a hat on that robot, then I quit.' And then there was a split-second pause, and he just went, 'Thank you very much, Jessica. You've done some great work for us, and we really appreciate everything.'
Gao then said this is all something she and Feige can joke about now. She also mentioned that a visual development supervisor helped facilitate a compromise.
Sweet Jackson Sze, who was head of the vis-dev team and ever the mediator, very gently suggested that they incorporate something into the design of the robot that would make it look like it was wearing a hat, and that was the perfect compromise.
What's particularly interesting about this detail is that Feige prompted Gao to take a less conventional route with their ending. The She-Hulk writer had written over 20 traditional versions of the finale before Feige told her they had created an entirely different show that should have a wholly different kind of ending. Gao continued:
Kevin was the one who said, 'There's no reason to do a big Marvel ending. You've made a show that's completely different than anything we've done before, so there's absolutely no reason to treat it like a typical Marvel movie'… That's really what got wheels turning about going really out of the box and doing something that was more true to this show, as opposed to what's true to a typical Marvel project.
Feige didn't think a baseball cap made sense for the robot, but the showrunner wouldn't hear it. She was willing to walk away from the project over the baseball cap, and in the end, she won the argument. This is good for us Marvel fans because, in my opinion, K.E.V.I.N. was a brilliant and welcomed addition to the series finale. Without that fantastic hat, I don't think the robot would have been nearly as memorable.
While it's still uncertain whether we will see Jen in an upcoming Marvel movie, fans are hopeful she'll return for at least one of the announced Marvel shows, Daredevil: Born Again. This is especially exciting considering the amount of chemistry Charlie Cox and Tatiana Maslany shared on screen. And since we already know Matt Murdock's MCU future is looking big, here's hoping we have more She-Hulk crossovers to look forward to soon.
Until then, enjoy some fantastic behind-the-scenes anecdotes from our interview with some of the show's cast. To check out the hilarious and fourth-wall-breaking show, you can watch all nine episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law with a Disney+ subscription.
