Murphy's Multiverse

Tag: TV

  • ‘House of the Dragon’-Episode 8 Recap

    ‘House of the Dragon’-Episode 8 Recap

    Throughout the first season of HBO Max’s House of the Dragon, Viserys has been the buffer between the two factions of his house, headed by Alicent and Rhaenyra, respectively. Each of them knows that they can’t make any moves while Viserys still rules. While Alicent and Otto have been tiptoeing about up until Episode 8, Viserys had grown very weak and has given the keys to both of them to run his kingdom. About 6 years of time have passed between Episode 7 and this one. Time to get into some lore.

    Viserys

    This is the dying King’s finest hour. Viserys talked with Daemon in an earlier episode about how he felt he’d never been tested as a king, and how he wished he could prove his mettle. He did that in this episode, rising to the occasion to save his daughter and grandsons from losing Luke’s inheritance and legitimacy. His walk up to the throne is a top 5 scene from the Game of Thrones franchise, taking all of his effort, and only accepting help from Daemon in his climb. According to the director, the crown falling from his head and Daemon placing it back onto Viserys was unscripted, and it made the moment all the more powerful.

    The events of that scene were forced by Vaemond Velaryon, Corlys’s brother, trying to go around Viserys and Rhaenyra, straight to Otto and Alicent to secure his claim, reasoning that Luke is not a true Velaryon and has no right to Driftmark. Vaemond got taken out at the knees when Rhaenys, the matriarch of the Velaryons, put her chips in with Rhaenyra, agreeing in front of the court to marry Jace and Luke to her granddaughters, Baela and Rhaena. This sent Vaemond into a rage to call out that the boys are bastards and their mother is a whore. Viserys warned that anyone who questioned Jace’s and Luke’s parentage would get their tongues ripped out; however, Daemon took matters into his own hands, slicing half of his head off with Dark Sister, but he let him keep his tongue.

    With his family all under one roof for the first time in 6 years, Viserys hosted a dinner with all of them, where there were toasts all around and everyone was playing nice, with Alicent even telling Rhaenyra that she will make a fine queen. That seemed to indicate that the matter of succession was over. Yeah, in Viserys’s dreams. I am happy that in Viserys’s last moments before he was carted off, there was a small smile seeing his family happy all together. Even for all of his faults, he deserved a better family than the vultures he had. His last, muttered words were “My love,” pretty obviously in memory of his first wife, Aemma.

    It’s shown very explicitly that both Rhaenyra and Alicent have some differing parental styles. Rhaenyra is supportive in Jace’s learning of High Valyrian, and there has been no signs of mental or physical abuse towards her sons. Also, we got our first sighting of Aegon the Younger and Viserys, which are Daemon’s and Rhaenyra’s sons. There’s no denying that they are Targaryens with that platinum hair, and it’s great that Viserys got to see them before he died.

    The Children

    Speaking of Viserys’ terrible family, Alicent was shown to be abusive to Aegon, and this episode showed that it had been well deserved since he sexually assaulted one of the handmaidens and dismissed it as “Just a bit of fun.” But what did Alicent do? She covered it up, paying the girl and giving her moon tea to eliminate any chances of an unwanted pregnancy. She followed up by then slapping Aegon in the face and saying he’s no son of hers. Problem solved, put a band-aid on it!

    I noted that Alicent finally ceded to Rhaenyra and admitted to her being the next queen, but the seeds had already been sowed in Aegon and Aemond’s minds that they were above Jace and Luke, and deserved the inheritance. Aegon repeatedly asked Jace’s bethrothed, Baela, if she wanted to sleep with him right in front of everyone. Even after that, Jace raised a toast to Aegon and Aemond, hoping they could become friends as they once were. Aemond had a pig placed in front of him, a reference to when Aegon, Jace and Luke dressed up a pig as a dragon for Aemond. This really really pissed him off when Luke is seen to be laughing at him, so in retaliation he raises a toast, calling Jace Luke and Joffrey “Handsome, smart, brave….. and STRONG.” This sent the Blacks into a fury, only stopping when Daemon stood between Aemond and Jace and stared him down, sending him away with his tail between his legs. Aemond is trying so hard to be Daemon, but as of now, there is only one Daemon. There’s a showdown coming for those two in future seasons. Alicent and Rhaenyra have a touching moment after, where Alicent wants Rhaenyra to stay in King’s Landing. They’ve finally put their differences aside and want to be close again. If only.

    The Power of Prophecy

    Throughout all of this series, people have been driven by prophecy. The all-encompassing prophecy is The Song of Ice and Fire, which includes The Prince that was Promised as the messiah figure. If you watched Game of Thrones or read the series, you know there have been many, many people who believe that they were the chosen one, and each time war has broken out. Rhaegar’s belief that he or his children were the Prince, led to Robert’s Rebellion and the destruction of the Targaryens. Stannis’s belief that he was the Prince, led to the War of the Five Kings, and the destruction of the Baratheons. And finally, both Jon and Daenerys were led to believe they were the ones, and while they destroyed the White Walkers, it also led to thousands of people’s deaths. The question is always asked, is the prophecy always meant to come true, or is it the people’s actions after learning of it?

    House of the Dragon continues, or sets (?), this tread with Viserys unknowingly having fed this information to Alicent while delirious and moments from dying. He talked of Aegon the Conqueror’s dream and that this prophecy will save the kingdom, which Alicent took to mean that her son Aegon would be the one to save the realm. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back as Alicent believed she had no choice but to stand against Rhaenyra, fulfilling Viserys’s last wishes. The Westerosi version of telephone where it sent hundreds of thousands to their deaths.

    Things to Come

    With Viserys dead, there is now nothing to stand between the Greens and Blacks, and both of them feel they have the right to rule. Episode 9, if my predictions are correct, will send both sides into a full-scale war. While Aegon is the elder, Aemond will be the martial leader of the Greens, versus Daemon on the Blacks.

    A very small part of this episode showed that there are twin Kingsguards, Arryk and Erryk Cargyle. Their parents are absolute trolls naming them. This will come into play if the series follows the book, because one of these twins will be with Rhaenyra on Dragonstone, and the other with Alicent in King’s Landing.

    We also saw Mysaria again, who has contacts in the Red Keep that are keeping tabs on the royal family for her. She keeps popping up for small appearances, so she still has a part to play in the Dance.

    Also returning are more Helaena Dragon Dreams! During dinner, she muttered to herself, “Beware the beast below the boards.” As with most of her other dreams in this season, this was meant to be taken literally. If you watched Game of Thrones, you know that there are tunnels underneath the Red Keep where people can travel in secret throughout the castle. Tyrion, with help from Varys, used these to sneak into his father Tywin’s chambers to kill him. In that time, it was basically only Varys that knew these passageways, because the knowledge had been lost in time. In House of the Dragon, there are many people who know these tunnels, because they use men instead of cats as rat catchers. They’re not doing a very good job it seems, as there are rats seen throughout a lot of different episodes. What are they hinting toward? Wait and see.

  • ‘Percy Jackson’ Disney+ Series Adds to Impressive Cast

    ‘Percy Jackson’ Disney+ Series Adds to Impressive Cast

    The cast of the live-action Disney Plus adaptation of the Percy Jackson novels has grown once again. Adam Copeland, Suzanne Cryer, and Jessica Parker Kennedy have all been announced as guest stars to the already impressive cast. They join Walker Scobell, in the titular role, alongside Aryan Simhadri and Leah Sava Jeffries as Grover and Annabeth, respectively.

    Copeland, best known for his work as Edge in the WWE, will be playing Ares, the Greek god of war. He is described as being a handsomely arrogant god that loves to be an agent of chaos. Suzanne Cryer, likely best known for her leading role in Silicon Valley, will guest star as Echidna, the Mother of Monsters. She is described as a maternal, yet dangerous figure that will serve as a major challenge to the protagonists, both physically and spiritually. Jessica Parker Kennedy, likely best known for her supporting role on CW’s The Flash, will be portraying the infamous Medusa. She is described as an embittered wild card that the core characters are unsure if they can trust.

    Percy Jackson and the Olympians tells the story of a 12-year-old with ADHD and dyslexia who must come to terms with being the son of Poseidon and adapting to his new home at Camp Half-Blood. The first season will adapt the first novel of the Rick Riordan series,The Lightning Thief, in which Percy must clear his name and solve the mystery of who stole Zeus’ master lightning bolt.

    Source: Variety

  • ‘Fargo’ Season Five Fills Out Ensemble Cast

    ‘Fargo’ Season Five Fills Out Ensemble Cast

    The fifth season of Fargo is ready to go and the principal members of the ensemble cast seem to be on board. FX has added David Rhysdal, Sam Spurell, Jessica Pohly, and Nick Gomez to the cast of the ongoing series. Rhysdal is set to play Wayne Lyon, Spurrell will portray Ole Munch, Pohly will play Agent Meyer, and Gomez is playing Agent Gomez. Beyond the official character names, not much has been revealed about the nature of these new castings.

    The newest season in the Fargo universe will be set in 2019 in the upper Midwest of the United States, the standard and familiar setting from previous installments. The main premise is built around the question of “when is a kidnapping not a kidnapping, and what if your wife isn’t yours?”

    Jon Hamm, Juno Temple, and Jennifer Jason Leigh are set to lead Season 5 as Roy, Dot, and Lorraine, respectively. Other notable supporting cast members for the season include Joe Keery, Lamorne Morris, and Richa Moorjani.

    Fargo has been a massive success in the television landscape since its debut in 2014. Following the release of the classic Coen Brothers’ film of the same name in 1996, Noah Hawley and his production team have overseen all of the previous four seasons and are currently working on the fifth. This project will look to be a bit of a bounceback for the franchise after the slightly less positive reception to the Chris Rock-led fourth season from 2020 (which still isn’t considered to be a “flop” in many senses).

    Source: Deadline

  • REVIEW: ‘She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’ Finale

    REVIEW: ‘She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’ Finale

    We have come to an end of yet another Marvel Cinematic Universe series, but this finale stands on its own. Since WandaVision, MCU series have been rather well known for either botching or just not following through with outstanding finales. How anyone feels about the She-Hulk: Attorney at Law finale is less straightforward than usual. While the word “unique” has been thrown around a lot in Phase Four, there is no other way to start the discussion.

    Even though it did not take up the entire runtime, the massive fourth wall break in the finale has to be an instantly iconic moment in the MCU. To not only take the audience out of “the show” but to spend time with the titular character in Marvel Studios’ headquarters is beyond bonkers. Of course, the jarring transition from the regular program to She-Hulk breaking out of the Disney+ screen is incredible, and it lives up to the comic book version of her doing the same decades ago. The core potential of the character is released in the finale, and there are very few moments in the MCU that can genuinely say the same.

    The humor stemming from the fourth wall break is not only laugh-out-loud funny, but it is peak She-Hulk. Throughout the season, the show makes jabs at tropes and the incessant presence of the internet’s yelling in every single moment of the contemporary MCU. Anyone on Twitter is familiar with this, and anyone with a brain knew that She-Hulk would provoke perhaps the most attention in that regard. Instead of winking at the audience about it, the artificial intelligence replacement for Kevin Feige (a joke worthy of its own review maybe) addresses it head-on. The MCU has an internet relations struggle. She-Hulk is a strong, confident woman. The two combined were meant to be together, but the way the finale actually embraces it is almost too good to be true.

    The fourth wall break, without a doubt, is the finale. It may even be She-Hulk. Still, that does not mean the finale as a whole deserves top marks. It is somewhat hard to separate the fourth wall break from anything else, both because of the inherent difficulty of that and because they addressed very different things. The break speaks to the essence and the heart of She-Hulk, and what better place to do that than in the finale? But the rest of the story is quite limited because of it.

    Yes, it brings home the point that this is She-Hulk’s show, but it also made it clear that She-Hulk’s story—at least in Season One—did not do much more than what we already saw before this episode. That is not inherently bad, especially considering the show really wants to call itself a legal comedy. Plus, fans should have learned their lesson after WandaVision to not expect series finales to become the crossover, universe-shattering moments of their dreams. To that, She-Hulk said: here is Skaar. But plenty of plotlines arguably deserved more time and attention, and a longer version of how Jen cleared her name would have been very welcome. That in particular is the biggest loss of the finale’s choice, but at the end of the day, the fourth wall break is always the preferred option.

    She-Hulk made waves as an MCU series. As one of the few MCU projects to feature a woman in the title role, it went beyond just basic representational work on that front. Women’s real experiences were either mentioned or actually discussed, and the first project the MCU felt comfortable throwing sex in was a project where a woman led that concept on-screen. But the series will also go down as the funniest Marvel Studios project to date and in many ways one of the most grounded in reality (which is ironic in plenty of ways). Jen was an actual, believable human, and the series made that the basis of everything, even the crazier elements. She-Hulk, arguably, was what many internet fans wanted Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Cameos to be, and yet this was just the first season of a solo series. At the end of the day, there is not much else to say except: She-Hulk smashed.

  • The ‘She-Hulk’ Finale May Have Confirmed a Season 2

    The ‘She-Hulk’ Finale May Have Confirmed a Season 2

    Much happened—or didn’t, depending on how you look at it—in the She-Hulk: Attorney at Law finale. The series ended on an upbeat note, and Jen seems to have taken back her life after the dark ending of Episode 8 and the sad beginning of the final episode. One thing is for sure, though, and that is that the bonkers fourth wall break is undoubtedly an iconic Marvel Cinematic Universe moment from here on out. In it, there are a couple of moments that mention a She-Hulk Season 2. And while Loki is still the only series to get an official confirmation by the time the credits start rolling, we have may have gotten the next best thing.

    When She-Hulk arrives in the writers’ room, she interrupts their conversation about what the second season should be. Specifically, one writer pitches the god-awful idea that the entire second season would be a dream sequence. Later, when She-Hulk is talking to K.E.V.I.N., a second season is once again brought up in a very matter-of-fact way.

    While the fourth wall break does not appear to be Marvel Studios’ way of officially announcing something, the fact that a She-Hulk Season 2 was mentioned more than once in a “yeah, this is going to happen” way seems like a fairly obvious way the show may be teasing it. After all, robot Kevin Feige had plenty to say but certainly did not correct the Season 2 assumption. While the writers could have included the references as cheeky jokes—after all, the internet will surely start debating what every word in the fourth wall break meant—it did not play off as obviously as some of the other jokes in that sequence.

    Like everything, we will have to wait and see if or when Marvel Studios decides to announce something like She-Hulk Season 2, but the writing may be on the wall. She-Hulk is also, conveniently, an incredibly second-season-friendly show with its ability to be a half-hour legal comedy. Whether it truly accomplished that in this first season is perhaps debatable, but the potential from this show and the comics’ source material is truly astounding. The episodes with Donny Blaze, Madisynn, and group villain therapy could easily become the norm in a second season, and those were standout episodes. There is a lot more lawyering Jen can do, and there is certainly a lot more She-Hulk smashing she can do.

    All episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law are now streaming on Disney+.

  • ‘She-Hulk’: Skaar’s Introduction Explained

    ‘She-Hulk’: Skaar’s Introduction Explained

    The She-Hulk: Attorney at Law finale had so much going on, that the surprise introduction of a major character at the very end almost did not pack much of a punch, perhaps because it has been rumored for quite some time. Still, the brief introduction of a new character likely has major implications for the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward.

    At the end of the She-Hulk finale, Bruce does eventually show back up (granted, he was axed from the messy climax after Jen went to clear things up with Marvel Studios). At the Walters’ family picnic, however, Bruce arrives with someone else in tow: his son, Skaar. For those unfamiliar with Skaar from the comics, this could be a wild twist. In general, it is a major inclusion in the MCU that will surely carry a lot with it. So, first, who is Skaar? And second, what does his presence mean for the MCU now?

    In the comics, Skaar comes from a relationship the Hulk has while on Sakaar. He conceived a son with Caiera the Oldstrong, but after a ship explosion that killed Caieria, the Hulk believed that Skaar had died in the womb. Obviously, Skaar did in fact survive and was raised by his mother’s Shadow People on what was left of Sakaar. Eventually, he was exiled to Earth. And when he arrived, all he wanted to do was kill Bruce.

    In live-action, it is not hard to imagine that something similar happened and our MCU Hulk fathered a child on Sakaar. We have a lot less information on who Skaar’s mother might be, the state of Sakaar, or why Skaar has come to Earth, however. The way his arrival was set up in She-Hulk, it almost came across as though Bruce went to Sakaar knowing that he had some sort of responsibility—maybe Skaar. It is also very likely he was not aware of Skaar before his return to the planet. In any event, he definitely brought his son with him and they seem chummy enough.

    The most obvious prediction for how Skaar will factor into Phases 5 or 6 is as part of the rumored ‘World War Hulks’ project. She-Hulk seemed to tease that it could be part of the setup for that project or overarching storyline, given the Hulk blood fascination. The series did not end up going that route, but the implication is very clear: the MCU is about to get more hulks. What happens when the MCU gets a bunch of hulks?—probably some type of World War Hulk iteration. Skaar plays a significant role in that story, but the theories on how Marvel Studios might adapt it so far are endless since we are seemingly at an early stage of that process. However, given the casting of Tim Blake Nelson as The Leader in Captain America: New World Order, that movie might be a solid place to start.

  • 20-Year Old ‘Kingdom Hearts’ Pilot Animatic Released Online

    20-Year Old ‘Kingdom Hearts’ Pilot Animatic Released Online

    Seth Kearsley has recently opened up about the Kingdom Hearts animated series that never was. It has been 20 years since he worked on the project and it was something he held quite dearly, which is why he no longer wanted to keep it a secret from the world. In a surprising twist, however, instead of just talking about the project he went on to release the entire animatic for the world to see online, which you can check out here:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Iyg6gQZFhc

    It’s definitely a bold move, as he highlights that he doesn’t own the right to publish this. Disney holds onto the rights even with Square-Enix being the creator of this Disney-Final Fantasy mashup. Many have long wondered why we never got an adaptation of any kind, but it’s great to get a look at what could have been after all these years. Kingdom Hearts has lived on as a massive franchise spanning books, multiple consoles, and ongoing musical concerts but still no cinematic or TV adaptation.

    While this move won’t lead to the series getting a renewal after all these years, there is still the potential for them to consider an adaptation. Disney+ may unshackle them to explore many different types of stories and such a massive IP would definitely be the perfect touch, no matter if they go an animated or even live-action route. Kingdom Hearts still remains as one of Square Enix’s popular entries and we’ll see if the upcoming fourth entry alongside this leak potentially reviving interest to explore a project based on it after all.

    Source: YouTube

  • Russo Brothers’ Italian ‘Citadel’ Entry Adds Matilda De Angelis as its Lead

    Russo Brothers’ Italian ‘Citadel’ Entry Adds Matilda De Angelis as its Lead

    Russo Brothers have been quite busy with their various projects and it looks like they are already eyeing to kick off their Amazon Prime Video series, Citadel. Once again taking a step into the world of spies and thrillers, they have cast the rising Italian star, Matilda De Angelis, as its lead, who recently made her name with her work on Susanne Bier‘s The Undoing. The project has now started production and was announced by Amazon Studios at Rome’s MIA content market.

    For those wondering, Citadel is part of a wider event series with a U.S.-based main series and various spinoffs. Currently, Prime Video plans to expand it into India and Mexico as well with Arnaldo Catinari spearheading this project based on head writer Alessandro Fabbri‘s scripts. ITV Studios’ Cattleya is also currently producing the series with Gina Gardini set as its showrunner and executive producer alongside Marco Chimenz, Giovanni Stabilini, and Riccardo Tozzi.

    The series has already cast Bernhard Schütz, Lorenzo Cervasio, Thekla Reuten, Julia Piaton, Filippo Nigro, and Maurizio Lombardi in undisclosed roles. This is the first local production to start and the U.S.-based series has already added Stanley Tucci, Richard Madden, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. It’s unclear if they will all be under the same title of Citadel or potentially each get their own titles moving forward but the project is certainly ambitios.

    Source: Variety

  • Colin Farrell’s Penguin Spinoff Deals With the Aftermath of ‘The Batman’

    Colin Farrell’s Penguin Spinoff Deals With the Aftermath of ‘The Batman’

    Colin Farrell has been quite busy lately and will soon return to The Batman franchise with his very own spinoff. After a long bout of silence, the project has quickly picked up the pace with Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Lauren LeFranc set as its showrunner and slowly adding directors. In an interview with Variety, Farrell surprisingly lets a few topics loose and reveals that the series takes place right after The Batman‘s ending.

    It starts about a week after ‘The Batman’ ends. So, Gotham is still, somewhat, underwater. I read the first script of the first episode and it opens up on my feet splashing through the water in Falcone’s office. Even that alone, when I read it, I was like, ‘Oh, Jesus!’

    Colin Farrell

    We still haven’t heard much about what we can expect in the sequel from Matt Reeves, but it’s interesting that the spinoff series might be the one to focus on a flooded Gotham. Perhaps the return of Robert Pattinson‘s Batman might take place at the same time, but we won’t know until they start working on the project. Still, Farrell is quite excited bout the project and praises showrunner LeFranc‘s work.

    It’s lovely. It’s so well-written. Lauren LeFranc has done such an extraordinary job, and she’s writing the whole thing and show-running. She is formidable. It’s just an exciting prospect. I love that character. I was greedy with it. I felt like I didn’t have enough. I wanted to do it more and more and more.

    Colin Farrell

    We’re definitely excited to see what the project might explore, but a power vacuum left in the wake of Falcone’s death and a flooded Gotham is definitely the perfect direction for this project. Here’s hoping we get to see some other iconic mobsters from this universe. Perhaps we’ll get a few set-ups of future confrontations with Black Mask, White Shark, The Hammer, Cosa Nostra, and many more.

    Source: Variety

  • Why ‘She-Hulk’ is Marvel’s Best Disney+ Series

    Why ‘She-Hulk’ is Marvel’s Best Disney+ Series

    Even before She-Hulk: Attorney at Law premiered on Disney+ this past August, the internet has had no shortage of jabronis voicing their complaints about the show. There has been so much media made about how She-Hulk is the worst TV show ever. All this negativity toward She-Hulk has led to some giving up on the show. However, with the final episode premiering later this week, now is the perfect time to get back on board so you can see what you’ve been missing, because She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is the best Marvel Cinematic Universe Disney+ show.

    She-Hulk is the First Marvel Disney+ Show That Knows How to be a Show

    There’s something to be said for a piece of media effectively utilizing the medium in which it exists. A common complaint among the Marvel Disney+ shows is that they feel like movies cut up into 6 pieces and thrown on Disney+. In some cases, it’s a fair criticism. Frequently, the episodes don’t feel like their own concise story, so while the episodes can be separated by certain storytelling functions or a change in location, it still feels like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, or even Ms. Marvel could’ve been better served by cutting out a bunch of the fluff and editing the entire story into a 2-hour long movie. Only What If…?, WandaVision, and Loki had done this right previously, but She-Hulk might be the best at it specifically because unlike What If…?, WandaVision, or Loki, She-Hulk is very explicitly a sitcom.

    Part of the charm of a sitcom is that while there are big, season-long arcs – like Diane warming up to Sam in Cheers or Mac getting fat in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – the episodes themselves are largely disconnected and can be watched out of order. Once everything was set in motion, starting with episodes 3 and 4, the creatives on She-Hulk really managed to hit that balance. That balance can be pretty effectively highlighted by focusing on the legal aspect of the series. Every episode is another case. Every case presents a new challenge, introduces a few new characters, and after 22 minutes, everything is neatly wrapped up. Someone could watch episode 1 and then skip to episode 4, and they’d mostly get it.

    Some people don’t like this disconnect at the heart of the show, but it’s a feature, not a bug, and whether one likes everything about She-Hulk or not, it’s hard to deny that it’s living up to the promise of a superhuman law sitcom. If you don’t like the idea of sitcoms, then this was never going to work for you, but it’s difficult not to appreciate how She-Hulk is the first MCU show that has embraced the sitcom format.

    She-Hulk Expands on the MCU in Interesting Ways

    She-Hulk has introduced so many characters and concepts with barely any legwork. This can be attributed to the fact that She-Hulk is the first MCU show that is explicitly about a character dealing with the superhuman side of the universe that audiences don’t really see. Moon Knight had Egyptian gods. Ms. Marvel had Clandestines. They did not have, for instance, a sorcerer just show up; it wouldn’t have made sense and that’s fine. Thematically, it is consistent with the scope of the story. But it’s pretty wild that even though Earth is full of aliens, Asgardians, and all sorts of gods and enhanced people, outside of the Shang-Chi cage fight, there has not been an earthbound project where characters just bump into something weird or acknowledge the weirdness in the rest of the world. She-Hulk is the first MCU show to properly acknowledge the Celestial in the middle of the ocean – that’s incredible because one problem with Phase 4 is that – apart from Wong – it’s felt sort of disconnected. There aren’t those little moments where Coulson mentions a thing he has to deal with that signals to the audience that Thor also exists in this world, or where Bruce Banner name-drops Wakanda. Moments like those are necessary to keep everything balanced outside of the big team-up movies and ground the world in some shared reality, even if it is a weird one.

    Phase 4 has done a fair amount of world-building, but it was almost always providing context to past events from the last few phases, like Kamala telling the audience about the end of Avengers: Endgame or Hawkeye watching “Rogers: the Musical.” Fans have gotten plenty of context for things in the past, but what about the very recent past? There have been so many world-altering events that never get mentioned. Did anyone else experience the time Mr. Knight and Khonshu turned back time in the sky, or that kaiju fight from the end of the series? Those are examples just from Moon Knight. Nobody has brought up the Gargantos attack, any of the Statue of Liberty stuff, Hawkeye shooting goons in 30 Rock on Christmas, the Taskmaster chase, the attack on New Asgard, the Shang-Chi bus fight, and anything from Eternals…outside of acknowledging that Kingo exists. These things all happened in public, so the idea of a character who gets to react to them or a show that would not feel weird if it acknowledged them is a lot of fun.

    It’s clear that Phase 4 was jumbled by the pandemic. Lots of movies changed spots, so plenty of the direct references wouldn’t play, but a show like She-Hulk wraps a lot of that up at the end. It’s the last D+ project of 2022, so She-Hulk gets to be sort of a greatest hits of the phase. But even beyond that, She-Hulk’s world-building is really impressive because of how much the creatives trusted the audience. A Light Elf shows up – audiences have never seen or heard of them before, but the writers know if they look and act a specific way, audiences will infer that this is a Thor-related thing. Mr. Immortal just popped in for an episode. In the comics, he has the power to live forever and was the leader of the Great Lake Avengers at one point. This version of the character was certainly a different take on the hero, but it fits into the universe well. It’s great that they can do characters like this without explanation; it just makes the world feel so much bigger.

    Jennifer Walters is an Interesting and Likable Character

    There has been a lot of discourse pertaining to whether Jennifer Walters is an interesting character or not. Many seem to believe that Jen is not an interesting character because she has no flaws – she never does anything wrong and dismisses Bruce, her kind, older cousin. However, this is a wild misreading of the entire series. Jen’s biggest flaw is that she’s sort of arrogant – just like Tony Stark, Thor, Peter Quill, or Stephen Strange before her. Jen believes she’s will be better at being a Hulk than she actually is and dismisses people offering her help…that is, until she doesn’t. Though it does remain to be seen if Jen will learn her lesson by the end of episode 9, perhaps the other lawyer superhero will have something to say about the whole work/life balance thing.

    Another great element about Jen’s character is that she really feels like an adult. The idea of having to go on bad dates or attend a chaotic wedding is really relatable. That’s why the conversation that Jen has with Bruce in the beginning of Episode 1 feels apt. Jen talking about how Steve Rogers never got to have sex is both a fun conversation that all nerds have had at some point, but also an acknowledgment that the MCU’s second lead character never got to just slow down and date – at least, not so far as audiences have seen. She-Hulk exploring that is refreshing, especially since Tony Stark being a little playboy was one of the things that drew people to the MCU. Just like Tony, Jen has a sense of humor and feels human.

    And similar to how they’ve explored relatable adult relationships with Tony Stark, Thor, Peter Quill, and Stephen Strange, Jen and all of her supporting characters are great. The group dynamic between Jen, Nikki, and Pug is a lot of fun, and so are the little Nikki and Pug side adventures. What they’ve done with Mallory Book – a character who plays an important role in the Dan Slott comic run from 2004 – is also commendable. Additional standouts are Jen’s family, Wong and Madisynn, and Lulu, played by Patti Harrison.

    With She-Hulk coming to an end, give it a look with a pair of fresh eyes and appreciate it for what it is: a sitcom that’s grown the MCU in a creative way.

    The 9th and final episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law releases on Disney+ Thursday, October 13th.