The dust continues to settle from the abject failure of Disney and Marvel’s She Hulk: Attorney at Law. There are rumors that the character was set to appear in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars in some capacity, but this was nixed by none other than Kevin Feige following a less-than-constructive reaction to She Hulk and the negative reaction from certain leading cast members.
When digging deeper into the issues the production faced, a few things start to stand out.
According to some inside scoopers, She Hulk was originally conceived as a “case of the week” lawyer show that would feature many characters from the MCU dropping in to solve their super-powered legal issues. A full-on legal drama covering trial of Emile Blonsky was also planned at some point.
Then the writers’ room was assembled, and it all fell apart.
The writers said they didn’t know how to write legal drama like this, saying the skill required had been lost. Instead of getting a new writers’ room, the whole show pivoted to the light-hearted and eventually meta-comedy that it became. Then it failed.
The head writer and showrunner on She Hulk was Jessica Gao, whose previous big gig was being credited as the writer on the much-vaunted Pickle Rick episode of Rick & Morty. There were issues on that show, too, as Gao had a big issue with Susan Sarandon being brought in to voice a character Gao had named as Dr. Wong.
This resulted in Rick & Morty showrunner Dan Harmon taking part in a podcast with Gao called “Whiting Wongs” where Harmon was forced to undergo the critical theory equivalent of Marxist struggle session.
Leaks from inside the production of She Hulk allege that Marvel Supremo Kevin Feige had to become heavily involved in the show as he attempted to reshape it following catastrophic test screening reactions. This was poked fun at in the show when it broke the fourth wall in the final episode when a robot named K.E.V.I.N. as revealed.
Feige allowed the inclusion of the robot to stand, but Gao insisted on putting a baseball cap on the robot like the one Feige always wears in real life. Gao threatened to resign if she was not allowed to include the hat and was then taken completely by surprise when Feige immediately accepted her resignation. Eventually a designer managed to reach a compromise by including a hat-like element to the robot design.
The show was cancelled after one season. Nothing in She Hulk is mentioned in any other Marvel movie or TV show, and Tatiana Maslany has not appeared in, or will appear in, any other MCU project at this time.
Gao shows no writing credits on the IMDb since the cancellation nearly four years ago.
