She-Hulk Creator Jessica Gao Discusses Reigning In Jen And K.E.V.I.N.'s Finale Conversation
This article contains spoilers for "She-Hulk" Season 1, Episode 9.
Smashing its way onto Disney+ on August 18, 2022, "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" brought one of Marvel's most iconic female superheroes into the ever-expanding realms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The show follows the life of Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) as she represents superhero legal cases while trying to balance a healthy social life. "She-Hulk" presents itself as a different breed of Marvel production, one where the comedy takes center stage over any explosive action or major stakes.
The show not only plays with the kind of comedy you would expect from its premise, such as Jen's awkward dates and weird social encounters, but additionally makes great strides to have a more satirical edge to it than your typical Marvel fare. Commentating on TV show cliches, superhero tropes, gender roles, and internet trolls who are quick to criticize female-centric superheroes, "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" holds no Hulk-sized punches back when it comes to poking fun at these different avenues of entertainment in all its fourth-wall-breaking glory.
No episode exemplifies this more than the final episode of this season, "Whose Show Is This?" Following a messy series of events that sees various characters from the show return, She-Hulk confronts the Marvel Studios creative team about changing her finale, resulting in a conversation with an A.I. robot known as K.E.V.I.N. that has been making all the creative decisions for the MCU. Creating such an off-kilter episode was surely a challenge, but it was one that its team was more than happy to accept.
Jen's interactions with K.E.V.I.N. mirror Jessica Gao's real life
It's been a long three-year journey for "She-Hulk" creator Jessica Gao to make her vision of the Disney+ legal comedy series a reality. During that time, she stood firm on that vision, tackling topics and meta-commentary that the MCU never explored this deeply. In an interview with Variety, Gao explains that it was not only the fan comments and Twitter responses that she and the team got their inspiration from for the fourth-wall-breaking finale. "That conversation between Jen and K.E.V.I.N. is very much the relationship that I have with real-life Kevin [Feige] and a lot of that is taken from conversations I've had with him," she said. "That scene was so much longer in the scripts. If they had let me, I probably would have written a 10-minute conversation of my avatar arguing with Kevin. This is probably the tightest version of what it could have been. There were a couple of jabs where Kevin was like, 'OK, this is a little mean now.'"
This was not the only time Gao had too much material to work with for the show. The accomplished TV writer admitted in an interview with Collider that there were plenty of ideas cut from the 1st season that she would have liked to do, but could not get to for one reason or another, and hopes to explore if a 2nd season sees the light of day.