Remember She-Hulk: Attorney at Law? The Disney Plus series garnered instant heat with Jennifer Walters speech about being able to hold her anger better than her cousin Bruce, but the chatter about the series didn’t get any better from there. Many fans and critics consider She-Hulk to be the worst show to come out of the Marvel canon. It’s hard to blame them when some of the most vital things to come from the series are She-Hulk twerking with Megan Thee Stallion or her picking up random dudes for some hot fun.
So it isn’t much of a surprise that there’s been zero talk of a possible season two. Tatiana Maslany essentially confirmed that Disney has no interest in revisiting another season with Jennifer Walters during her interview with Deadline about the possibility of the show returning, “I don’t think so. I think we blew our budget, and Disney was like, ‘No thanks.’” However, it isn’t impossible to have a compelling show focused on She-Hulk as she’s a nicely complex character in the comics. These changes would vastly help She-Hulk: Attorney at Law season two, if one ever came to fruition.
Drop The Comedic Sitcom Angle
The MCU doing a full-blown sitcom was bound to happen since light-hearted comedy was always their bread and butter. But making She-Hulk: Attorney at Law a full comedy often undermined the characters and the world surrounding it. The biggest issue with the first season was the lackluster story. Or one that was barely featured. Seinfeld‘s lack of narrative structure worked because it was a genuinely funny and smart show that understood its characters and world.
She-Hulk didn’t necessarily go for the low-hanging fruit, but the jokes weren’t a smart commentary of the Marvel Cinematic Universe nor did it enhance the protagonist. The show was so focused on the “comedy” that it stripped away what made her such a delight in the comics and turned Jen into a self-absorbed narcissist who never developed throughout the series. We never got much on her psyche about her newfound powers because the writers made Jen a pro from the beginning. There’s an interesting angle about her not wanting to be a superhero herself, but that’s never given the proper development.
There’s nothing wrong with going against the traditional origin story, but there has to be something equally compelling to replace it. Jen’s story didn’t have any sort of impact on the MCU as a whole, making the entire arc feel meaningless.
Give Her A Defined Purpose Within The Marvel Cinematic Universe
I touched on this in the previous paragraph, but what value does Jen bring to the MCU? Sure, she’s a lawyer for the heroes, but so is Matt Murdock aka Daredevil. In fact, Murdock’s introduction within the MCU was helping Peter Parker get out of a jam in Spider-Man: No Way Home. There were plenty of directions that the series could’ve taken, but Jessica Gao was so focused on “trolling the trolls” that she forgot to give She-Hulk a strong narrative purpose.
There’s value in exploring Jen’s career as a lawyer; In the She-Hulk 2004 comics, Jen balances being a lawyer and hero, highlighting various relationships with names like Scarlet Witch or The Wasp. Even in the second volume of the same comic, the main focus becomes on her career as a lawyer, but that becomes complicated when Steve Rogers offers her a spot on the Avengers team.
Stories like that can still take place in the second season because Jennifer’s world is being challenged. She’s bringing value into the MCU by developing relationships with some of the most complex names in Marvel, yet she’s also contributing on the superhero front as well. Her journey is unique because it’s a personal story about a woman caught between two worlds, and if the writers honed in on that fascinating aspect then they could have something special in their hands.
Pointless Cameos
Bruce Banner aka The Hulk’s time on the series was the worst out of all of the big names. He was emasculated in the very first episode. This is a man who has gone throw a terrible war that killed one of his best friends. Banner had to deal with abuse, suicidal thoughts, and a huge mental crisis when it came to his powers, yet, Jen dismissed everything he went through because her struggles made her better at containing anger. Apparently catcalling and hearing advice from your firm partners is ten times worse than what Bruce went through.
More importantly, they made She-Hulk better than him at nearly every turn. The Hulk should’ve been a compelling source of content when it comes to the entire season of the series. Yet, it felt as if he was a punching bag who didn’t have much value beyond the inciting incident. Daredevil and Wong didn’t fare much better. She-Hulk focused on their political message first, which hurt the product overall.
These cameos should’ve made Jen’s world more exciting, but they brought down their respective careers. Cameos are necessary for a series of this nature, but they should prove some narrative value that can give Jennifer Walters some nice dimension. The tools to make a great She-Hulk are all there, but Kevin Feige has to abandon a good portion of everything that happened in season one.
