Jennifer Walters belongs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And if you don’t believe it, just ask Bruce Banner, Wong, and Daredevil: all important Marvel characters who got to know Jen (some better than others, in the case of Matt Murdock) in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. But for She-Hulk star Tatiana Maslany, Jen works best when people come to visit her and become part of her story.
“There’s something about She-Hulk being the star of her own show that makes sense,” Maslany said on the Bingeworthy podcast. “Because of the direct address, she is our narrator. So, I think it would be a real cool challenge to see her in some other context, but I do think like the sort of joy of She-Hulk is in the singularness of it.”
Maslany has a point. Even Deadpool had to exist in his own corner of the MCU, restricted to interacting with the TVA and with Happy Hogan (in a scene that doesn’t totally make sense, but don’t worry about it). And the John Byrne comic book run from the late ’80s and early ’90s, which emphasized fourth-wall breaking and set the tone for Attorney at Law, certainly had a different tone than the rest of the Marvel Universe. In fact, the first issue of that run featured She-Hulk threatening to rip up readers’ X-Men comics if they didn’t buy her book.
But even more than the Merc with a Mouth, the comics also have found a way to include her in the mainline Marvel Universe. In particular, She-Hulk was a member of the Avengers when Byrne began working with her. He liked Jen so much that he brought her onto the Fantastic Four during his legendary run on the book, using her to replace the Thing after the events of Secret Wars.
