‘She-Hulk: Attorney At Law’ Season 1: Ending, Explained – Is K.E.V.I.N. The Real Villain Of The MCU?

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“She-Hulk: Attorney At Law” has finally come to an end. After seven painfully awful episodes and one decent episode (featuring Charlie Cox’s Daredevil), creator Jessica Gao and director Kat Coiro have managed to bring down the curtain on this train wreck. But, hey, we are supposed to talk about it critically. So, let’s do that. In last week’s episode, after using Daredevil in the marketing for months, Matt Murdock showed up to represent Luke Jacobson (Griffin Matthews). Why? Because Jennifer Walters’s (Tatiana Maslany) client, Leapfrog (Brandon Stanley), accused Luke of giving him a faulty suit. Matt won the case, hooked up with Jennifer, and then they teamed up to take Leapfrog down when he kidnapped Luke and forced him to make a new suit. Later, at the Gala, Jennifer’s sex tape (with Josh) was leaked by the Intelligencia, and that caused her to go on a full-on rampage.

Major Spoilers Ahead


Jennifer Goes To Emil Blonsky’s Resort To Chill Out

Episode 9 of “She-Hulk: Attorney At Law” opens with a homage to “The Incredible Hulk” T.V. series from 1978 and essentially recaps the entire mini-series, all the way up to the debacle at the gala. Jennifer wakes up in the D.O.D.C. (Department of Damage Control) jail, thereby revealing that she was dreaming all that and showing us how the writers and directors could’ve smartly delivered exposition all this time. Mallory Book (Renée Elise Goldsberry), Nikki Ramos (Ginger Gonzaga), and Pug (Josh Segarra) enter the room. Pug says he has contacted Bruce (Mark Ruffalo) regarding this whole situation. When Jennifer starts talking about how they need to identify every individual who has hacked her private information, Mallory tells her that nothing’s going to happen until she accepts the plea deal. And the deal is that Jennifer has to wear the inhibitor so she can’t turn into She-Hulk.

Jennifer accepts the deal, puts the inhibitor on, and walks out to her parents. She gets fired by G.L.K. and H. She sees how the media is painting her as a monster and is camping around her house to get any information out of her. Her lack of employment and the constant media attention forces her to sell that house and move back in with her parents. But all this doesn’t stop her from looking into the Intelligencia and the mastermind behind everything that has gone wrong with her life. Nikki suggests that she should try some superpowered methods to deal with these guys. However, Jennifer says that she’s going to pursue them legally only. She tries to get in touch with Bruce and Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), but they appear to be out of cellular reach. So, Jennifer packs her bags and heads over to Emil’s resort in order to take a mental health break.


‘She-Hulk: Attorney At Law’ Comes To A Halt, Literally.

Nikki takes an old video from Jennifer’s college days and puts it up on the Intelligencia website to bait someone into giving her the physical address of where these sick men meet. And one of the admins falls for it hook, line, and sinker and gives away said address. Nikki realizes that she can’t enter this congregation because Intelligencia obviously hates women, and her proximity to Jennifer will expose her ulterior motives. So, she recruits Pug because he won’t seem like a spy. Pug isn’t up for the job because he can’t act misogynistic and hateful (men should aspire to be like Pug). But Nikki tells him to do it for Jennifer’s sake so that they can nab the HulkKing and prosecute him for ruining Jennifer’s life. Pug holds his own quite well until Todd (Jon Bass) shows up. For a second, he thinks that Todd is going to chuck him out because he’s Jennifer’s colleague. Instead, he welcomes him.

Pug gets Todd talking about the Intelligencia, and he proceeds to blurt out that he is the founder of the website and that he is the HulkKing. Jennifer learns that Blonsky is attending some sort of private event at the resort. It turns out that he is giving speeches to the Intelligencia as the Abomination. Pug is understandably shocked by this revelation, and so is Jennifer when she walks into the session. Nikki barges in and tells Jennifer to bail out of the resort because they are in an Intelligencia meeting. Todd pulls out the syringe full of Jennifer’s She-Hulk blood and – after making some half-baked speech about earning the power to be the Hulk – injects it into his hand and turns it into a Hulk. Titania (Jameela Jamil) and Bruce crash the meeting. Abomination tries to save Jennifer from Todd-Hulk and the Intelligencia. Bruce starts fighting the Abomination. That’s when the mini-series literally pauses, goes to the Disney+ selection screen, and She-Hulk jumps from her panel into the “Marvel: Assembled” show.


‘She-Hulk: Attorney At Law Episode 9: Ending Explained – Is K.E.V.I.N. Supposed To Be Kevin Feige?

She-Hulk enters Marvel Studios and goes to the writers’ room to talk about the messy fight sequence. They say that it’s not up to them because something called K.E.V.I.N. makes the decisions for them, thereby alluding to Kevin Feige, the C.E.O. of Marvel Studios. When the guards try to stop her, she fights back and reaches the room where K.E.V.I.N. is. And, no, it’s not Feige. It’s, in fact, an A.I., and its name stands for Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus. K.E.V.I.N. tells Jennifer to transform back into her normal form because the visual effects artists have moved on to a new project. The “Black Panther” (a movie panned for its VFX) theme briefly plays over that bit, and it made me want to physically puke on my screen. But since I love my laptop more than this absolutely disgusting show that is dunking on VFX artists working for Marvel after exploiting the hell out of them, I didn’t.

Jennifer and K.E.V.I.N. have a lengthy conversation about how repetitive, and boring Marvel’s products are, and she manages to convince the machine to change her show’s ending. She erases the blood-stealing plotline and reduces Todd to just the founder of Intelligencia. She removes Bruce from the final battle. She turns Abomination into Emil so that he can hold himself accountable. She changes the nighttime setting into a daytime setting. And she brings Daredevil in too. K.E.V.I.N. then sends Jennifer back to her show. She sues Todd. Emil goes to jail again for breaching his parole conditions. Jennifer takes Matt to her family lunch. Bruce returns from Sakaar and reveals that he has a son named Skaar (Wil Deusner). Jennifer, as She-Hulk, goes to court to take on Todd and Intelligencia. In the credits, we see Todd in handcuffs and K.E.V.I.N. reading a She-Hulk comic. In the post-credits, Wong (Benedict Wong) breaks Emil out of jail and takes him to Kamar-Taj.

As mentioned before, the problem with “She-Hulk: Attorney At Law” (the ending and the show) is that it tries to have its cake and eat it too. The intention of doing so isn’t particularly bad. But when the cake is made of garbage and rotten materials, having and eating it is only going to give you severe food poisoning, and you are going to regurgitate it and get sick. That’s a roundabout way of saying that breaking the fourth wall and addressing the issues plaguing Marvel Studios and “She-Hulk,” doesn’t rectify them. It’s as if Marvel Studios, via “She-Hulk,” is trying to say that the fact that they haven’t made a substantial piece of cinema that can stand on its own merit since Phase 1 is because they were building up to a gag in a mini-series about the Hulk’s cousin. Those bad movies and shows still exist. The market continues to be oversaturated because of the amount of content Marvel and Disney have pumped out. The VFX industry continues to be in shambles because of them. That makes the said gag infinitely unfunny.

Portraying the C.E.O. of Marvel Studios as an A.I. that’s producing stories based on algorithms that’ll appeal to everyone would’ve been hilarious if the last 10-12 Marvel IPs (including “She-Hulk”) hadn’t looked like something that had been made by an A.I. They are devoid of passion, creativity, and the basics of filmmaking. They are heavily pre-visualized, which often has little to nothing to do with the actual story or the director’s creative choices. Hence, there’s this vast difference between the dramatic aspect of a film or show and its action sequences. The joke about the writers and the VFX artists would’ve landed with a “boom” if the last few Marvel projects (again, including “She-Hulk”) hadn’t been riddled with horrible dialogue and exposition and if the visuals would’ve looked like a million bucks, which these movies and shows evidently cost to make and earn as well. Instead, it all feels like Marvel’s way of spitting on the faces of the writers and VFX artists who have been micromanaged to death by Kevin Feige and his team for a wee laugh. That said, this “plot twist” does get one thing right: Kevin is the MCU’s – and the entertainment industry’s – real villain.


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Pramit Chatterjee
Pramit Chatterjee
Pramit loves to write about movies, television shows, short films, and basically anything that emerges from the world of entertainment. He occasionally talks to people, and judges them on the basis of their love for Edgar Wright, Ryan Gosling, Keanu Reeves, and the best television series ever made, Dark.

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