With so many plot points to juggle going into the finale of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, it was anyone's guess how that would get wrapped up in a satisfying fashion, especially with — as of right now — no news of a Season 2 on the horizon, and only a standard 35-minute runtime. Though events did build to a natural conclusion, the very meta legal comedy took things to an even more meta level, not so much breaking the fourth wall as Hulk smashing it. But did it work? Sort of.

Rather than a "previously on," the episode opens with a fairly close remake of the intro to 1978's The Incredible Hulk series that serves to catch the audience up before cutting to Jen Walters (Tatiana Maslany) now lying in Emil Blonsky's (Tim Roth) old prison cell. She is soon visited by Mallory Book (Renée Elise Goldsberry), Nikki (Ginger Gonzaga), and Pug (Josh Segarra), who tell her the priority at the moment is not prosecuting those who released Jen's private information — including a sex tape that I'm not convinced she knew was being made — but instead dealing with the charges laid against Jen herself. Mallory tells her the DA will drop all the charges provided she wears an inhibitor permanently, which Jen agrees to.

Because a woman simply does not go to prison and expect to keep her cushy corporate job, Jen is let go from GLK&H and forced to give up her adorable apartment to move back home with her parents (Mark Linn-Baker and Tess Malis Kincaid). She is down but not out, as she and Nikki begin to devise a way to find out who exactly is behind Intelligencia and the HulkKing pseudonym. Jen is looking to prosecute them legally, Nikki is prepared to take them down "by any and all means," and of the two Nikki's approach feels the more satisfying.

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Image via Disney+

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Though Jen is taking steps to find out who exactly derailed her life, she still finds herself needing to clear her head, and takes off for Blonsky's meditation retreat in the middle of the night where she hopes to stay for a couple of days. Back at the office, Nikki uploads an embarrassing college video of Jen to Intelligencia, not because she is secretly behind it all, but instead because she is hoping to draw out one of the site users and get them to slip up. The video proves to be ammo enough that she is embraced by the community at once, and invited to a gathering. Because they assume she's a "bro," she ropes Pug into going with her, so she can send him in undercover. At the Intelligencia gathering, the room is filled with every shade of stereotypical man who feels disenfranchised enough by the mere existence of women that he would use the word "females" in an unironic way. The tone and vocabulary employed by all the men are familiar to any woman who has had to inhabit a public space, and it was very endearing to see just how repulsed Pug was by the whole thing. The bar is on the floor, and still, Pug is the only man in the room who managed to clear it.

In typical sitcom fashion, our two plots collide as it turns out the lodge hosting the event is on Blonsky's property, and Blonsky — in Abomination form — has been invited as a guest speaker. I wasn't prepared for how upset I would be thinking Blonsky actually agreed with the Intelligencia bros, though to his credit it seemed like he wasn't totally clear on their ethos, thinking they just needed a motivational speaker. Things come to a head when Jen and Nikki separately barge into the room, Todd reveals his grand plan to steal Jen's blood, so he could "earn" powers she had merely been given, and injects himself, turning into a Hulk. Bruce (Mark Ruffalo) arrives to fight Abomination, thinking he's attacking Jen, and Tatiana (Jameela Jamil) barges in through the wall ready to fight as well.

The utterly chaotic climax is interrupted by Jen, who declares that this cannot possibly be what the audience wants. It's at this point the show goes from winking at the fourth wall to putting a She-Hulk-sized hole in it. Jen exits her series via the Disney+ main menu and makes her way into one of the Marvel: Assembled documentaries, which gives her access to the writers' room for her series.

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Image via Disney+

There, the writers tell her that they are following a formula, and that any issues she has need to be taken up with K.E.V.I.N. (Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus), an AI brain responsible for Marvel's formula. Jen points out that most Marvel series end in a repetitive fashion, and she convinces K.E.V.I.N. to rewrite the end to her satisfaction, which eventually he does. They bypass the entire climactic fight and instead end with Blonsky taking accountability for turning into the Abomination by agreeing to return to prison, and Todd and the other Intelligencia bros being taken away by the police.

With so little time to wrap up the plot, I found myself getting frustrated with the extended digression into the "real" world outside the show. Objectively, I understand this is a logical leap for a show entirely about breaking the fourth wall to make. From a writer's standpoint, if you want to heighten both the stakes and the joke, that is certainly an effective way to do it. But what's so frustrating about it is, like it or not, the big confrontation is what the whole season was being written towards, especially where Todd is concerned.

Arguably things were resolved with Titania in Episode 7, "The Retreat," when Jen bested her in a fistfight. If she had to show up at all in the finale, it would have been enough for her to be there to support Jen in a "nobody messes with my nemesis but me" sort of way. K.E.V.I.N. argues that Bruce's presence at the end was necessary to explain where he'd been, but it's not like this is the last time we're going to see him. It's been 14 years of one project bleeding into the next. Why the sudden concern with wrapping up the plots of characters we know we're going to see again later? I certainly didn't expect him to return in this series.

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Image via Disney+

But then there's Todd. Does he still have a vial of her blood in his system? Was that whole plot point undone? I certainly hope not, because then we lose the entire motivating drive for the back half of the season, much as Josh's (Trevor Salter) actions still sit poorly with me. Jen seems satisfied that Todd will face justice for what he did to her. Call me a fourth-wall-breaking cynic, but the criminal justice system so rarely punishes men for this sort of crime that even in fiction, I doubt he'll be gone for long. I know Jen wanted to do things her way, but I kind of wish his smug face had been punched at least once before he was taken away. Punch Josh too, while you're at it.

The episode, appropriately titled "Whose Show Is This?" does, fortunately, end with the focus in the right place. Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) shows up at the last minute to help out, disappointed to realize he actually missed the fight — does he want to punch Todd if no one else will? — but obviously still interested in Jen. To her delight, he decides to stick around for the week and even comes to a family barbeque, where Bruce arrives announcing he's been on Sakaar this whole time and introducing his son Skaar.

As a whole, She-Hulk thrived when it wasn't trying to follow the MCU formula, as a legal comedy that just happened to feature a superhero. Yes, the cameos were great, but it was in branching out to a new genre that it felt freshest. In moments where it stumbled into the predictable, or the ungracefully uncomfortable, it felt so at odds with the lively tone of the rest of it that it made the whole episode feel a little off-kilter. Minus the truly bizarre digression that I wish hadn't been necessary — no one has ever asked a male superhero to make his movie less predictable — the season finale was by and large a satisfying one, leaving none of Jen's plot points dangling. That said, now that we have the origin story and identity crisis out of the way, my hopes for a Season 2 remain high, with the caveat that should the series return, it leans fully into its legal procedural comedy vibe — without a visit to K.E.V.I.N.

Rating: B+

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Season 1 is now streaming on Disney+.