One of the most puzzling scenes of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings features Tim Roth’s Abomination battling against Benedict Wong’s Sorcerer Supreme in an illegal competition. With Roth returning as the former villain for Disney+’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, fans expect to learn why the Abomination is training with Wong. However, instead of this plot thread being planted by Marvel Studios, the return of Abomination was actually pitched by She-Hulk’s writer and creator, Jessica Gao.

In an interview with ComicBook.com, Gao revealed that her idea for the upcoming superhero legal drama was always to have the Abomination at the story's center. To Gao, forcing Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) to face her cousin Bruce Banner’s (Mark Ruffalo) old nemesis was something she wanted right from the start, which led to the Abomination’s surprising MCU return. As Gao explains it:

"So Abomination, Emil Blonsky was in my original pitch and at that point, the last time we saw him was in 2008, The Incredible Hulk. I had no idea what their relationship to this character was anymore. I don't know if they had any plans but it was a story I wanted to tell so I just put it in there. What's the worst that could happen? I don't get the job. Look, I have not gotten the job so many times at Marvel like it was old hat to me. I had no more fear. I was like Daredevil. I was the woman with no fear now."

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Although Gao wanted Abomination on her show, she didn’t know how Marvel Studios would reintroduce the character. The idea of putting the former villain in Shang-Chi came from the MCU’s producer Kevin Feige, who thought it was better to reintroduce the Abomination before he showed up in the series. In Gao’s words:

"Because he was built in to be such a big part of the show in that original pitch and in the writer's room, we really like, we were creating this whole story for him. Because everything in Marvel is connected, that was actually why he then was put in ‘Shang-Chi’ because he was in our show. That way, it was kind of to seed him so that people can get excited but also remember him and it kind of forced people to go, 'Oh, I should go back and check in on him and remember who he is and what all of that was about.'"

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law premieres on Disney+ with its first episode tomorrow, August 18. After that, new episodes come to Disney+ every Thursday. Check out the series trailer below: