Yesterday, Marvel Studios dropped the first trailer for their forthcoming She-Hulk project, now with a subtitle – She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. This Disney+ series, created by Jennifer Gao, continues Marvel Studios' efforts to introduce new MCU heroes via the small screen, like Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel. The show stars Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) as Jennifer Walters, an ace attorney who gains Hulk-like abilities– the same as her cousin, Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo).
The trailer kicks off with the Los Angeles city skyline and a voiceover from Bruce Banner, who waxes philosophically to Jennifer about the difficult road to becoming a superhero. “Who’s gonna protect the world if not people like you?” Some of the trials Banner alludes to are briefly glimpsed– panicked socialites under attack, some criminal types who look a whole lot like the Wrecking Crew (more on that in a bit), a nasty car crash, and a bunch of glowlight super Marines. This trailer is positively chock-full of Marvel Comics deep cuts, and we’re going to do our best to clock them all.
The Marvel Studios title card brings us headlong into what’s status quo for Jennifer Walters. She’s a pro lawyer for Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, & Holliway (GLK/H) who gets tasked with being the face of a new Superhuman Law Division– a job she describes as “demanding,” and one that we first saw the seeds of in shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones. One of the superhumans Jennifer encounters in this new role is Emil Blonsky, also known as The Abomination (Tim Roth). Abomination battled Banner all the way back in 2008 during the events of The Incredible Hulk, and he made a surprise appearance in last year’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Abomination’s current place of residence is a massive, futuristic super-prison. It’s not the Raft, because we’ve seen that before and this ain’t it. There are other super-prisons from the comics, but it’s probably not The Cube, as that’s for extraterrestrial prisoners. It's also unlikely The Big House, a facility for shrunken down criminals. One possible candidate could be The Vault. Abomination’s cameo in Shang-Chi had him sparring with Wong (Benedict Wong) at the fight club in Macau, only for Wong to give him fighting tips while escorting him through a portal to the very same prison cell we see in the She-Hulk trailer. How does that timeline shake out? Will we see Wong again in these episodes? How large of a role will Blonsky have in this story? Time will tell.
Other than that, she has a stressful new job, what we know about Jennifer is that she has friends with large personalities, while she seems to have a rather reserved, unassuming, by-the-book nature. Oh, and her cousin is the Incredible Hulk, no biggie. The official synopsis for the series explains that Jennifer gets her Hulk powers when she receives a blood transfusion from Bruce, perhaps because of that car accident from earlier. Jennifer calls her family situation “frustrating,” as Smart Hulk Banner tries to school her on all things gamma radiation at a tropical hideaway. Banner explains that Jennifer’s transformations are triggered by anger and fear, and he sticks her in a laboratory saw blade death trap that forces her to transform — and it works! Our first real look at She-Hulk is downright smashing as she busts the wall of saw blades and rips off the door in a fury at her cousin’s frightening methods. Jennifer warms up to Bruce’s teaching style, as we later see the two of them leaping and bounding across the beach, but him waking her up with an air horn might cause more friction.
Although Jennifer wants to be "a normal, anonymous lawyer," her dual identity brings her new celebrity status. Going to the office in her green form earns her stares from colleagues, but soon she has news crews at her door asking for She-Hulk. Her best friend Nikki (Ginger Gonzaga) tells her “you’re a story now,” implying she’s gone viral online. While Jennifer might shy away from the attention, She-Hulk attends red carpet events and strikes poses for admirers. Just like in the comics, it seems that when Jennifer transforms into She-Hulk, she’s bolder, more confident, and more flirtatious. She scoffs at the idea that she would ever become an Avenger, let alone a superhero at all. “That is for billionaires, and narcissists, and adult orphans.”
Despite her disdain, the trailer makes it clear that superpowers and heroics are a package deal for Jennifer with a rapid-fire montage with some of the show’s costumed villains. Early in the trailer, we saw a group of shadowy-looking dudes with an eclectic choice of weapons: a crowbar, a hook, and… a crossbow? They’re likely the Wrecking Crew, a group of villains empowered by an enchanted crowbar. These baddies have strong ties to Thor, but they have battled almost every hero in the Marvel pantheon. It’s possible that the magical element to their backstory could be pared down to match She-Hulk’s tone– if so, they’ll hardly be a match for Jennifer.
Jameela Jamil’s villain, Titania, is definitely a “pick on someone your own size” villain. Titania is briefly seen in the trailer, having a destructive brawl with She-Hulk in a courtroom. She’s a super-strong, super durable threat, and has established herself in the comics as a formidable rival to She-Hulk. Considering her background with supergroups like the Masters of Evil and the Frightful Four, it would be no surprise if Jamil is tapped for future appearances after her showdown with She-Hulk.
And then there’s Frog-Man. The trailer flashed him so quickly, I had to have a friend watch the trailer and tell me if that was actually him. We are indeed getting Frog-Man in the MCU. It only took 14 years! There are actually two versions of this character in the comics - the first is Vincent Patilio, aka Leap-Frog. He’s an inventor who designed a powered set of “leaping coils” that nobody cared about, so he used them for crime until he got busted by Daredevil. Then his well-intentioned son, Eugene Patilio, used his father’s invention to clumsily fight crime as Frog-Man. Of all the things Eugene could have done with his life, he decides to follow his father’s webbed footsteps and put on a frog suit. The apple doesn’t hop far from the lily pad, does it? The version we get in She-Hulk may be an amalgamation of the two, but I secretly hope it’s Frog-Man over Leap-Frog, because then that will mean there are canonically not just one, but two whole Frog-Men in the MCU.
On the other end of the show’s title card, the teaser ends with a comedic look at Jennifer’s dating life as She-Hulk. She bemoans dating in her 30s, but as She-Hulk, she gets a veritable flood of online dating matches. Something about her new look drastically expands her dating pool. There’s just a boatload of big, buff, handsome guys in L.A. who want nothing more than to be picked up and cradled by a bigger, buffer, beautiful green lady. And you know what? Good for her.
This trailer makes it clear that She-Hulk is unlike anything we’ve seen yet on Disney+, and maybe not even the larger MCU. It’s tonally built ground-up for comedy, and though we have seen superhero lawyer shows before, it has a peculiar premise that sets it apart. She-Hulk may turn out to be a slice-of-life narrative first and a superhero action-adventure romp second, and that’s just fine. The Marvel Cinematic Universe needs to keep delivering more offbeat projects like this so that bland milk duds who keep saying the MCU is “formulaic” and “everything is the same” will either have to change with the times or be forced to do harder and harder mental gymnastics to keep up the line.
She-Hulk premieres August 17 on Disney+.