She-Hulk Alternate Finale Exists, and It's Much More Serious
The 9-episode run of Marvel's She-Hulk Attorney at Law ended on Thursday, October 13th with a big and quite unexpected finale. But as it turns out, things could have played out quite differently for an adorable lady in green.
Series star Tatiana Maslany admitted in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that the alternate finale was shot first, and the show could go in a completely different direction. According to Maslany, the head writer of the show Jessica Gao initially pitched 20 potential endings for the first season of the show.
"I never saw 18 of those versions, but I did see two: the one that we went with and then one that we shot prior," she continued. She called the initial version "very different" and "more serious" and called the way things turned out in the end "super fun and meta".
Head writer Jessica Gao has discussed the possible endings with Marvel.com and admitted that she was initially thinking of the classical Marvel ending:
"Big villain fight, big finale. But it never felt right because I was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole."
If you have already watched the finale you know what happened instead, and this turn of events seems more true to the nature of She-Hulk 's story.
It is not only the case that She-Hulk: Attorney at Law was all about breaking the rules and going meta with the entire Marvel universe. Throughout all nine episodes, the show kept winking at Marvel fans, quite literally sometimes, as the protagonist turned to the camera to address viewers directly with a wink and a witty comment. So it seems only natural that the fourth wall ends up literally broken as well, and the protagonist confronts its creator to demand a better ending for herself.
But for the true Marvel fan, even this turn of events shouldn't come completely unexpected. Because this is exactly the way the character was written and illustrated by John Byrne in the late '80s. In Byrne's comics, She-Hulk would often leap across panels to save herself the trouble of commuting in Los Angeles or even rip out the comic's pages.
No wonder the finale so full of Easter eggs dedicated to true Marvel fans set Reddit on fire. "I love how aware the She-Hulk writers are. They know us, the fans, they know what we think and what we want" writes one user, while the others also cannot conceal the excitement. "I would argue that's one of the greatest moments in MCU history & stand ready to fight anyone who says otherwise. Absolutely epic and batshit crazy."
Judging by the comments — and by the dashing 87% approval rating for the show on Rotten Tomatoes — fun works fine for Marvel's latest show.