Jen and her friends determine to discover the HulkKing’s identity…

I have had many criticisms of the MCU over the years, representation being one of my biggest bugbears. Since the first Captain America film the franchise has come a long way. However, it’s always been a bit of a beast and that has meant that no matter how ambitious it has been with its story telling it’s always bumped up against the limits it has set itself risking homogenisation even as it’s tried new things.

Without rehashing that argument too much, the franchise is based around people with enhanced agency – manifested through powers that allow them to silence debate via violence.

Into this framework one must insert stakes that potentially change the world only for our super-agents (see what I did there) to restore the status quo each time in a final climactic showdown with their opposites – those with agency who use it to disrupt the status quo.

So when something like She-Hulk comes along you are faced with these points to hold in tension. First is that it is yet another superhero show bound seemingly by all the above boundaries. Second is that this superhero in particular is famed for breaking the fourth wall and third, we have a superhero who is a smart, powerful woman before she’s a super powered individual.

If you’ve been reading my episode by episode reviews of the season you’ll see that I’ve enjoyed some of it and have been deeply irritated elsewhere. My frustration has been greatest where chances at representation and character work have been undermined by good old fashioned structural prejudice and bias.

Episode 9 is something of a valedictory for the series entire. It recasts some of the design choices and then takes a hefty haymaker right at the MCU’s borderlands.

By and large it works really well. I grinned nearly all the way through, raised my eyebrows several times and laughed consistently. I think I may even have exclaimed to the empty room I was in ‘how sweet’ at one point.

Without spoiling this episode, it is an entry in two parts. The first is a chaotic although by the numbers season finale – building up to exactly the ‘all parties’ fight we’ve seen so many times before. It goes off the rails with the reintroduction of unexpected characters and then, just as you’re about to throw your hands into the air it turns around and talks directly to you, the audience. It explicitly challenges us about expectations, pointedly calling out those who’ve been so, so toxic towards not just the show but the human beings involved and then turns its attention on the machinery of empire – Marvel.

We shouldn’t get too excited because when an empire tells you it’s aware of its flaws at least 50% of this performance is the powers that be telling on themselves in a different less favourable way. A specific conversation underlines this when a key decision maker says ‘this won’t happen again,’ as they’re challenged to do better. They’re not promising to do better; they informing everyone concerned that this is a one-off occurrence, an exception. Don’t expect them to deviate from their formula again.

Whatever.

Here the challenge to the status quo works. Why? Because the status quo is sexist nonsense about what women are allowed to want, when and how. About what they’re entitled to and the double standards by which they’re all too often measured.

The show, through Jennifer Walters, explicitly tackles each and every one of these points and literally says it’s not going to dignify them with a response let alone try to convince them of its merits. Hallelujah.

Instead, we get the world as Jen would like it to be – one where she can have whatever desires she wants, express them freely and indulge her passions without judgement. Where people accept responsibility, acknowledge their errors and justice is served via the rule of law rather than by strength of arm. It is a glorious fantasy but it is glorious nonetheless.

Sex is on the table (and that is quite fitting as it’s not since the Netflix Marvel shows – especially Daredevil – that adults have been allowed to be horny). And, for once, it’s sex from a woman’s point of view. There’s something especially cute about Matt Murdoch being an object of desire.

The season has been uneven – choosing a regressive and deeply out of date format didn’t help even if the choice was understandable. But when She-Hulk has shined as it has in its opening and now in episodes 8 and 9, it is dazzling.

Verdict: I mentioned at the beginning about superheroes essentially being people with enhanced agency. In that light, Jen Walters is the most powerful superhero of them all because through her the writers changed the very foundations of the world to end her story on her terms. That’s some good heroing as far as I’m concerned.

Rating? 9 menu icons out of 10.

Stewart Hotston