In her own words, Jennifer Walters is all about smashing the fourth-wall (and sometimes Matt Murdock), but she truly tore down that wall into rubble in the She-Hulk: Attorney at Law finale. In the episode’s standout scene, Tatiana Maslany’s meta-aware heroine visited Marvel Studios itself and had a chat with the secret head of the company to get the ending of her show changed: no, not Kevin Feige, but K.E.V.I.N., the all-knowing A.I.
While fans have lapped up all the jokes at the Marvel president’s expense, naturally Feige himself wasn’t too pleased with the inclusion of his robotic counterpart. Not because he doesn’t have a sense of humor, but because it sounds like he doesn’t want to take the spotlight himself. Appearing on the latest episode of the D23 podcast, She-Hulk director Kat Coiro revealed the one thing about the finale that caused Feige to draw a line in the sand: he positively refused to provide K.E.V.I.N.’s voice. Coiro explained:
“What’s so amazing to me is what a huge part Kevin plays in every little detail of, you know, the Marvel content. You think he’s working on so many things, he’s so busy, there’s no way he’s gonna be that hands-on, but he really was. And obviously, this is something he had a lot of opinions on, and what’s funny is that I was slightly squeamish about throwing Marvel under the bus and throwing Kevin under the bus and he was like, ‘No no, it’s fine!’ He was so self deprecating, and game, and fun. Where he drew the line is when we said ‘oh, are you going to do the voice?’ and he was like ‘absolutely not.'”
When quizzed on why exactly Feige didn’t want to bring the hilarious spoof to life, Coiro clarified that he was keen to keep some distance between the two Kevins:
“He wanted a separation between the K.E.V.I.N. and the Kevin Feige. But I think it just speaks to the sense of humor and the playfulness, and the irreverence that they have and is part of what makes Marvel so special.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve learned that Feige had some objections about the depiction of K.E.V.I.N. (full name: the Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus). Showrunner Jessica Gao has previously noted that the A.I. originally wore a baseball cap, just like the real Feige, but the exec thought that was too ridiculous to be believable, hence the switch to the A.I.’s visor resembling the hat instead.
Of course, you could argue that K.E.V.I.N.’s mere existence changes the game for the entire MCU, but nope, for Feige, the real issues are his hat and who’s voicing him.