She-Hulk: Attorney at Law kicked off on Disney Plus this week, and it delivered a lot of firsts for the MCU. The first appearance from Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters, our first confirmation that Steve Rogers had sex, and, notably, the franchise’s first fourth wall-breaking moments. As per her comic book adventures, Shulkie knows she’s in a TV show and speaks directly to the audience.
While superhero-loving audiences are already used to this gimmick from the Deadpools films (although Jen did it before DP in the comics, to be fair), not everyone’s loving the meta-humor angle in She-Hulk as it pulls them out of the reality of the Marvel universe somewhat. For those who need some convincing, then, director Kat Coiro has now explained why the fourth wall breaks were necessary to the show.
Coiro explained to The Wrap that the aim was to create “a friendship” and “connection” between Maslany’s heroine and the audience, although the production team was careful not to overdo it. As she put it:
“It was really about cultivating a friendship between Jennifer, She-Hulk, and the audience so that when she turns to speak to the camera, there’s a connection. And we talked a lot about that, Tatiana and I, about how she could really, you know, connect to the audience and draw them in. And then after she developed that relationship with the camera, it was really about finding the balance so that we could draw the audience in, but not doing it so much that we alienated them from the story in the world that we were building.”
While the pilot episode has Jen talking to the camera within minutes, the first chronological instance of Jen breaking the fourth wall comes during a flashback to her Hulk training with cousin Bruce (Mark Ruffalo). Banner says he’ll respect her decision if she decides to become a superhero, to which Jen turns to us and says “he won’t.” The character then frowns, as if she’s not really sure what just happened.
Coiro addressed this moment, revealing that it was fully the intention here to suggest that Jen gained her meta awareness when she became a Hulk:
“That was one of those magical little moments where we had planned for that to be the first time she breaks the fourth wall. The discussions were very much like, she gains all these superpowers in terms of strength, and height, and speed and agility. But also she gains this new level of self awareness that leads her to know that there’s someone else out there. And so that little moment is where she realizes there’s somebody else driving her story. There’s somebody else watching her.”
Showrunner Jessica Gao has previously opened up about how Marvel made the She-Hulk team go back to the drawing board over its fourth wall breaks a couple of times, with one version of the show featuring no looking at the camera at all and another utilizing caption boxes that Jen would’ve interacted with. Ultimately, it seems they reached a happy medium.
We’ll have to see how fans take to Shulkie’s Jim from The Office impression as She-Hulk: Attorney at Law continues Thursdays on Disney Plus.