Nobody believed Tatiana Maslany for a second when the actress denied that she’d be playing Jennifer Walters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s She-Hulk, and the Orphan Black star was officially confirmed for the role yesterday during Disney’s investor call, which brought a cavalcade of massive announcements surrounding the upcoming D+ schedule.
Fans who’ve been waiting patiently for any news on the MCU’s slate of future projects are probably still recovering from bombshell after bombshell including Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn’s Secret Invasion, the first trailers for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki and What If…?, and, of course, Spider-Man director Jon Watts signing on to helm Fantastic Four.
Back to She-Hulk, though, and as well as Mark Ruffalo boarding the cast of the superhero legal thriller, Tim Roth will also be back as Emil Blonsky. Which certainly comes as a surprise as up until recently, William Hurt’s Thaddeus Russ was the only thing that connected The Incredible Hulk to the rest of the MCU, with Kevin Feige seemingly determined to sweep the movie under the rug and pretend as though it never even happened.
Roth reprising his role as Abomination is also unexpected as the character was handily defeated during the aforementioned film’s third act and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Plot details remain scarce, but we could realistically be seeing a courtroom battle in She-Hulk where the hotshot lawyer is either defending or prosecuting Blonsky as he seeks forgiveness for his crimes. In any case, bringing Roth back indicates that the villain will spend more time in his human form than the scaly and poorly-rendered figure that we last saw in 2008, and it’ll be nice to see the MCU finally acknowledge a movie that was released just six weeks after Iron Man.