‘She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’ Review: Tatiana Maslany Is Sensational in Marvel’s First Comedy Series

When Scarlett Johansson hosted Saturday Night Live back in 2015, she starred in a parody trailer for the Black Widow movie that fans had been demanding for years at that point — and it was a full-blown Devil Wears Prada-style romcom. Black Widow: Age of Me reimagined the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s lead heroine (and back then one of the MCU’s only heroines) as a quirky every-girl who loves ice cream and hates wearing heels. She loves her job, sure, but she also yearns for love. This trailer, bookended by tongue-in-cheek narration reassuring audiences that Marvel totally understands women, mined comedy from the fact that 2015 Marvel Studios low-key refused to make a Black Widow movie, or any movie wherein more than two women had anything of note to do.

Fast-forward seven years and here’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, a Marvel Studios TV series about a 30-something woman who’s career-driven, cute yet quirky, and has to navigate the hellscape that is online dating. Oh — and she’s also a Hulk! The first trailers for the Disney+ series showed Jennifer Walters (Emmy-winner Tatiana Maslany) admiring her new She-Hulk curves, setting up a dating profile, having drinks with her bestie, and lamenting the fact that she can’t just be a regular ol’ lawyer. So… not too far off from Black Widow: Age of Me.

And therein lies She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’s raison d’être, it’s biggest selling point, it’s biggest connection to Marvel canon, and, assuredly, the thing that’s gonna stir up a lot of boring-ass takes from men on the internet. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is unashamedly mundane, weird, funny, and feminine — and that’s why it is such a success.

In the Marvel comics, which She-Hulk has been a part of for over 40 years, the character is a study in contradictions. Big green muscles stretching a purple power suit past its limit, stilettos smashed by a suddenly hulked-out foot — she drives a pink convertible and she’s strong enough to chuck it across a city. She-Hulk proudly embraces all of the feminine stereotypes that she wants to embrace while never compromising the traits that defy expectations. She’s unashamedly herself. That’s the one aspect of the character that She-Hulk: Attorney at Law needed to nail in order to be a faithful She-Hulk series. This IDGAF confidence is She-Hulk’s “with great power” — and the series absolutely gets it. You can tell that from the show’s title alone.

This undoubtedly comes from the fact that the show is helmed by women, head writer Jessica Gao (Rick & Morty) and director Kat Coiro (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), who are able to infuse every minute of She-Hulk with lived-in, unflinching honesty.

The series retrofits She-Hulk’s ability to control her hulk outs, as Jen explains to her cousin Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) that women have to learn how to regulate their emotions or else they be shamed, overlooked, dismissed, or even murdered. Yes, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law gives us moments that feel a lot like that Black Widow parody trailer (an episode is devoted to Jen discovering that she’s more popular on the apps if she’s green… and it just may be the best episode of the first four). But She-Hulk also gives us a lot of moments that expand what clueless men (hi!) know about the experience of women — like how women are at their most relentlessly supportive of each other in bar bathrooms, even if one of them is coming down from her first-ever hulking out.

It’s in these small moments where She-Hulk: Attorney at Law thrives, when Jen and Nikki (breakout star Ginger Gonzaga) are wondering about whether or not the Avengers have solid health insurance, or when Jen’s dealing with the fact that her star witness is the Sorcerer Supreme, or when she’s helping her dad (’80s sitcom icon Mark Linn-Baker!) lift things around the house. The show also delivers massive, constant laughs, and it’s wild that Disney let some of these jokes into a Marvel show. The big Marvel-y stuff works too, and it’s a real joy to see Jennifer Walters begrudgingly try to figure out how to fight like a superhero, but the small stuff makes this series feel special.

That’s why Tatiana Maslany is a perfect fit for this role. There is a dichotomy to Jennifer Walters that she so effortlessly captures; she’s equal parts by-the-book attorney and snarky dork. And even when she’s 6’7″ and green, Maslany is able to emote and, most importantly, sell jokes while her face is undoubtedly covered in dozens of dots for the animators to reference. She makes She-Hulk and Jennifer Walters feel every bit as seamless as she’s meant to be.

This is a credit to the animation, a matter of controversy that’s overshadowed everything else. To be blunt, when Jenn’s not at work, the She-Hulk CG looks every bit as right as the Smart Hulk CG (which is to say 75% right — CG characters always look a little off!). The scenes of She-Hulk at GLK&H, though, do have a stiffness to them that ranges from Sims to Polar Express on the creepy scale. But two things are true about those on-the-job scenes: there is an in-universe reason for the stiffness, and every one of Maslany’s jokes and reactions still hit. Your mileage may vary, but that’s literally the case with every aspect of every show.

Animation quibbles aside, and there are a lot of justifiable quibbles from the VFX team, the only real drawback in the first four episodes of She-Hulk is another one that the show is aware of: at times, it does feel like She-Hulk is a guest star in her own show. That’s kinda the nature of legal shows anyway, and it’s definitely true when the cases involve an unnervingly chipper Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) and current MCU MVP Wong (Benedict Wong). Still, the pitch-perfect premiere is such a thorough and focused character study of Jennifer Walters, and Maslany is just so damn good in the role, She-Hulk’s able to step back a bit without getting lost. It’s hard to lose her. She is a hulk, after all.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is going to be controversial, if only because male-heavy corners of the internet simply cannot stand to see women do… well, anything. The humor, the CG, the abundance of MCU lore and the side-eye that characters rightfully give to a lot of it, the feminism — She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has a whole lot going on. And, just like She-Hulk always has, the show absolutely revels in every stereotype, every truth, and every contradiction with confidence and glee. That’s She-Hulk for you!