REVIEW: ‘She-Hulk,’ Episode 9 – “Whose Show Is This?”

The She-Hulk: Attorney At Law finale is here, and it’s not what anyone expected – which is a bit of a double-edged sword. “Whose Show Is This?” immediately wastes no time in dealing with the fallout of Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) Hulking out due to the Intelligencia’s manipulations. While Jen manages to cut a plea deal to gain her freedom, it comes at a cost. She can’t turn into She-Hulk again, and this pushes her and her friends to finally find out who’s behind the Intelligencia.

The first half of the episode builds upon the cliffhanger of “Ribbit or Rip It“, and sees Jen at her lowest. She loses her job, she has to move back in with her parents, and she’s constantly painted in the media as a danger. Even though she has every right to be angry at what the Intelligencia did to her, Jen winds up painted as the villain. Showrunner Jessica Gao and her writing team have been fairly open about the challenges Jen faces as a woman, even with powers, and that continues here. Perhaps the smartest thing Gao does is reshape the Intelligencia from a cabal of supervillains to an online collective of trolls. It feels realistic, and it’s proof that you don’t need a death ray or an elaborate plan for world conquest to wreck a superhero’s life.

None of it would work without Maslany’s performance. And she brings the same mix of emotion and humor that powered her turns as the many, many clones in Orphan Black. In fact, this might be her best hour on the series yet! She gets to show vulnerability, as the reality of her sentence sinks in. She gets to be angry WITHOUT hulking out. And she gets to deliver some zingers that touch on everything from toxic masculinity to fanboy expectations. And the best part comes when she asks herself if being normal is what she really wants, in a scene that brings full closure to her journey of accepting both halves of her life.

However, She-Hulk Episode 9 ends up taking a wild left turn halfway through its runtime, and it left me confused. Yes, it means Jen continues to break the fourth wall in a clever and inventive way. And yes, it’s a bit of meta-commentary on how superhero shows – especially Marvel Studios’ Disney+ offerings – often race to wrap up their storylines in the big finale. But it ends up derailing some of the more emotional impact that the episode was building up to. Had this scene taken place closer to the end of the episode, it would have hit harder. But in the middle of the episode? Not so much.

The one upside of this is that it lets director Kat Coiro play around with the structure of the episode. She opens things with a homage to the original Incredible Hulk TV series and inserts a trippy sequence that will probably cause headaches for Disney+’s support staff. But Coiro wisely avoids the big blowout fight at the end that’s usually a tradition of superhero media and opts to recenter the story by letting Jen spend more time with her family and friends. After all, it’s her show, right? A bone is thrown fans’ way as Charlie Cox makes another appearance as Daredevil; I welcome it because that means more flirting between Jen and the Man Without Fear, and because Cox and Maslany have such great chemistry.

She-Hulk Episode 9 ends the first season on a bit of a mixed note, as an emotional catharsis and the collapse of the fourth wall butt heads. Overall, the series was a fun experience that had a few bumps but still got to the core of who Jennifer Walters is. And I would not mind seeing a second season featuring her dealing with all kinds

All episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney At Law are now available to stream on Disney+.