If She-Hulk: Attorney at Law had given fans a small sampling of meta fourth-wall breaks in its first eight episodes, it fed a full-on buffet's helping with its finale. The Disney+ series has finished its first season run, garnering largely positive reviews for its creative use of the Marvel Studios formula and unique take on the superhero genre. But the She-Hulk finale was a whole different beast, including a truly mind-blowing wink and a nod to the audience.
Warning - The rest of this article contains spoilers for the finale of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
Fans are still reeling from the events of She-Hulk's final episode, as it showed the character breaking out of her Disney+ confines, and coming face-to-face with the mastermind behind the MCU, K.E.V.I.N. The Hal 9000-esque A.I. was a riff on Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, ultimately helping Jen Walters in fixing the problems she saw with her finale.
It was an unprecedented creative move from Marvel and one that surely took multiple iterations to perfect. And as was expected, Feige himself had some notes about a joke that came at his expense.
Kevin's Notes on She-Hulk's K.E.V.I.N.
Speaking on Comicbook.com's Phase Zero podcast, She-Hulk writer Jessica Gao revealed what sort of feedback Marvel Studios executive Kevin Feige had on the K.E.V.I.N. sequence from the series' Season 1 finale.
“We did get in a fight over the hat because in the script it says that She-Hulk enters the inner sanctum. There is this big Akira-like, Hal-9000 type of AI machine, and that’s KEVIN. And it says in the script: ‘And the machine is wearing a little black baseball cap on top.’ And the pre-vis team, had started mocking up all types of versions of KEVIN. And they all had a little black baseball cap on top."
But when the Marvel Studios headman gave his notes on the scene, he disagreed with one key part of K.E.V.I.N's character. According to Feige, "it doesn’t make any sense why a machine would wear a baseball hat."
Gao laughed at this response from Feige remarking "Kevin, that’s the logic problem you have with all of this?" That in a sequence where "She-Hulk breaks into the fourth wall [and] comes into the real world," it's the "baseball hat resting on top of this machine" that breaks the logic:
"And then real Kevin says… you know, he gave his notes on what he liked and what he didn’t like of the designs, but then he finally goes, ‘You can’t have the... It doesn’t make any sense why a machine would wear a baseball hat.’ I was like, ‘Kevin, that’s the logic problem you have with all of this? She-Hulk breaks into the fourth wall, comes into the real world, breaks into Marvel, you are a machine, and… the disbelief you can’t suspend is that there would be a baseball hat resting on top of this machine.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah. I can’t. That doesn’t make any sense. You can’t do it.'"
This caused the She-Hulk writer to threaten to quit, to which Feige jokingly replied, "We’re sad to see you go." Ultimately, a compromise was made resulting in a baseball hat-like piece of machinery being "[incorporated] into the design" rather than an actual hat:
"And I was so furious, and this was in a meeting with like 20 different people, and I said, ‘Kevin, if you don’t let me put a hat on that machine, then I quit.’ And then Kevin goes… ‘Thank you very much Jessica, you’ve done a lot of great work for us. We’re sad to see you go.’ (laughs) And then, sweet Jackson Sze from pre-vis, ever the mediator and hard worker, gently suggested, what if they incorporate into the design of the machine something that would read as a baseball hat. And then Kevin was like, ‘Oh, I’m okay with that. If it’s part of the machine, of course. That makes all the sense.’ So that was our compromise. And I didn’t have to quit over a hat on a little robot.”
Really, That's Your Problem Kevin Feige?
As Gao notes above it is quite funny to think that Feige's big issue with She-Hulk's mind-bending finale was over a hat sitting on a robot. It wasn't the fact that Jennifer Walters was literally going to break the reality of the MCU, storm into the real-life Marvel Studios office, and talk to an all-knowing AI version of the executive.
No, it was the fact that the robot was going to wear a literal hat.
It'll be exciting to finally see all the different renditions of KEVIN when concept art emerges. Maybe the artwork will prove Feige right that a hatless android is the better fashion choice.
For a while, some have speculated about the Marvel Studios executive eventually making his way into an MCU project and after the events of She-Hulk, that prospect feels even more real than ever. Just make sure he has his hat at the ready when that moment comes.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is available to stream now on Disney+.
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