Why You Can Trust CNET 'She-Hulk' Episode 3 Recap: Megan Thee Stallion Drops In, Plus Marvel Easter Eggs
Some familiar faces add spark to this week's She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, streaming now on Disney Plus. (Spoilers!)
She-Hulk isn't wild about the superhero name she's been given.
She-Hulk isn't one of those shows that relies on a guest star cameo each week -- except it totally is. This week's MCU mainstay is Benedict Wong, who turns up to join Tatiana Maslany's Jen Walters and Tim Roth's Emil Blonsky in episode 3 of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, streaming on Disney Plus now. And that isn't the only familiar face bringing some laughs to an episode where Jen shows off her legal skills and her twerking, as Megan Thee Stallion shows up.
Episodes 1 and 2 are already streaming on Disney Plus. Here are our recaps of She-Hulk episode 1 and episode 2, and this is our dive into the third instalment, titled "The People Vs. Emil Blonsky." It's a big week for cameos, Easter eggs and post-credits material. Lots of spoilers to follow!
Episode 4 follows on Sept. 8, with more to come every Thursday (here's the full schedule of episode release dates for She-Hulk).
Fourth wall breaking
Maslany turning to the camera and chatting directly to the camera is a signature for the show, echoing the moments in the comic when Jen Walters broke the fourth wall and talked to the reader. Does she actually say anything funny, though? In a bar, Jen looks at the camera and mentions that the scene connects the A and B story -- sitcom parlance for an episode's main story and secondary subplot, which should come together in a satisfying way. It's very self-aware, but it's not terribly amusing.
And as for that initial fourth wall break, when Jen tries to insist it's not a show based on cameos? Say it with me: Self-referentially pointing out the shortcomings of a story does not magically excuse those shortcomings!
Media perception
The so-called She-Hulk is blowing up, with Jen plastered all over the news. We see news outlets like The Tattle News, Citizen News Tonight and The Conversation with Jefferson Coop, although they're mostly filled with bland identikit newsreaders rather than introducing interesting journalist characters.
Nikki pushes Jen to do an interview, correctly pointing out the genie is out of the bottle. Even Blonsky understands that the media will tell the story whether she's part of it or not. But we're supposed to believe that GLK&H is an LA law firm that doesn't understand PR. In the last episode, Jen's boss Holden Holliway even says they took Blonsky case's for the publicity. There are protesters calling Jen "a monster defending a monster," so what kind of publicity does he think the firm is going to get?
The point of all this media scrutiny is to add another facet to the show's themes about the way women are treated. From her unwanted name to the onslaught of ridiculous and offensive "rumors" about her, Jen finds that she's objectified and vilified in the public eye. And assholes in the comments section decry women taking on superhero roles, echoing the real life sexist, misogynist discourse around this show and any story that spotlights female characters.
Rights and Wong
The superhuman law team takes the stand this week, with Jen showing off her legal skills by recruiting Wong to exonerate Blonsky. Even after he Hulks out and turns into the Abomination, Jen reacts to Blonsky's curveball with a quick thinking and an impressive speech.
Meanwhile, her colleague Augustus "Pug" Pugliese represents sleazy former colleague Dennis Bukowski, who thought he was dating multi-Grammy-award-winning Megan Thee Stallion. He even paid off her Passat, which should have been the first hint he was actually hooking up with a shape-shifting Light elf from New Asgard.
The mischievous Runa is the daughter of an Elfin ambassador in New Asgard, the Scandinavian enclave for the survivors of Asgard which we saw in Thor: Love and Thunder. The hearing is a fun example of the weird new legal dilemmas created by this weird world of superheroes and aliens and cosmic craziness.
While we're happy to see the hilarious Wong, he's actually a really good example of how superpowers are incredibly troubling. It's played for laughs because he's our cuddly good guy, but ethically speaking Wong actually does a bunch of pretty horrible things. Erasing memories, forcing an imprisoned man to fight him (for practice) and sending people to mirror/shadow dimensions. Not only does Wong show a complete disdain for the laws of the land, but he's also kind of a dick.
Speaking of Wong, Nikki tempts the former librarian by sending a thirst trap photo involving a pile of books. Actor Ginger Gonzaga playfully posed for that photo on her social media (but also reminded us not to read too much into the books she chose for the picture, which include a book on Donald Trump, some Margaret Atwood novels and a book about ADHD):
There’s only one way to trap a librarian! #wong #shehulk #thirsttrap 😂 pic.twitter.com/t45nlSOc6h
— Ginger Gonzaga ✨ (@gingerthejester) September 2, 2022
The Wrecking Crew
The episode 1 cliffhanger introducing Titania proved to be a bit of a false start, as there hasn't been much in the way of superpowered fisticuffs since then. But in this episode, Jen is confronted by a motley gang of muggers. We don't yet know exactly who they are, but we do know they're after Jen's gamma-irradiated blood. Clearly Bruce was right to burn his samples of her blood in episode 1.
The gang carries magical weapons, which turn out to be Asgardian construction tools. More of the weirdness of superhero fantasy crashing into real life -- and which harks back to one of the themes of Spider-Man: Homecoming, when Michael Keaton's working-class salvage worker used pilfered super-equipment.
These guys are clearly less supervillains and more on the working-stiff end of the spectrum. "The boss is gonna be mad!" one of them shouts. Who is their mysterious boss?
One of them is referred to as Thunderball, suggesting that this is the Wrecking Crew from Marvel's comics. But while these guys don't seem like the sharpest tools in the Asgardian toolbox, the comics character Thunderball is a genius in the gamma radiation field, described as "the black Bruce Banner."
What's the closing credits song?
The closing credits play under the song Seize the Power by Yonaka, a band from Brighton in the UK featuring Theresa Jarvis on vocals. Originally released in early 2021, Seize the Power includes apt lyrics like "I looked in the mirror, I'm different"; "They're not brave like you, they're too scared to do anything that's different, anything that new"; and perhaps most appropriately, "This power is yours for the taking."
Episode 3 post-credits scene
That really is Megan Thee Stallion, and she joins Jen for an office dance party. If you've ever wanted to see a Hulk twerking, now's your chance.
The green She-Hulk persona is a computer-generated character, which means presumably a visual effects company had to design and render a bouncing CG booty. Nice work if you can get it...
She-Hulk random thoughts and Marvel easter eggs
- Wong's employment history runs from Sorcerer Supreme in New York, to Librarian at Kamar-Taj in Nepal (11 years) to Target sales associate (also Kamar-Taj, 9 years).
- One of the reporters asks if Jen got her powers from a Mafia hit gone wrong. In the Marvel world, the equivalent of the Mafia is the Maggia crime ring, which appeared in MCU TV show Agent Carter. This little in-joke is a reference to Jen's origin story in the comics, where she was shot by a crime boss and had to be given a blood transfusion of Bruce Banner's gamma-irradiated blood -- which is much more interesting than the TV version's lacklustre origin.
- The closing credits include an image of Jen squeezing some colleagues in an elevator. It's a reference to a comic cover showing Jen in a lift with Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) and Howard the Duck. It also brings to mind an iconic shot from Silence of the Lambs, subverting a moment in which Jodie Foster is dwarfed by an elevator's worth of male FBI cadets as a metaphor for the sexism she faces in that film.
- Jen's colleague in the Superhuman Law Division, Mallory Book, literally walks in a door and straight out again. In the comics she's Jen's frenemy, a former beauty queen and formidable lawyer, earning her the nickname "The Face That Never Lost a Case."
- News footage introduces Gideon Wilson, the original prosecutor who put Blonsky away. In the comics, Gideon Wilson is the brother of Sam Wilson (aka the Falcon aka Captain America). At one point he had Hulk-like powers, but he was usually seen as a minister whose son died of AIDS.
- "The Big Green Woman" / "La Gran Mujer Verde" is apparently a hashtag.
- "Toilet kombucha."
