She-Hulk is Marvel’s most relatable superhero and she’s not going to take any crap

We all know certain types of fans are belligerent and awful. And Marvel’s latest project isn’t going to stand for them.

She-Hulk is streaming on Disney+

When there’s a new Marvel movie or series out every other week, each title has to be distinct or it avoids bleeding into the amorphous whole.

When there’s a pantheon of superheroes to compete with, it becomes harder and harder to carve out a little space. Being six-foot-seven and green certainly helps.

The latest MCU streaming series, She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, stars the preternaturally talented Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters, a go-getter career woman excited about her job as an assistant prosecutor. She has big ambitions about her professional future.

She’s also Bruce Banner’s (Mark Ruffalo) cousin. When his blood is contaminated with hers, Jen’s genetic make-up means she has now taken on similar powers to his – an ability to “hulk out”. But unlike almost every other superpowered being in the MCU, Jen isn’t interested in being a hero. She just wants to live the life she had.

Jen Walters is Bruce Banner’s cousin.

Being a public superhero comes with more challenges than rewards when you’re trying to build a career and connect on dating apps. Jen is the most relatable MCU lead we’ve had yet, most of her problems are grounded and not fantastical, at least not in the first four episodes made available for review.

While She-Hulk’s trailers weren’t particularly promising, and the CGI is still not amazing, the series itself is much better than what was teased.

It’s witty, smart and makes full use of Maslany’s brimming charm. And that screen presence is necessary to (mostly) pull off the show’s fourth-wall breaks. Ever since Fleabag, the fourth-wall break has been used and abused to varying degrees of success.

It’s a technique to draw the audience in, to become confessional buddies. While its use here may actually disrupt the internal logic of the MCU, Maslany’s charisma makes you want to be part of Jen’s inner world.

Tatiana Maslany is an Emmy winner for her work on Orphan Black. Picture: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel

There are many layers of meta-ness to She-Hulk but perhaps its most spicy turn is that it’s happy to poke the bear – and the bear it’s poking is the fandom.

While most fans are genuinely enthusiastic, open-minded and respectful, there are elements of the fandom that are not so – the same ones who review bomb any female-led or inclusive superhero title. God forbid they’re both, like Ms Marvel was, and which was, indeed, review bombed.

To those folks, She-Hulk goes smash with its take-down of belligerent fans and toxic men.

More than any other Marvel title in memory – and we are now at 37 and counting – She-Hulk engages directly with fan culture and contemporary pop cultural dynamics.

There’s a minor character, a colleague to Jen, who is so deluded in his entitlement and self-aggrandisement, he actually believed he was dating a very well-known celebrity instead of a shapeshifter.

His comments about women in the workplace are appalling and you can’t help but feel that’s She-Hulk’s writers, led by creator Jessica Gao, making a very pointed comment about the types of people who exist in the fandom and in the wider world – and who have (to be generous) antiquated views about 50 per cent of the world’s population.

There’s a montage of in-universe public reactions to the revelation of Jen and her alter ego which is distressingly familiar – but also hilarious in how it bitingly captures the real discourse around female superheroes.

She-Hulk is the 37th Marvel Studios title.

She-Hulk makes a convincing argument – not that we still need to be mounting those defences – about the place of women in public spaces, including in superhero movies and TV shows.

And it powerfully comments on female rage through a character that supposedly “hulks out” when they’re angry. There’s a “yes, yes, yes” moment in the first episode that directly tackles what every woman has said and felt at many points in their lives.

This is what makes She-Hulk specific and relatable.

It may still be a little loose and unfocused on a narrative level – it certainly doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to establish the season’s story arc – but the character and Maslany’s performance are so appealing, it almost doesn’t matter.

She-Hulk: Attorney At Law is on Disney+ from Thursday, August 18