In a damning indictment of modern internet culture, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law found itself being review-bombed by trolls before the first episode had even premiered on Disney Plus, and not a single soul was surprised.
Fortunately, the creative team was fully aware of the backlash they’d receive from a vocal subset of so-called “fans”, and decided to turn the constant negativity they knew would surround the series into one of the legal comedy’s recurring themes through both the constant criticism Jennifer Walters receives from those around her, and the villainous Intelligencia.
In an interview with Variety, star Tatiana Maslany admitted that she was completely aware of what would be in store heading into her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut, and embraced the fact that the entire production was deliberately gearing up to flash them all one big middle finger.
“Reading the script, it was so true. There’s so much resistance to a woman just existing in that space of superheroes. There’s always going to be that. I sort of anticipated it. It’s why I also feel it’s important. There’s such an entitlement to space held by certain people, and to even exist as She-Hulk is like a f*ck-you, and I love that.”
Building off of that, lead writer and executive producer Jessica Gao echoed Maslany’s sentiments, and went one step further by blasting the unimaginative nature of the trolls – having predicted exactly what they were going to say years ahead of time.
“Our writers room opened three years ago. The fact that we were able to predict what the reaction was going to be, what a lot of the trolling comments were going to be, really shows how very tired and unoriginal these trolls are. That really tickled me because the little troll that lives inside of me really loves trolling the trolls.”
As the lowest-rated film or television title in the history of the Marvel Studios era in terms of Rotten Tomatoes user ratings, it’s clear that the key creatives behind She-Hulk don’t give a damn what the naysayers think, because they knew precisely what they were getting themselves into from the start.