In news I am extremely, 110% into, Deadline is reporting that Marvel has officially cast their choice for She-Hulk, and it’s a good one: Tatiana Maslany will be taking on the role of Jennifer Walters, a.k.a. She-Hulk.
The news comes not long after Marvel announced Kat Coiro will direct the pilot and a few other episodes of the Disney+ series. Meanwhile, Rick and Morty writer Jessica Gao will lead the bullpen in the writers room. It appears that, now that Marvel’s first wave of streaming series are moving along, they’re turning their attention to the next few shows in the pipeline.
Jennifer Walters is a complex Marvel character who has found renewed interest from comic book fans in recent years and the last major character to be co-created by Stan Lee. The cousin of Bruce Banner, she gained a milder version of Bruce’s powers when he had to give her an emergency blood transfusion of his own blood after she was near-fatally shot. Unlike her cousin, who constantly wrestles with the Hulk side of himself, however, Jennifer welcomes her transformation, retaining her personality, language and intelligence, though she’s still prone to angry outbursts from time to time.
Eventually, Jennifer decides to remain in her She-Hulk form permanently as it makes her feel more confident and assertive. Jennifer is an interesting superhero because she already had a full, complete life as a high-powered lawyer in New York City before accidentally becoming a superhero. The result is that she still spends quite a bit of her time as a lawyer, frequently serving as legal counsel for other superheroes and metahumans around NYC and in the broader Marvel universe.
Maslany is an unexpected but great choice to step into the role of Jennifer Walters. She’s a phenomenal actress, earning Golden Globe and Emmy nominations and an Emmy win for her work in Orphan Black, where she played multiple clones of herself, a role that required no fewer than half a dozen distinct, unique performances from Maslany. She most recently received praise for her work in HBO’s Perry Mason series, where she played 1930s revival preacher Sister Alice McKeegan in a role based on the real-life Aimee Semple McPherson.
Maslany’s casting comes right as Marvel is in full swing with their Disney+ series. It was announced this week that WandaVision will debut sometime this year. Meanwhile, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has resumed production in Budapest. The Loki spinoff has also resumed filming. And there’s been recent buzz about other new series meant to introduce new characters, such as Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel. While these newly-introduced characters are appearing on the Disney+ streaming series for now, it’s not a stretch to think we’ll see all of them appear in the movies at some point. Now that the television side of things is entirely under the Marvel Studios banner, continuity and consistency will make actors moving back and forth from TV to film far easier than during the contentious period of the Marvel Studios/Marvel Television divide.
There’s no news yet on when Marvel plans to put She-Hulk into production, but we should expect more casting news before long.
