The newest Marvel Cinematic Universe show has premiered, and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is proving to be a reasonably faithful adaptation of the character while also pissing off the misogynists who claim to read comic books. However, it is but the latest evolution of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as revealed by She-Hulk’s showrunner, Jessica Gao. You can read the full article here, but we’ll quote the relevant portion.
[We made a] conscious and specific decision [not to explore The Blip.] So many shows and movies in the MCU have already kind of covered that and, you know, it’s been talked about a lot that it just felt like, OK, so many people have already covered that territory that we’ve accepted it… We live in a world where that’s already happened and people have already moved on.
This was reacted to with the expected level of online discourse. Some laughed at how stupid the idea of Marvel’s citizens getting over that 5-year gap and armageddon without flinching onscreen, while others began to obsess with how this affects the MCU as a whole. Many people just shrugged and moved on with their lives.
But what few people realized is something far greater: this makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe into an even closer brother to Marvel Comics as a whole.
For an example of what I’m talking about, we’re gonna rewind back to 1991. Marvel Comics was experimenting with the format of the event comic once again. Massive events had been essentially beta-tested in the mid-80s with both Secret Wars and Secret Wars II, resulting in two different ways to tell a massive story with ongoing repercussions. After the weird and derailing mess that was Secret Wars II, however, Marvel went on to place more crossover stories in the annual specials each comic had at the time. Stories like The Kings of Pain would bring together X-Force and the New Warriors, while The Subterranean Wars drew the Avengers, Namor the Sub-Mariner, and the Hulk together for an adventure. They would be self-contained to just the annuals, and the cast of the overall story made fans feel like they were getting both a complete story and something special.
This time, however, Marvel would try something akin to their first Secret Wars: an event comic that was mostly stand-alone but would feature massive repercussions for the universe at hand. Thanos would obtain the six Soul Gems, which he himself would rename into the Infinity Gems out of respect for the infinite power they contained.
