Last week, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law star Tatiana Maslany said that the Disney+ series likely won't be returning for a second season.
“I don’t think so,” Maslany told streamer NerdIncorrect during a Twitch livestream when asked about the possibility of the show ret🐭urning (thanks, ). “I think we blew our budget, and Disney was like, ‘no thanks!’”
I had mixed feelings about She-Hulk while it was airing, and I have mixed feelings about this (unofficial) statement that it won’t be coming back. The series never quite found the sweet spot between workplace comedy and expensive CGI brawls, and it wasn’t especially popular with Marvel fans. I found it cringe-inducing at least as often as it was amusing, and its meta finale didn't really work for me.
But, I also thought it was the only MCU series that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:actually felt like a TV show. Much of that was down to its longer season. Loki, Moon Knight, Falcon and the Winter Soldier and others ran for six episodes, which made them feel more like bloated movies chopped into parts than actual episodic TV. She-Hulk had a longer nine episode season. That still is a little too short for wha🅘t this style of ꦜseries needs, but it gave it some extra space to tell its story.
On network TV, seasons have historic💯ally had 20-pl𓃲us episodes to tell their story. In the streaming era, 10 or less is far more common.
More importantly, it had time to tell a bunch of little stories. Given that it was a case-of-the-week legal comedy, it was a better fit for episodic storytelling than the other Disney+ shows. The episodes typically began by introducing a new problem for Jen, and concluded when she had resolved it. It's a format as old as TV, but in an era when the definition of TV is increasingly amorphous, it provided welcome structure. It never quite found its footing, but it was the most promising of the MCU TV shows at actually being a TV show.
But, it also cost more than any TV show probably ever should — especially a legal comedy — at a reported $225 million (more than Top Gun: Maverick, and in the same ballpark as the first Avengers movie). Marvel, and Disney more broadly, had a very bad 2023, with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels both flopping at the box office. With DC's string of disappointments (Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Blue Beetle, The Flash, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and Black Adam) the past year-and-change called into question the continued financial viability of the superhero genre. For a studio in crisis mode, another season of a series that wasn't especially beloved by the fanbase and cost as much as a theatrical blockbuster (without any chance to recoup its budget at the box office) doesn't make much sense.
But, as I wrote at the time, She-Hulk was the series 🐻that would most have benefited fr🌌om a second season. It didn't manage to mix its disparate elements in the first season, but there were signs that it could have evolved into something worthwhile. Marvel's success was a rising tide that lifted all boats for a decade-and-a-half, elevating heroes that weren't well-known to the general public to blockbuster success, both within the MCU's stable (Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, the Guardians of the Galaxy) and throughout the superhero genre (Deadpool, Aquaman). Now that the ship appears to be sinking, the reverse is also true. Worthwhile projects like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Marvel's Midnight Suns have been victims of superhero fatigue, anꦇd She-Hulk season 2 i🍌s being sacrificed to stop the bleeding.
Though She-Hulk could have evolved into good TV, the Disney+ approach isn't really compatible with achieving that end. Few series knock it out of the park in their first episodes, and many of the most beloved TV shows of all time didn't come into their own until a few seasons in. That's the nature of the medium, as the writers' room learns to work together, and feedback from the audience provides an indication of what's working and what isn't. But, when a company is spending $225 million on a freshman season, there's little room for that identity-finding process. She-Hulk may have been too expensive, but this process of making TV is costing us something, too: the chance to watch a good show become great.
