She-Hulk's Surprise Final Villain Could've Been A Major Guest Star
This post contains spoilers for the "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" finale.
Who did you think would be the Big Bad at the end of She-Hulk's season-long saga? In the leadup to the finale, it was absolutely anyone's guess. Despite being packed with a ton of lesser-known comic villains, "She-Hulk: Attorney At Law" has never been overly concerned with laying out the candidates for who has been targeting Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany). Sure, we knew that something suspicious was going on with her romantic fling Josh and there were lots of hints about the mysterious Intelligencia, but following those breadcrumbs was never really the point of this story. And in case you ever doubted that, the season finale made sure to hammer it into all of our heads by swerving off in a very unexpected direction.
Despite the fact that he was the mastermind behind the blood-stealing society of incels, billionaire tech idiot Todd (Jon Bass) was not the true villain of "She-Hulk." Okay, wait, scratch that — Todd is absolutely a villain in this story. Todd sucks. But he's also such an insignificant asshole that when it came down to it, he wasn't even worth a final showdown. He was simply glossed over as a footnote in Jen's story and slapped with a lawsuit.
Because in the end, the true big bad of this story is none other than the President of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige.
She-Hulk vs K.E.V.I.N.
In a stunning turn of events that I find absolutely delightful, Jennifer Walters took one look at the climax of her story and decided that it was totally wrong. So instead of settling for a boring CGI battle, she Hulk-smashed the barriers of reality and goes searching for some answers: she climbs through the Disney+ interface, marches right into Marvel Studios, and demands a meeting with the head honcho himself! Obviously, she's immediately denied access. Marvel can't very well allow anyone with complaints to chat with their favorite moneymaker — but who are they to keep a She-Hulk down? After doing some of her best smashing yet, she finds his lair and this is how Jen comes to discover that the bossman is not a man at all.
K.E.V.I.N (Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus) is a Jarvis-like AI that is responsible for making all the big MCU decisions. Head writer Jessica Gao could not have dreamed up a better villain — but once upon a time, she did consider an alternative. Had she gone with the initial pitch, She-Hulk would have charged into Marvel Studios and come face to face with Don Draper.
She-Hulk vs ... Jon Hamm?!
Let me explain — upon realizing that a final showdown with copycat Hulk was not the proper ending to Jen's story, Gao and her writers decided to go the extremely meta route and send their hero to Marvel Studios. Gao told Marvel.com that before coming up with the idea for a sentient AI, they toyed with casting a flesh-and-blood version of the Feige insert. More specifically, they considered going the stunt casting route with "George Clooney or Jon Hamm, a very handsome debonair man in a tuxedo." That version of K.E.V.I.N. was "essentially this James Bond-type man in a tux."
Casting George Clooney as Kevin Feige sounds like an idea that the Marvel boss came up with himself. I'd hate to lose the version we ultimately got, but I'd be lying if I said Jon Hamm in a suit and baseball cap wouldn't tickle my funny bone. The same interview also saw Gao revealing another shelved idea for the all-powerful K.E.V.I.N. Gao explained:
"I wrote in the script that when she sees this big AI machine, it's wearing a classic Kevin Feige-style black baseball hat. When the [visual development team] was showing us different possible sketches of K.E.V.I.N., they were all wearing little hats. No matter what type of robot or machine it was, it was wearing a little black baseball hat on top."
The true villain is revealed
I know what you're probably thinking. A scary robot with a tiny baseball hat? It's genius. It should 100% exist. But apparently, not everyone agreed. When the team shared the idea with Feige, he was perplexed. According to Gao, he said, "Well, that doesn't make a lick of sense, why would a robot wear a hat?" In turn, Gao had the greatest response possible:
"I said, 'That's the part that doesn't make sense to you, Kevin? That is the line of logic that you won't cross? We have you represented as an AI brain that is controlling all of the Marvel Cinematic Universes, but the thing that you can't get past is that it might have a hat on top of the machine?' And he said, 'Yeah.'"
Just to recap: She-Hulk jumping through the Disney+ interface to confront the writers of her show? That's fine. Captain America dating his ex-girlfriend's granddaughter? Perfectly reasonable. Starlord defeating galactic evil with the power of bad dancing? Makes sense. A robot that wears a baseball hat? Utter blasphemy. Could not possibly happen.
So with Feige being very anti-baseball cap, the creative team reached a compromise: the hat was incorporated into the robot's design. "That was the compromise that we made where now it made logical sense for Kevin and I got to have what looks like a little Kevin hat on this machine," Gao told Marvel.com with a laugh. Someone please inform Kevin Feige that he is the villain of this story and retrieve those robot sketches immediately!