‘She-Hulk’ Episode 4 Review — ‘Is This Not Real Magic?’ Delivers on the Show’s Premise for Better and Worse
The fourth episode of She-Hulk, titled Is This Not Real Magic? is now streaming on Disney Plus. Here’s our review.
Directed by Kat Coiro and written by Melissa Hunter, it is exactly what the show promised to be — a 30-minute serialized legal comedy. After putting Emil Blonsky’s case behind her (for now, we assume), Jen is now moving on to other cases. Enter Wong, who’s had enough of a wannabe magician named Donny Blaze (not Johnny Blaze — the original Ghost Rider). He is tampering with the stability of the multiverse by opening up portals for his cheap magic show, and Wong apparently can’t deal with him. This is an interesting turn of events, as the week after it was revealed that he broke the Abomination out of prison numerous times, the same character now can’t take the sling ring from this guy’s hand, so he calls “Ms. Walters”.
Spoilers ahead…
First of all, this episode is the premise of the show brought to life. A superhero from the MCU runs into a problem, calls She-Hulk, and now she has to deal with it from a legal perspective, all while Jen learns how to control her new personality on the side. The Abomination part was cool, but this is what I was looking forward to — what crazy legal problems are our heroes facing, and how does that affect the way we see the MCU? And this episode gave me exactly that. Wong having to deal with Kamar-Taj deserters who are using the tricks they learned there to try to impress regular people is hilarious on paper, but very worrying if you start to think about it. I’m personally good with the show taking the lighthearted side of things, but like almost anything in the MCU, there are a lot of very plausible scenarios that would totally happen in our world being completely ignored here.
But it also raised a very interesting question that the writers didn’t really answer (and whether or not they can, or will, is up in the air right now). What happens when these powerful beings start causing trouble? Who do they answer to? Obviously, when Dormammu starts invading our world, we are rooting for Doctor Strange to take him down. But what about small-time crimes? Our courts of law are not prepared to deal with magic experts or receive evidence from superpowered beings. What happens if there is no evidence? Episode 3 already (kind of) addressed this question with the shape-shifter subplot, and I have a feeling the next few episodes will dive deeper into it.
However, I just hope they don’t do it with buffoon lawyers — those clowns took me out of the episode every time, and I get this is supposed to be a comedy, but there is a difference between being comedic and being silly. Another character that I thought wasn’t handled great is Wong, actually, who was charming as always, but a little too over the top at times. And I get that is the show, and I love every time the writers just make fun of the MCU through his dialogue, but I wish they would take it down a notch in some scenes. That being said, though, I love how they just spoiled The Sopranos to half their audience (including me) — I absolutely hate when movies or TV shows do that, but She-Hulk is so out there that it just worked. And that leads us to probably my favorite post-credits scene so far, as strange as that may sound.
And I say it is strange not only because I was a bit disappointed about how they handled Wong, but also because I could not stand the character of Madisynn, who is apparently the new Internet sensation. I get why, but I was just putting myself in Jen’s shoes and having to deal with this woman to win her case, and I was almost having a heart attack. I guess that I should congratulate the writer for that, because that was probably the intention. And yet, I was under the impression that she was so drunk the entire time that she was imagining a friendship with Wong — only to find out that no, it was actually real. That post-credits scene taught us more about Wong than the other two episodes he’s been in did, and I would even dare to say than some of his latest movie appearances. I also love how Marvel is more than aware of how much we love that character that Jen even brings it up at the beginning of the show.
But let’s remember whose show this actually is. Because She-Hulk was also one of my favorite parts of the episode. The dating life subplot was teased by the trailer, and they absolutely nailed it. Dating in your 30s is hard, and even when Jen, or She-Hulk, I should say, pulls it off, the guy is immediately scared off by something he knew was coming. I was also very satisfied by the line “Not that that matters, but it does”, when talking about the attractiveness of her dates. As a man, I’ve always hated the cliché of “I don’t care about the outside, I only care about the inside”, because a) that’s totally unrealistic and b) that’s just a lie. She-Hulk just said it perfectly.
At the end of the day, She-Hulk episode 4 was a mixed bag for me. A lot of highs, but also some lows that I fear the show will repeat over the next few episodes. I am looking forward to the rest, though, which is more than I could say before it started airing.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
