She-Hulk Did Deadpool’s Meta Schtick Much Better

Deadpool & Wolverine has been a box office smash hit, grossing $211 million in its opening weekend, which made it the sixth highest-grossing opening weekend of all time and the largest for an R-rated movie. Many have claimed it as a big return to form for the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the box office disappointment of The Marvels, the underperformance of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and the disastrous reviews of Secret Invasion. Indeed, the idea the MCU was in trouble was a bit blown out of proportion given that all three of their 2022 films were in the top ten highest-grossing movies of the year, but Deadpool & Wolverine seems to have won over fans.

Deadpool & Wolverine is treading a lot of familiar ground, and a large portion of the praise that fans have given it seems to be ignoring that the MCU already did something similar in tone and format and did it better. That is, of course, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law ran for nine episodes in 2022 and, despite getting reviewed and bombed, garnered praise from critics and some high-profile fans. She-Hulk, both the character and the series, was criticized for a lot of the same things Deadpool & Wolverine is doing and getting a lot of praise. Is it as simple as Deadpool & Wolverine doing a bit better, or is there something else at work here?

She-Hulk Is Judged More Harshly than Deadpool

On the surface, She-Hulk and Deadpool seem worlds apart, but the two characters have a lot in common. The biggest thing they have in common is that both characters break the fourth wall, speaking to the audience and seemingly being aware they are fictional characters. While She-Hulk debuted in 1979, the first time she broke the fourth wall and addressed the reader was a decade later, in 1989. This was two years before Deadpool even debuted in Marvel Comics. Yet Deadpool has become more known as the fourth-wall-breaking character.

This even pertains to their powers in the film. Both She-Hulk and Deadpool don’t gain the ability to break the fourth wall until after they get their superpowers. The MCU uses She-Hulk’s fourth-wall-breaking ability as an expression of her inner monologue, and aside from one quick glance from the Hulk, nobody in the universe knows she is doing this. Meanwhile, Deadpool breaks the wall to communicate with the audience as both an inner monologue and a way to tell jokes, yet the other characters are semi-aware of it.

She-Hulk’s ability to break the fourth wall, particularly in the season finale where she changes the ending, was said to “break” the MCU and not make sense. It divided fans. Yet, nobody seems to have an issue with Deadpool breaking the fourth wall within the MCU. Nobody even took umbrage with Deadpool breaking the fourth wall in the Fox X-Men universe, and instead, the film and character were praised for breaking the reality of those films.

Both Deadpool and She-Hulk are also characters who are open about their sexuality. The first Deadpool establishes that he is open and free with his sexuality; constantly flirting with Wolverine and various other male characters. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law addresses the character’s alter ego, Jennifer Walters, who struggles with dating. She has three partners in the series, leading a vocal minority to slut-shame her. In a way, the series got ahead of it by making those people essentially the villains of the series, yet Deadpool is warmly embraced as being a wacky, silly hero. It does feel like Deadpool is given more passes than She-Hulk.

She-Hulk’s Jokes About the MCU Felt More Relevant, While Deadpool’s Felt Pandering

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Deadpool & Wolverine have plenty of jokes to make about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is odd how people seemed shocked that Disney and Marvel let Deadpool make such pointed jokes about them when, just two years prior, She-Hulk used the same daring approach, just without needing to use swear words or easy sex jokes to push the boundaries of the Disney machine. Yet, as it stands, both use their hero’s fourth-wall-breaking abilities to make jokes and comment on the state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law finale sees Jennifer Walters fed up with the plotlines on her show, break the fourth wall and move into “viewers reality” and confronts both the writers of the series and also K.E.V.I.N., an A.I. that is a stand-in for Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige. The finale is filled with many great jokes about the larger MCU, with K.E.V.I.N. saying their algorithm makes “near perfect” products, commenting on how some viewers like other films better than others while poking fun at the criticism that MCU films all feel the same.

She-Hulk outs a bunch of the MCU’s story conventions, like how they all end the same way with a big third-act fight. Not only does She-Hulk: Attorney at Law comment on this, it breaks the mold by having its finale truly be a lawyer giving a closing argument. She-Hulk even pokes fun at the contrived magic blood plotline that Marvel Studios would unironally do in Secret Invasion the following year. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law‘s jokes are not only commonly held critiques of the MCU but do something different.

Deadpool & Wolverine, on the other hand, has the issue of Deadpool calling out the MCU conventions but partaking in it. The “welcome the MCU, you are entering at a bit of a low point” sounds like a joke commenting on the recent state of the MCU, but it also feels like a cheap shot because it never precisely says what that means or what entries it is calling out. It feels less like commenting on a genuine criticism and repeating a talking point. Doesn’t that also make Deadpool & Wolverine part of that low point?

Even Deadpool’s comment on being tired of the multiverse and being played out clashes with the film itself, which revels in the multiverse aspects that allow for returning fan-favorite characters. Where She-Hulk: Attorney at Law poked fun at the MCU formula and gave a new type of ending, Deadpool & Wolverine comments on the MCU conventions and thinks that is enough to excuse it for indulging in those same tropes.

The Dancing Double Standard

The key difference between how audiences have reacted to She-Hulk and Deadpool, and particularly how one is given a bigger pass than the other, is in their dance scenes. In She-Hulk: Attorney at Law‘s third episode, “The People vs. Emil Blonsky,” the episode’s mid-credits scene features She-Hulk dancing with Megan the Stallion, with the two twerking to the singer’s hit song, “Body.” This clip became a lightning rod for a specific subset of the fandom, saying how far the Marvel Cinematic Universe had fallen for allowing this scene to exist and making a whole joke of the franchise.

This is in sharp contrast to Deadpool & Wolverine‘s opening title credits, which see Deadpool killing an entire group of TVA agents with the remains of Wolverine’s corpse to the *NSYNC song “Bye Bye Bye.” The opening credits also feature Deadpool doing the iconic dance moves from the hit music video. This scene was praised, and within days, the official NSYNC YouTube renamed the song video as “*NSYNC – Bye Bye Bye (Official Video from Deadpool and Wolverine).”

Deadpool & Wolverine has the benefit that “Bye Bye Bye” is now seen as a nostalgic song, being 24 years old (released the same year as Hugh Jackman’s first appearance as Wolverine in X-Men). While fans likely in 2000 would have reacted very poorly to the popular boy band in a superhero movie, as time moves on, nostalgia makes people more willing to accept things they hated at the time of their release, as noted by some of Deadpool & Wolverine‘s big reveals getting audience cheers instead of boo’s like the mid-2000s.

If one is being genuinely honest, there is no difference on the surface between Deadpool and She-Hulk dancing. Both are fun little scenes that give insight into the character’s more comedic nature that fits with their characterization in the comics and in films. If there is no good reason, the disdain for She-Hulk must be more depressing. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law gets labeled cringeworthy, whereas Deadpool & Wolverine gets to be funny. The boys are allowed to make jokes, but a woman does the same, and they are unfairly criticized.