Tatiana Maslany, the actor who played Jennifer Walters, aka She-Hulk She-Hulk: Lawyerhas dashed any hopes for a second season of Marvel’s divisive Disney Plus show.
Appears on streamer NerdIncorrect’s Twitch game show Codenames LiveMaslany was asked by the host: “Should we hope for a season 2?”
“I don’t think so,” Maslany replied. “I think we blew our budget, and Disney said, ‘No thanks!'”
Maslany’s statement is of course not official, but it sounds quite definitive. A second season of the show was never discussed by Marvel, although head writer Jessica Gao has said she had ideas for even more seasons, and the final episode left the possibility open.
But if Disney has decided not to show She-Hulk on TV anymore, it wouldn’t be a surprise. In many different ways She-Hulk: Lawyer was emblematic of the problems Disney has faced with its ambitious plan to expand its top film franchises, Marvel and Star Wars, into streaming TV series.
As Maslany pointed out, the cost on top of that is the most important. Conceptually, She-Hulk was deliberately quite modest: a comedy that would gently mimic a major TV genre, the legal drama, but also include some low-to-mid level superhero hi-jinks, and some fourth-wall-breaking meta-comedy which is associated with the character in the comics.
But the main character was a walking special effect, which (according to Variety) led to escalating budgets of as much as $25 million per episode and a total cost equal to that of a major blockbuster film release. That’s a high price tag for a show with a niche, low-stakes concept that had only a mediocre impact upon release. To make matters worse, Variety also reported that Marvel Studios’ script development and production processes proved ill-suited for episodic TV, resulting (in She-Hulk‘s case) in rushed and unfinished visual effects that were especially disappointing considering the budget.
She-Hulk was an object lesson in how difficult it is to scale franchise films to television, and its apparent cancellation is indicative of a shift away from this expensive strategy at Disney. After premiering nine live-action shows in a span of three years, Marvel is now turning its focus to animation with this year’s films. X Men ’97 And Eyes of Wakanda; it only has a few live-action TV projects planned, and the status of many of them beyond this year Agatha: Darkhold Journalsis unclear.
As for She-Hulk, it seems possible that the character will appear in future MCU films, but Maslany is certainly not working on anything yet. “I have nothing going on. You can find me on Instagram, not on posts,” she joked on stream. “I do not have a job.”