This week’s She-Hulk is so inconsequential within the short-term that it really made enjoyable of the truth that it was a minor, standalone episode. Even earlier than the opening titles, Jen Walters (Tatiana Maslany) breaks the fourth wall to announce that she’s taking an inopportune break from the present’s ongoing storylines to attend an outdated good friend’s wedding ceremony.
In a manner, that was a fake-out. Whereas many of the episode was certainly a light-hearted lark, the present ended with a tease that would wind up introducing (or in a single or two instances, reintroducing) live-action variations a few of the most well-known and highly effective villains in all of Marvel Comics. They’d be the “Intelligencia,” yet one more group of super-villains who’ve been featured up to now in Marvel books, and who’re name-checked on the finish of Episode 5 of She-Hulk: Legal professional at Legislation.
Within the present, Intelligencia is the title of a Reddit-like web site the place web trolls congregate to alternate imply GIFs and memes about She-Hulk. Jen’s co-worker Mallory (Renee Elise Golsberry) dismisses the location as another meaningless supply of web hate. However Jen’s finest good friend Nikki (Ginger Gonzaga) isn’t certain it’s all so harmless. And she or he is appropriate, as a result of on the very finish of the episode, we see glimpses of some mysterious villains prepping a huge syringe to varsity She-Hulk’s blood for an experiment.
It’s potential Nikki is aware of to not belief the Intelligencia as a result of she’s learn Marvel Comics, the place it’s the title of a gaggle of sensible super-villains who congregate sometimes to share info, and infrequently to make use of it in opposition to the Hulk. Right here they’re on the duvet of the 2009 mini-series Fall of the Hulks.
Marvel.com describes the group thusly:
They’re a few of the most sensible minds on the planet, and a few of the most harmful criminals as properly. United they could obtain issues denied to them on their very own, and the world can be on the mercy of the Intelligencia.
The group was the brainchild of the Chief, the Hulk’s most persistent antagonist in Marvel Comics. That’s him within the orange jumpsuit and large inexperienced noggin above. He’s been uncovered to gamma radiation similar to the Hulk, solely his made his mind stronger as a substitute of his muscular tissues. The opposite members of the crew, from left to proper, are Physician Doom, MODOK, the Purple Ghost, the Mad Thinker, Egghead, and the Wizard. (The enormous gorillas are “Tremendous-Apes,” who’ve been uncovered to the identical cosmic rays that gave the Implausible 4 their powers. Now they serve Purple Ghost, who additionally has cosmic powers, as a result of comics are the best possible.)
Whereas it’s too early to inform which if any of those baddies we’ll see in She-Hulk’s model of the Intelligencia, there’s one which looks like a really protected guess: The Chief. Not solely is he the character with the most important chip on his shoulder in terms of the Hulks, but additionally as a result of Marvel has already introduced that the character, who first appeared onscreen manner again in 2008’s The Unbelievable Hulk will probably be returning to the MCU within the very close to future. Tim Blake Nelson, who performed the Chief (or a minimum of his human alter ego, Samuel Sterns) in Unbelievable Hulk has been introduced because the villain of Captain America: New World Order, which is due in theaters on Might 3, 2024.
She-Hulk appears primed for a shock re-debut of the Chief, in a lot the identical manner Loki concluded on a shock cameo from Jonathan Majors’ Kang forward of his official first look within the MCU within the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Among the different members of the Intelligencia are fairly unlikely — though it will be cool as hell to see She-Hulk combat some Tremendous-Apes.
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