Episode 8 of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law was such a gift to fans. Not only did Daredevil (Charlie Cox) finally make his grand entrance, but HE AND JEN HOOKED UP. They didn’t make us wait for the season finale—they just up and did it right away! That ethereal hum you hear in the air is the combined bliss of countless Marvel fans. Matt and Jen are now the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s hottest power couple, and we’re over the Moon for them. (So what if Matt lives in New York? They’ll figure it out.)
To recap: When Jen represents Eugene Patilio (A.K.A. Leap-Frog) in his lawsuit against designer Luke Jacobson, Matt shows up to represent Luke. After trouncing Jen in court, Matt buys her a drink, and then the two team up to free Luke after Eugene kidnaps him and forces him to make a new Leap-Frog suit. Then they do what any self-respecting super team would do if they’re feeling frisky: They go back to Jen’s place to have some fantastic sex.
The sex scene is wonderful for so many reasons. There’s the brief struggle to get Matt’s Daredevil suit off, which ends with Jen dragging him offscreen. There’s the tenderness and chemistry between them as they immediately hit it off. And there’s the fact that Matt wants to get with Jen, not She-Hulk, which gives Jen the acceptance that she’s been looking for ever since she gained her superpowers. It’s a particularly sweet touch after Episode 7, in which Jen admitted how hurtful it is that guys only seem to like her in hulk form.
As fantastic as that scene was, though, my favorite scene was the one immediately following it, in which Matt happily does the Walk of Shame.
Matt Murdock’s barefoot stroll
After the door closes on Jen and Matt, their clothes strewn on the floor, we cut to the outside of Jen’s house the next morning, where an elderly woman is walking her dog. Matt walks by her, fully suited up again, holding his boots in his hand and whistling to himself.
The best part of this scene is that there’s no practical reason at all for Matt to be barefoot. His shoes aren’t 6-inch heels that are grinding his toes into powder. They’re boots that are designed for comfort! Why wouldn’t he put them on? For that matter, why wouldn’t he just call an Uber or something? The shot is a visual gag meant to hammer home, without any possibility for doubt, that Matt is doing a walk of shame—and doing it happily.
Twitter haters can go cry about it
Ever since before the show premiered, misogynist haters on Twitter have been dumping on it, and last week men started frothing at the mouth because—wait for it—Matt made a joke. They claimed it was “out of character” (not true) for Matt to quip that his ass remained unwhooped. They howled that the MCU was ruining Daredevil, but really they were mad because Daredevil was playing second fiddle to a female superhero in a show directed by a woman.
Head writer Jessica Gao and the other showrunners have been fully aware from the very beginning of the sexist backlash that would inevitably happen against She-Hulk, and the show has responded to that backlash from the start. In Episode 4, Jen breaks the fourth wall to say that Wong’s cameo “is like giving the show Twitter armor for a week,” referring to the fact that people will talk about Wong instead of finding things to nitpick about the rest of the show. In later episodes, Intelligencia, the website run by men who want to take She-Hulk down, mirrors the online hate that’s thrown at women-led media in real life.
Matt Murdock’s walk of shame strikes directly at all that hatred and sexism, and that’s part of what makes it work so well as a gag. Daredevil is happy as a clam because he just got laid! He’s taking a cheerful morning walk knowing that he’s got someone special waiting for him whenever he comes back to Los Angeles! Isn’t that great? There’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of about walking home the day after hooking up with someone you’re crushing on, and you’d have to be the saddest, most repressed person on Earth to see it as a bad thing.
Congratulations, Matt and Jen! You had sex! That’s awesome! May you have lots more in the future.
(featured image: Marvel)
Published: Oct 7, 2022 01:08 pm