Since the announcement that She-Hulk: Attorney at Law would be shown on Disney+, fans of Marvel have been curious about the way the show will address the multiple facets of Jennifer Walters’ persona. The most peculiar aspect of these enigmas was the way she could suddenly change from timid and soft to ferocious and wild. Since the Marvel Cinematic Universe has altered the backstories of several of its characters, determining how faithfully it stays to the original source material is an ongoing challenge.

The comic book version of She-backstory Hulk’s is largely adapted into the new show based on her character, but the adaptation is just superficial. The change was made as a result of a conscious decision made by the showrunners and Marvel Studios to craft a narrative that is more consistent and coherent and that functions better in combination with the rest of their shared world. Here is how Jennifer becomes a green supervillain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, along with a comparison to the comics.

Jennifer Walters Becomes She-Hulk by Accident in Her Show

Jennifer breaks the fourth wall with her distinctive style of tongue-in-cheek humor for the first time in the pilot episode of Season 1, titled “A Normal Amount of Rage.” Jennifer is telling her superhero origin tale in this episode. It takes place between before and after the shocking conclusion of Avengers: Endgame, providing viewers a deeper look at the development of Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk and his new portrayal as the more intelligent Professor Hulk. In a flashback, we see that Bruce Banner and his cousin Jennifer Walters were on a journey together before he became the Hulk. However, the enjoyable time off that they had planned is cut short when they are forced off the road by a spaceship that belongs to the Sakaarans. Jen manages to pull her cousin out of the debris despite suffering a gash to her arm, which results in her bloodstream being contaminated with her cousin’s gamma-irradiated blood.

This instantaneously transforms her into a Hulk, albeit unlike Bruce Banner, she is a somewhat more civilized version of the green beast. Upon additional investigation, Banner determines that shared exceptional genetics are the reason that Jennifer also became a Hulk, but she is not pleased about what will become of her social and professional life as a result of this discovery. The origin of She-Hulk as depicted in this adaptation is relatively analogous to that of the character as depicted in the comics, despite the fact that Jennifer’s parents play a much smaller role than they do in the books.

Bruce Intentionally Made His Cousin Into She-Hulk in the Comics

Developed by Stan Lee and John Buscema, the character had his first appearance in The Savage. In the first issue of She-Hulk, published in 1980, the character of She-Hulk was shown for the first time. In this issue, she was revealed to be the cousin of Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk and the daughter of a California sheriff named William Walters. Her grandfather had a run-in with the underworld throughout his lifetime, specifically with the crime leader Nicholas Trask. Trask shot Jennifer, wounding her, because he was bent on getting his revenge, and Jennifer’s cousin Bruce had to perform a blood transfusion in order to save her life. Because they had the same genetic makeup and blood type, his blood transformed her into a Hulk as well… albeit one that was more intelligent, slimmer, and had a significantly more feminine appearance.

According to Jessica Gao, the lead writer for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, who spoke with Inverse, it was important to remove the mafia hit portion of her background since it would have required too much backstory for the show, which required more immediacy. In a similar vein, Gao was of the opinion that Banner would never purposefully transform another person into a potential Hulk like he did in the comics. This was based on how much of a threat the Hulk had been in the past. The decision to rewrite the show’s genesis story was a smart one since it enabled viewers on Disney+ to go ahead more quickly to the character of She-Hulk, which is the primary reason they watch the show. Although it is a significant shift, the concept of Jennifer and Bruce mingling their unique blood has been preserved, which is significant because it is at the core of her comic book origins.