One of the best things to come out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is Disney+’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. It combines superhero awesomeness with real-world (female) problems and tops it all off with hilarity. Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) is the hero we all would be if we got infused with Hulk blood. And it isn’t just Jen that is great. Her fellow lawyer Mallory Book (Renée Elise Goldsberry) and paralegal Nikki Ramos (Ginger Gonzaga) are non-superhero powerhouses.
Episode 6, “Just Jen,” let all three female characters shine, and we got a full-on wedding fight between Titania (Jameela Jamil) and Jen/She-Hulk. It was a lot of amazing packed into such a short time. Also, Mallory and Nikki researched an insidious website called Intelligencia that seemed to spew a lot of hate towards our green goddess. Let’s unpack what exactly Intelligencia is and what it means for She-Hulk.
Intelligencia in Marvel comics
Like most things in the MCU, Intelligencia comes from the pages of Marvel Comics. The original Intelligencia was a group of villains who thought they were the most intelligent baddies out there. They formed a team and investigated the secrets of superheroes so they could use their brains to defeat their foes. Two notable members of the team were Leader and M.O.D.O.K. We last saw Leader (Tim Blake Nelson) in The Incredible Hulk, and he will soon return to the MCU. Speculation on the internet claims M.O.D.O.K. will join the MCU in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
One of Intelligencia’s greatest victories was stealing the knowledge of how to re-create Hulk’s gamma blood and mix it with cosmic radiation. Using this intel, they created Red Hulk and several other villains specifically meant to defeat Hulk. This may be why they’re showing up in She-Hulk and the reason Bruce/Smart Hulk hasn’t been calling Jen back.
Intelligencia in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law
As always, the writers at She-Hulk take something from Marvel Comics and make it better. Instead of just being a team gathering information, She-Hulk framed Intelligencia in a way that reflects the terrible side of the internet that we deal with daily. An ex-wife of Mallory and Nikki’s client said she figured out her husband wasn’t dead when she saw a video of his miraculous death and subsequent restriction on a website called Intelligencia. Nikki asked if it was the site for the giant man-babies, so I knew we were in for a treat.
At first, Intelligencia just seemed like a place where people posted videos. But when Nikki tried to click on a link about She-Hulk, it said it required a membership. The women easily gained membership by spewing misogynist BS men have told them in the past. They found much of the site full of trolls posting awful memes about She-Hulk, from trying to “cancel” her to full-on death plots. Why? Well, She-Hulk is a strong, smart woman so they must stop her to preserve toxic masculinity.
Not only are people on Intelligencia, but at least one person is tracking her location. We see unknown people working in a lab to create a stronger syringe needle similar to the one attackers tried to use to get She-Hulk’s blood in a previous episode. These trolls are literally out for blood.
The troll behind it all
In the season finale of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, we finally got to see who was behind Intelligencia. The gross dude-bros had a real-life meet-up to bask in their disgustingness. Our beautiful and sweet man, Pug (Josh Segarra) begrudgingly infiltrated the mixer to help find out who was attacking his friend Jen. Much to Pug’s surprise (maybe not to the viewers), Todd Phelps took credit as being “HulkKing,” the internet troll that started it all. Previously, Todd flaunted his wealth as he tried to buy coolness, had a nasty date with She-Hulk (where he called her a specimen), and turned out to be a client of Jen’s law firm.
Todd and his followers felt She-Hulk was undeserving of her powers because she was a woman. He, on the other hand, deserved them because he was a rich white male. Honestly, that tracks. So he tried to steal her powers by taking her blood to synthesize something for himself. The ploy failed epically, and Jen/She-Hulk is now taking his butt to court. However, it remains to be seen if Intelligencia is finished in the MCU. We know the real-life versions of Intelligencia are still alive and well.
(feature image: Marvel/Disney+)
