Did She-Hulk Just Tease a Major Marvel Villain’s Return?

She-Hulk Episode 6 may have delivered our first real tease that a major Marvel villain is about to make a return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Even though She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has been a lighthearted romp through superhero-flavored courtroom drama, there has been a nefarious shadow hovering over Jennifer Walters – even if she hasn’t yet had the time and superhero experience to see it. At the end of She-Hulk Episode 6, the threat to Jen becomes all too clear, as an entire organization seems bent on getting a bit of her Hulk blood. 

…And we may have gotten our clearest hint yet that fan theories are right, and The Leader could be lurking in the wings of She-Hulk!

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW! 

The final scenes of She-Hulk Episode 6 reveal that there is an online community called Intelligencia, which has a secret She-Hulk forum that is dedicated to either hating on Jennifer Walters if not outright plotting against her. One of the plots is by a user named “HulkKing” who is using Intelligencia as a means of secret communication with a shady lab, which is preparing a Hulk-level syringe that can conceivably extract the sample of She-Hulk’s blood. 

The confirmation that Tim Blake Nelson’s Leader will be the villain of Captain America: New World Order has raised a lot of eyebrows in the Marvel Fandom. The leader seems like a left-field choice of antagonist for Captain America 4, and since we know what kind of Mastermind leader tends to be (plus some other casting for the film) there’s been a lot of speculation that his actual “new world order” scheme could involve Hulk blood as a key ingredient. That could mean the final arc of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law could indeed see Jen having to deal with a very real assault on her life – one that even She-Hulk has to be concerned about.

In Marvel Comics, The Leader was at the heart of The Intelligencia – a cabal of brilliant evildoers who scheme to advance the course of evil. The group consisted of characters like MODOK, Mad Thinker, Wizard, and even Doctor Doom. Fan theory is leaning hard toward the idea that cabals of villains are going to be on the rise in Phase 5 (Intelligencia, Skrulls, The Hood, Kingpin, The Thunderbolts), and She-Hulk could be one of the more pivotal (if not unexpected) stepping stones to a whole new generation of gamma-powered beings who are not necessarily on the heroic side.

She-Hulk streams new episodes Thursdays on Disney+.