She-Hulk's New Villain Was First Teased in Avengers: Age of Ultron
While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been chock-full of origin stories, none have taken shape quite like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, with the Disney+ exclusive series bringing the superhero genesis of Jennifer Walters / She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) to life. Along the way, the series has played with the past, present, and future of the MCU and even larger Marvel Comics canon in some wild ways — and the show's newly-released sixth episode was no exception. The episode laid the groundwork for an unexpected villain group to pop up on the series — a group that, oddly enough, was briefly referenced almost a decade ago in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Spoilers for Episode 6 of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, "Just Jen", below! Only look if you want to know!
The episode reveals the existence of Intelligencia, a Reddit-like website filled with various forums — including one private anti-She-Hulk forum filled with death threats and other salacious messages. The website seems to be a new way for the series to take on the landscape of misogyny and online vitriol, something that adds a weird wrinkle to the fact that the group was very briefly alluded to in Age of Ultron. In the Avengers' file on Ulysseus Klaw (Andy Serkis) in the film, it references that Klaw is a former member of the Intelligencia.
Granted, Klaw is a comic-accurate member of the group in the comics, which makes it being included on his dossier as an off-hand reference in the early days of the MCU somewhat unsurprising. At very least, the Intelligencia coming back around in She-Hulk is just an entirely new interpretation of the group — at very most, it might hint that Klaw didn't have the most progressive views before his onscreen death in Black Panther.
Created by Jeff Parker and Paul Pelletier in 2009's Fall of the Hulks: Alpha #1, the Intelligencia are an assembling of some of the smartest supervillains in Marvel lore, who work together to cause evil that can benefit all of them. After they initially formed and disbanded, they got back together after the events of World War Hulk, and were led by MODOK and The Leader. Their goal in the fight against Hulk was to create their own powerful being through gamma and cosmic radiation, and their work led to the creation of Red She-Hulk, A-Bomb, and Amadeus Cho. This directly connected with She-Hulk in the 2010 miniseries She-Hulks, which saw Jen and Lyra / She-Hulk, the future daughter of Bruce and Thundra from another war-torn Earth in the multiverse, hunt down the members of the Intelligencia and bring them to justice.
What do you think of She-Hulk and Avengers: Age of Ultron name-dropping the Intelligencia? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
New episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law will debut Thursdays exclusively on Disney+. If you haven't checked out Disney+ yet and you want to give it a go, you can do that here.
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