She-Hulk, the Marvel comedy series on Disney Plus, provides a direct reference to the one and only Daredevil. His helmet appears at the end of an episode, getting us all excited for Daredevil season 4. Jessica Gao, the director of the Marvel series, says she was quite nervous about handling such a crossover.
You read that in the script and you’re like, ‘Uh oh’,” Gao recalled to ComicBook’s Phase Zero podcast. “You read that and you’re like, ‘OK, now nobody can touch this script. I’m so afraid that it’s going to come up.’ You’re like, ‘OK, how do we shoot this? How do we…’ You know what I mean? So it was very fun.”
The moment is somewhat choreographed, by an eccentric fashion designer who works with superheroes with a very specific clientele list. We knew someone would get teased among all the costumes laying about, we just didn’t know who. Even still, seeing that helmet again is an electric moment, the kind of which the MCU has long been good at providing.
It was a different kind of electric behind the scenes, when it was clear those in the know were sitting on a big Marvel Studios secret. That’s what gave Gao the most pause.
“It was that moment that I was like, ‘I better not leave the script anywhere’,” she recalls. “I have it digitally on an iPad. But that was crazy. I was very happy to be able to contribute a little bit.”
Marvel has been known to be strict about spoilers, to the point of having a special room for certain meetings and screenplays. It sounds like Gao was spared that treatment, and managed to keep a lid on it all the while. Now we just wait for Daredevil to become a fully-fledged MCU character!
New episodes of She-Hulk are releasing weekly between now and October 13 on Disney Plus. Have a look at our guide to Marvel’s Phase 5 for more on the franchise.