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How She-Hulk Gets Her Powers In Marvel
She-Hulk, aka Jennifer Walters, is Bruce Banner's cousin and another gamma-irradiated hero, but how does she get her powers in the comics and MCU?

How She-Hulk Gets Her Powers In Marvel

Jennifer Walters, the cousin of Bruce Banner, becomes She-Hulk in both the mainstream Marvel Comics continuity and MCU, with potentially similar origins in both. Walters will star in the MCU’s upcoming She-Hulk Disney+ series, where her transformation into the gamma-irradiated hero will be shown (or at least referred to). Considering the differences between the two continuities and the MCU’s predilection for crossovers and inter-continuity, there is room for some changes to this new version of Walters’ superhero origin.

She-Hulk’s origin came from Stan Lee himself, debuting in the first issue of Savage She-Hulk. Jennifer Walters, a Los Angeles lawyer, was mortally wounded by Nick Trask, a local crime boss hoping to silence Walters after hearing a rumor that she had incriminating evidence against him. Bruce Banner, who’d visited his cousin before the shooting, was the only available and compatible donor for a life-saving blood transfusion, so gave her his gamma-irradiated blood, granting her his fantastic superpowers, but with the added benefit of retaining her mind in both forms and being able to control her transformations.

She-Hulk has always been different from the Hulk from the offset, as her comics gradually became action comedies, particularly after John Byrne’s influential Sensational She-Hulk comics in the late 80s and early 90s. The MCU’s She-Hulk looks to be adapting Walters’ action-comedy adventures, though it hinted at a similarly dark origin for the otherwise lighthearted hero. She-Hulk’s official trailer offers some hints in its opening moments, implying that a shooting or car accident necessitated Jennifer Walters’ fateful blood transfusion, but perhaps, as an MCU series, the mobsters responsible for Walters’ near-fatal injuries work for a familiar crime lord.

The She-Hulk trailer doesn’t show or mention a blood transfusion, but it’s reasonable to assume that this key portion of Jennifer Walters’ She-Hulk origin will include this detail. As for what severely injures Walters, the trailer includes shots of a gala being evacuated by panicked attendees, a group of what might be mob enforcers (some armed with firearms), and a car rolling down a hill. Any one of these moments might be related to Jennifer Walters’ near-fatal injuries, though there’s no indication as to who’s responsible for them.

Nick Trask hasn’t been shown or announced as a She-Hulk antagonist yet, but if he appears in the series, he could be an associate of a more familiar MCU gangster: Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. The Kingpin. Considering Fisk’s memorable appearances in Daredevil, Hawkeye, and what will likely be further roles in Echo and a Daredevil revival, he’d be a natural greater-scale antagonist to indirectly cause She-Hulk’s superhero origin. Whatever MCU connections are added to the upcoming She-Hulk show, however, it’s almost certain that she’ll receive a life-saving blood transfusion from her cousin, Bruce Banner, granting her super strength as it did for her Marvel Comics counterpart.