With greater than 100 hours unfold throughout motion pictures, Disney Plus collection, and questionably canonical Netflix exhibits, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is brimming with GIF-able moments that gas a collective web zeitgeist. The memes and moments vary from direct pulls (“I understood that reference”) and barely modified scenes (“I see this as an absolute win”) all the best way to full-on remixes that pattern from the MCU to create one thing wholly distinctive, but nonetheless very a lot related.

For my cash, there’s one MCU response GIF that stands above the remainder. In just some looping seconds, it manages to include greater than three dozen Marvel moments whereas inserting at its heart one of the vital influential figures within the MCU, albeit one which has by no means really appeared on display screen. Because of this, its unfold is essentially restricted to Marvel-centric discussions between those that know — an especially potent in-joke, sure, however an in-joke nonetheless.

This week’s She-Hulk finale, “Whose Show Is This?”, paid homage to, if not the GIF immediately, then to the ethos that impressed it. And it did so with a a lot bigger manufacturing price range.

[Ed. note: The rest of this post contains spoilers for the She-Hulk finale.]

The GIF is a murals. We open on the frowning head of Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, superimposed onto the physique of the omnipotent Architect, a pivotal character from 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions. On both aspect of him are 36 displays, every enjoying a special scene from a Marvel film — and never simply the MCU but in addition X-Men, Deadpool, and even Fantastic Four. It’s one of the best and worst of its cinematic historical past, with Spider-Man’s debut in Civil War simply two spots away from Vinnie Jones screaming “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch.” Throughout all of it, Feige casually wears the Infinity Gauntlet, Marvel’s Mega-MacGuffin for its first 23 interconnected motion pictures, whereas slowly cracking a top-10 supervillain smile.

The message, for those who don’t bear in mind the Matrix sequels, is that Kevin Feige’s place because the architect of the MCU is greater than only a job title; fairly, he’s a godlike determine who controls the future of each single hero, villain, and aspect character in his universe. In this model, he’s a being whose energy exceeds the boundaries of humanity and requires him to be a highly-advanced intelligence to tug all these strings.

On our aspect of actuality, there’s a grain of fact there. Kevin Feige has lengthy been the ultimate say in nearly each choice for the MCU — the buck-stops-here producer who (virtually) at all times wears a baseball cap and shepherds a record-breaking, money-printing mega-franchise with canonical cohesion. Then there’s the opposite aspect of actuality, the one the place Jennifer Walters is pissed.

We Need to Talk About KEVIN

Back to the She-Hulk finale. (You didn’t suppose I forgot, did you?) As the episode splinters into incoherence, our hero pushes her ever-expanding, fourth-wall-breaking superpowers to their fullest potential to search out out who, certainly, finally controls her future.

After breaking by the Disney Plus menu and into the studio lot, Walters pleads her case with the She-Hulk writers’ room solely to be advised in no unsure phrases that “This is the story that Kevin wants.” Kevin is seemingly so essential, one author within the room avows a willingness to homicide to guard him. For extra informal followers, it’s simply an absurd little joke — what all-powerful being could be worshipped for his TV-making prowess, and why would he go by a rote mononym like “Kevin”? But Kevin it’s, so Walters indicators an NDA and fights her strategy to a non-descript door that homes the One Who Makes the Final Calls.

Image: Marvel Studios

The room Jennifer enters is precisely because the followers joke — a row of over three-dozen displays enjoying completely different moments from Marvel’s historical past, and a sophisticated intelligence in the course of all of it. Only this one doesn’t have Kevin’s human face and that mononym is definitely an acronym. KEVIN, it seems, stands for Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus. “Were you expecting a man?” asks the robotic government.

And so Walters sits down with the one being who can assist her out. It’s not the primary time that She-Hulk has damaged the fourth wall to alter her story, neither is it the primary time {that a} Hulk has yelled at a god. But this scene tears into the center of Marvel storytelling.

Rumors of a Kevin Feige cameo in She-Hulk have been circulating since not less than December 2021 in round-up put up from the Marvel Studios Spoilers subreddit, a large neighborhood with an lively moderation staff that tries to strike a stability between scoop veracity and lulz. As the present aired, these whispers intensified. She-Hulk showrunner Jessica Gao has acknowledged seeing the web chatter, “but I can’t imagine this is how they thought that the cameo would happen.”

The Kevin-as-the-Architect GIF was first uploaded December 13, 2017 in anticipation of Disney’s then-rumored acquisition of Fox, which might be formally introduced only a couple days later and return the X-Men film IP to Marvel. The GIF was created by GIPHY Video Editor Leroy Patterson — a personality in his personal proper, who owns over 4,000 copies of the Xbox 360 traditional Sneak King — who emailed me the meme’s origin story:

The second that leaked the day earlier than Disney had bought Fox, and all of the Mutants have been “coming home” to Marvel, I used to be tremendous excited and, because the senior video editor for Giphy, I wished to do one thing to commemorate the second!

As an enormous Marvel and Matrix Nerd, the paring of the 2 made whole sense. It gave me a fast straightforward visible to work with, and on account of all of the displays, let me spotlight lots of the moments in Marvel Film historical past that I vastly loved.

It was the very first thing that got here to thoughts, and possibly took two hours, most of which was sourcing all of the clips. I wished to ensure every franchise on the time was represented. If I made it now, I must prolong the background for a lot of extra displays!

Patterson continues to supply Marvel memes for GIPHY, together with a collaboration with Bosslogic.

Perhaps it is a case of parallel pondering — an omnipotent AI controlling destiny is a well-worn trope — however the core concept of each Patterson’s meme and the She-Hulk reveal is derived from an amused exaggeration for Marvel creatives and followers alike. “It was just so funny to make these writers revere Kevin in the way that everyone at Marvel Studios reveres Kevin,” Gao notes within the post-finale write-up. “This is kind of how Kevin is talked about at the studio. I mean, I really drew so much from real life to put into that section of the finale.”

While Feige nonetheless hasn’t appeared within the MCU in his flesh-and-blood type, he has made a cameo within the X-Men comics, attending Krakoa’s inaugural Hellfire Gala in a June 2021 situation. And if the uncannily-sketched face didn’t make it clear sufficient, Feige made positive to put on his personal signature supersuit to the occasion: blazer, no tie, and a baseball cap. In his solely line of dialogue, Feige may be seen asking Cyclops for his story. We by no means learn how he responds, but it surely doesn’t actually matter. After all, it isn’t going to be Cyclops’ present — it’s KEVIN’s.