She-Hulk’s KEVIN is a bizarre Kevin Feige Marvel meme brought to life

There are more than 100 hours in Marvel Cinematic Universe, which includes movies, Disney Plus and questionably canonical Netflix series. This gives rise to a collective Internet zeitgeist that is rich with GIF-able moments. The memes and moments range from direct pulls (“I understood that reference”) and slightly modified scenes (“I see this as an absolute win”) all the way to full-on remixes that sample from the MCU to create something wholly unique, yet still very much connected.

My money is on one MCU reaction GIF. This GIF incorporates over three dozen Marvel moments, while placing at the center of it one the most powerful characters from the MCU. It takes only several looping seconds. Because of this, its spread is largely limited to Marvel-centric discussions between those who know — an extremely potent in-joke, yes, but an in-joke nonetheless.

This week’s She-Hulk finale, “Whose Show Is This?”, paid homage to, if not the GIF directly, then to the ethos that inspired it. The production budget was much higher.

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

GIFs are a piece of art. We open on the frowning head of Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, superimposed onto the body of the all-powerful Architect, a pivotal character from 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions. On either side of him are 36 monitors, each playing a different scene from a Marvel movie — and not just the MCU but also X-Men, Deadpool, and even Fantastic Four. It’s the best and worst of its cinematic history, with Spider-Man’s debut in Civil War just two spots away from Vinnie Jones screaming “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch.” Throughout it all, Feige casually wears the Infinity Gauntlet, Marvel’s Mega-MacGuffin for its first 23 interconnected movies, while slowly cracking a top-10 supervillain smile.

The message, for those that don’t remember the Matrix sequels, is that Kevin Feige’s position as the architect of the MCU is more than just a job title; rather, he is a godlike figure who controls the destiny of every single hero, villain, and side character in his universe. In this version, he’s a being whose power exceeds the limits of humanity and requires him to be a highly-advanced intelligence to pull all these strings.

On our side of reality, there’s a grain of truth there. Kevin Feige has long been the final say in virtually every decision for the MCU — the buck-stops-here producer who (almost) always wears a baseball cap and shepherds a record-breaking, money-printing mega-franchise with canonical cohesion. Then there’s the other side of reality, the one where Jennifer Walters is pissed.

There is no better way to discuss KEVIN than by talking about it.

Return to the She-Hulk finale. (You didn’t think I forgot, did you?) The episode becomes chaotic and incoherent as our hero pushes all of her superpowers, which are ever expanding, to the limit to uncover who is ultimately responsible for her fate.

Walters makes her case to Disney Plus after she has gotten into the lot. She-Hulk writers’ room only to be told in no uncertain terms that “This is the story that Kevin wants.” Kevin is apparently so important, one writer in the room avows a willingness to murder to protect him. For more casual fans, it’s just an absurd little joke — what omnipotent being would be worshipped for his TV-making prowess, and why would he go by a rote mononym like “Kevin”? Walters, however, signs an NDA to protect Kevin and fights her path to the door with the One Who Makes All the Final Calls.

Image: Marvel Studios

The room Jennifer enters is exactly as the fans joke — a row of over three-dozen monitors playing different moments from Marvel’s history, and an advanced intelligence in the middle of it all. Only this one doesn’t have Kevin’s human face and that mononym is actually an acronym. KEVIN is actually Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus. “Were you expecting a man?” asks the robotic executive.

Walters then sits down at the table with the only one who can save her. It’s not the first time that She-Hulk has broken the fourth wall to change her story, nor is it the first time that a Hulk has yelled at a god. However, this moment breaks into Marvel storytelling’s heart.

Rumours of Kevin Feige’s cameo appear in She-Hulkcirculated since December 20,21. This roundup was posted by the Marvel Studios Spoilers Subreddit. It is a large community that has an active moderation team and attempts to balance scoop veracity with lulz. As the broadcast aired those whispers intensified. She-Hulk showrunner Jessica Gao has acknowledged seeing the online 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 would be formally announced just a couple days later and return the X-Men movie IP to Marvel. The GIF was created by GIPHY Video Editor Leroy Patterson — a character in his own right, who owns over 4,000 copies of the Xbox 360 classic Sneak King — who emailed me the meme’s origin story:

The moment that leaked the day before Disney had purchased Fox, and all the Mutants were “coming home” to Marvel, I was super excited and, as the senior video editor for Giphy, I wanted to do something to commemorate the moment!

It made complete sense as I am a massive Marvel and Matrix Nerd. This gave me an easy visual and allowed me to highlight some of my favorite moments from Marvel Film History.

The first thing I thought of was this. It took probably two hours to find all the clips. It was important that each franchise represented at the same time. To make it happen, I’d have to add background images for several more monitors.

Patterson produces Marvel memes for GIPHY and has also collaborated with Bosslogic.

Perhaps this is a case of parallel thinking — an all-powerful AI controlling fate is a well-worn trope — but the core idea of both Patterson’s meme and the She-Hulk Marvel fans and creatives alike laugh at the joke that is reveal. “It was just so funny to make these writers revere Kevin in the way that everyone at Marvel Studios reveres Kevin,” Gao notes in 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 still hasn’t appeared in the MCU in his flesh-and-blood form, he has made a cameo in the X-Men comics, attending Krakoa’s inaugural Hellfire Gala in a June 2021 issue. And if the uncannily-sketched face didn’t make it clear enough, Feige made sure to wear his own signature supersuit to the event: blazer, no tie, and a baseball cap. Feige asks Cyclops about his story, which is his only dialogue. We never find out how he responds, but it doesn’t really matter. After all, it isn’t going to be Cyclops’ show — it’s KEVIN’s.