She-Hulk: Attorney at Law certainly wasn't graphic in its depictions of sex (the actual act was only ever implied), but it was the first Marvel Studios project to focus on a single woman with an active dating/sex life, and it sounds like the studio higher-ups might have been a tad apprehensive about the premise.
Sex has been discussed in previous Marvel Studios films/shows, of course (Sersi and Ikaris even had a brief, rather chaste shag in Eternals), but She-Hulk definitely upped the ante, with Jen Walters joyfully confirming that Captain America "fuuuuuuu...s," declaring that she "smashes" Matt Murdock, and more.
While speaking to The Wrap, star Tatiana Maslany revealed that the show's openness when it comes to sex was one of the things that drew her to the role.
“I love it. I mean, Jessica Gao and I and Ginger [Gonzaga], we all talk about how horny this show is,” said the Orphan Black actress. “That’s like what we love the most about it, it’s kind of got a gleeful horniness. You know, which just doesn’t feel like a sort of reverent superhero thing. And it really, it’s like, I don’t know. It’s like, giddy, it’s feminine, it’s about desire. It’s about whatever!”
Predictably enough, not everyone at Marvel/Disney was quite so enthusiastic about the "gleeful horniness" on display.
“It was definitely a part of our conversations, because you can’t make a story about a woman in her 30s navigating modern life and not address sex," adds director Cat Coiro. "And I do think that the media is strangely more prude when it comes to the female point of view in regards to sex. And, you know, we’ve got Iron Man doing a lot of things, but then there were all these conversations and there was a lot more fear around her sex life than there was about making fun of Marvel. But we just kept saying, this is her story, and this is her truth, and we’ll handle it in a way that’s light. “I never wanted to go too far with the sex, but I also don’t want sex to be taboo, even for young people. And so it was always finding that balance."
She-Hulk was far from "R-rated," but it did push the envelope in certain respects. Could this be sign that the MCU is beginning to relax somewhat when to comes to producing more adult-oriented content? Deadpool is on the way, after all!
What did you guys think of the first season of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law?