It’s the moment many Marvel fans have been waiting for. In the penultimate episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Daredevil is back! And in the thoroughly entertaining episode 8, streaming now on Disney PlusCharlie Cox’s Matt Murdock prompts She-Hulk to smash (in more than one sense).

If you need a refresher, here’s our recap of last week’s zingy therapy session in She Hulk episode 7 (or start with She Hulk episode 1). Now let’s delve into the latest installment, titled Ribbit and Rip it, as Daredevil finds a whole new corridor of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to ventuire into, plus more Easter eggs — and lots of spoilers!

The next episode of She-Hulk outing is the finale, Episode 9, which drops on Thursday Oct. 6 (here’s the full schedule of episode release dates for She-Hulk).

Matt’s back

Thanks to a hapless wannabe superhero who turns out to be an obnoxious rich kid, Jen finds herself on the wrong side of a courtroom to Luke Jacobson, the one tailor who can provide suitable outfit for her unique physique. But Luke has tapped another client to represent him: all the way from Hell’s Kitchen in New York, it’s blind lawyer Matt Murdock, AKA horned vigilante Daredevil.

We first met Cox’s Daredevil in a Netflix series back in 2015. The arrival of Disney Plus as the streaming home of the MCU suggested we’d seen the last of Daredevil (and the other characters seen in Netflix shows, including Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Punisher). But now the fan favorite shows have been ported over to Disney’s streaming servicethe much-missed legal eagle makes his triumphant return at last.

Murdock’s arrival forces Jen to do some actual lawyer-ing as they debate the right to privacy for superheroes. This legal sparring will soon turn to actual fighting, but first they have a flirty chat over an Appletini in the Legal Ease bar. Murdock suggests that Jen, like him, is in a strong position to do some real good in court and/or by using superpowers to help people when the law fails them. “You can choose”, he argues. Sure sounds like “the best of both worlds” to a tempted Jen, but it also throws up the question of why these (flawed, human) individuals get to decide what justice means (especially when we’re talking about meeting out violence).

Daredevil vs She-Hulk

Speaking of violence, after a quick detour to catch up on tech bro Todd bragging about his new Wakandan war spear, Jen and Murdock are reunited in their superhero alter egos. It’s the first outing for Jen’s She-Hulk costume, and Daredevil has a new look too. This mustard and ketchup suit actually harks back to the character’s original design from his comics debut in 1964, when writer Stan Lee and artist Bill Everett put their new hero in a yellow and dark red costume made from his father’s boxing robes.

A car chase leads to a parking lot punch-up in which Daredevil uses his cool acrobatic skulls to head off Jen’s brute strength, but his sharpened echolocation hearing is thwarted by Jen’s sonic clap. Luckily they join forces, although at a secret lair (with neon sign) they disagree about whether to tackle the threat with stealth or brute strength. After an interesting discussion about the semantic distinction between henchmen (who believe in an evil cause) and goons (who are just doing it for the money), Daredevil throws down in a hallway, just like the trademark one-take corridor fights from his Netflix show (FYI these guys are goons, but they probably didn’t expect their paycheck to involve a brutal baton beating).

After rescuing Luke and securing herself a dress for the gala, Daredevil and She-Hulk re-rendezvous on a roof. Despite Jen’s terrible math and propensity for property damage, the two are really hitting it off. Finally Jen meets a decent dude! Which leads to an image that surely rockets straight into the list of the MCU’s funniest moments: Daredevil doing the walk of shame.

Bring on the horned (and horny) hero in Marvel’s upcoming Daredevil: Born Again.

Episode 8 post-credits scene?

No post-credits scene this week, but the episode does continue on after the satisfying conclusion. “Seriously, what is this scene?” Jen asks the audience as Nikki arrives with a dress and make-up. “Are we doing the gala?” Yup — you probably expected the Female Lawyer of the Year Award show to be the big set piece in next week’s finale episode, but the show wrongfoots us by heading straight to the event — and the big twist cliffhanger.

Jen is surprised to find she has to share the incredibly patronizing award with several other women, but is even more dismayed to share the limelight with hackers from the Intelligencia website. A distorted voice and masked figures (inspired no doubt by the real-life Anonymous movement’s trademark tactics) rail against Jen being undeserving of the power she “stole” from the Hulk, with a side order of slut-shaming. Jen rises to the bait and smashes the auditorium, but before she can grab the culprit she’s surrounded by the Department of Damage Control. The superhero branch of the feds were on-scene suspiciously fast — Is this a set-up? Tune in to next week’s finale to find out!

She-Hulk random thoughts and Marvel Easter eggs

• This isn’t quite Matt Murdock’s first post-Netflix MCU appearance: he had a brick-catching cameo as Peter Parker’s lawyer in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
• The episode’s antagonist is rich kid Leapfrogbetter known in the comics as a Daredevil villain called Vincent Patilio, originally created by Stan Lee and Gene Colan in 1966.
• This wannabe heroic version of Leapfrog gives similar vibes to the character of Vigilante in Peacemakerthe irreverent HBO series featuring lower-league DC comics characters who were slightly deluded in their super heroic activities.
• You might think the names of the award-winning lawyers are Easter eggs. They aren’t.
• The patronizing host of the gala refers to how women lawyers “do everything regular lawyers do, except backwards and in high heels”. This refers to a famous description of dancer and actor Ginger Rogers who was more than a match for her dance partner Fred Astaire (the saying was coined or at least popularized by cartoonist Bob Thaves).
• Jen mentions a “Red Hulk“, which is a cheeky nod to a Marvel comic character of the same name. General Thaddeus E. Ross was seen in the MCU as the man who recruited Emil Blonsky, but in the comics he, like Blonsky, also became a twisted version of the mighty hulk.
• Jen also wonders if she about to get “fridged“. This is the name of a trope in which women characters are killed to motivate the male hero. Comic book writer Gail Simone coined the expression after a Green Lantern comic in which the hero discovers his murdered girlfriend stuffed into a refridgerator.