As for the thugs in question, they are a fairly radical reinvention of the Wrecking Crew, a supervillain team who first appeared in issue #17 of The Defenders, back in November 1974.
Charter members Wrecker, Piledriver, Thunderball, and Bulldozer all obtained their powers/abilities (mainly superpowered, uh, construction tools) through a combination of Wrecker’s magically-infused crowbar and a well-timed bolt of lightning, and have spent most of their Marvel Comics history squaring off against the Avengers, the Defenders, etc., with Thor in particular being their main nemesis.
In their brief live-action encounter with She-Hulk, the Wrecking Crew very much wield their names and tools (“Did you guys rob an Asgardian construction worker?” Jen asks. “Yeah,” Wrecker replies proudly), although they’re dressed in comparatively subdued street clothes as compared to their more outlandish Marvel Comics outfits.
She-Hulk head writer Jessica Gao tells Den of Geek that she and the writing team were given relatively free rein to reinvent the Wrecking Crew as they wished.
“We always just pull characters and then come up with what we want to do with them,” she explains. “We put it on paper, we send it over and Kevin [Feige, Marvel CCO] really decides whether he likes it or not, and he’ll give you notes. But he’s generally very, very open with giving us creative freedom. He always says that he just likes ideas if they’re good. A lot of people say that but Kevin genuinely means it when he says that if he likes the idea, then it’s fine. He doesn’t care where it came from.”
While Jen Walters makes short work of the Wrecking Crew in their first clash, we imagine that the team is still very much in play as She-Hulk works its way through its next six episodes. One of them also mutters that “the boss is gonna be mad” as they exit their debut scene, suggesting that we have yet to meet whoever is pulling the Crew’s strings.
