Why We Should Be Worried About Bruce Banner After Avengers: Endgame
So Hulk’s a cripple now. The behemoth has one arm. The concept is kind of strange to think about really. When you imagine the Hulk you don’t envision him with just three limbs. When you think about the Hulk smashing people you also don’t think of him doing it with one arm. Sure, he could do it. If we remember correctly he only needed his right arm to put down a god in Loki. But just because he can do it doesn’t mean we really imagine him Hulking out with just one hand. Has this actually ever happened to him before anyway? Hulk’s healing factor is legendary, so we imagine it hasn’t. In one of the most recent Hulk comic storylines entitled Immortal Hulk, the Hulk’s healing factor was such that he regenerated completely from a skeleton after having just been blasted from orbit by one of Iron Man’s satellite cannons -- a Helios Laser Tony called it. MCU Hulk is, of course, nowhere near as powerful as his comics’ counterpart, but he’s still the Hulk.
So then this is one of many concerns thought of by the Hulk’s fans. They, of course, know that he’s not powerless. But a one-armed Hulk is still a bit weird to contemplate. It doesn’t help that lately, the Hulk hasn’t been receiving much justice. He got his butt handed to him by Thanos and then refused the opportunity for a rematch. We don’t even think he fought Thanos at all in Endgame even after having merged with Bruce Banner. Speaking of which, considering the current Hulk is actually just Bruce Banner with the Hulk’s features, it may be better to just refer to him as Doc Green from now on since he isn’t really the Hulk, or at least not a Hulk persona so much as he is a Bruce one -- a nitpick, but you know how it is.
Not unlike Thor, the Hulk has been nerfed. In Hulk’s situation, though, it was severely unnecessary. The Hulk was already depowered when the MCU started off. The only person he’s had any real glory against in the past 11 years has been Loki. You can probably throw Ultron in that group too, but you get the general point: the Hulk’s not a major threat. Nowhere near what he should be anyway. He’s not holding a candle to buff Thor, Doctor Strange, or Captain Marvel at least.
Where does he go from here then? Is Doc Green’s injury supposed to take him out of the MCU? Is this just Marvel’s way of ending his story? Probably not. At least we don’t think so. While we admit that Marvel hasn’t been the best when it comes to telling the Hulk’s story lately, we do think there may be some surprises left for him in the future, some things in store that will eventually lead him to a more conclusive and satisfying ending. We still have a bit of faith in Marvel to salvage the character. Here’s what we think Marvel might have in store for the Incredible Doc Green in future MCU stories:
Bruce Banner in Black Widow’s Movie
To kick things off, the whole relationship between Bruce and Black Widow was left hanging. There was no mention of it at all in Infinity War other than an awkward “hello” exchange. We don’t know exactly what -- if anything -- went down between the two of them during the five years in Endgame after Thor killed Thanos. Since we didn’t see anything, we’re going to assume nothing happened and take things from there.
Now it’s obvious that Bruce still feels something for Natasha. He was the most affected by her death aside from Hawkeye. He even told everyone else that he went out of his way to try and bring her back with the Iron Gauntlet in Endgame despite knowing it was futile (well, that’s a stretch, he only had Hawkeye’s word for it after all). Regardless, Bruce’s relationship with Natasha is the thread we’re going to use to introduce him back into the story.
Black Widow may be very much dead but Marvel still feels the need to release a film starring her. We’ve speculated on this before about whether or not it would be a straight-up prequel or a prequel told through a present-day story, and for the purposes of this theory, we’re going to use the present-day story concept. The MCU has stated that Black Widow’s death is irreversible, but because this is a movie franchise based off of superhero comics, we all know that that’s a load of bullcrap. So, assuming Black Widow does come back to take part in her present-day prequel movie, Doc Green will be her co-host.
This will be a chance for Bruce and Natasha to actual settle what’s going on between them for the audience as it’s been poorly showcased to us. They can decide to officially end their relationship here or to actually see where it goes. They could at least address the fact that Bruce was practically kidnapped by the Hulk and held hostage for two years off world.
If the plot of the movie deals with what we think it will deal with (the Red Room), then Doc Green’s nerfs might even come in handy for him, or at least for the plot of the movie. If the film deals with the Red Room, it’ll feature multiple other Black Widow assassins, all of them as deadly, if not deadlier, than Natasha herself.
Without the ability to effectively “Hulk out,” Bruce’s presence may not take away from the tension of the movie. Endgame showed that Bruce doesn’t have the temperament of Savage Hulk. Yes, he gets annoyed, but he’s not rampaging through buildings at every chance he gets, killing anything that moves and breaking anything that isn’t another Hulk. Groups of assassins could endanger him if they do what assassins do best and sneak up on him. If Doc Green’s damaged arm registers pain of any kind, his enemies could use that against him as well, which would effectively introduce Doc Green’s injury as a real problem that needs to be solved in the MCU itself. It wouldn’t be something Doc Green could just walk around tolerating any longer.
Whatever happens between Bruce and Natasha at this point, Doc Green recognizes his arm is a real problem and decides to do what he can to solve it. He may even go back to the gamma lab to test some solutions, which would eventually lead to too:
Avengers 5: World Breaker Hulk?
Bruce Banner spent one year and six months experimenting on himself in a gamma lab during the five year period following Thor’s execution of Thanos. The result was that he and the Hulk merged to create Doc Green. We can only assume that Bruce’s experiments forced him to absorb even more gamma radiation, which is what caused the fusion between him and Hulk in the first place. So what would happen to him if he absorbed even more? We imagine it would strengthen his healing factor to the point that his arm was regenerated. But we also think it would have a pretty interesting side effect, one that wouldn’t be noticed until Bruce does what he always does and gets angry.
In the comic book series World War Hulk, Green Scar Hulk returns to planet Earth filled with malice. He wants to take revenge on the heroes who sent him away from the planet and then killed the family he made off-world in their attempt to kill him. He comes to find out later, however, that it wasn’t the earth’s heroes at all, but Miek (yes, that same one who hangs out with Korg) who set off the explosion that killed Hulk’s family. Bruce’s rage over this pushes him into the World Breaker Hulk state.
Now, of course, the MCU would have to handle this differently. For starters, the MCU has already done their adaptation of the Planet Hulk storyline with Thor: Ragnarok and Hulk didn’t have any baby mamas while on Sakaar (that we know of anyway). And Miek (unless he’s been hiding his evil cognizance this whole time) is close enough to being too stupid to do much of anything to piss Bruce off. That means whoever the villain of Avengers 5 is will have to do it (a lot of people are putting their money on Kang the Conqueror).
As for the role of baby mama, well, this is where Natasha comes in -- of course, she won’t actually be pregnant like Caiera was when she was blown to hell. Natasha doesn’t really have to be. If Natasha and Bruce decided that they were going to go ahead and see where their relationship took them, and then Kang or whoever fatally wounded Natasha during the events of the fifth movie right after Bruce just got her back from a fate that was supposed to be irreversible -- well, let’s just say it probably wouldn’t be a good day to be a living creature stuck on earth. (We would definitely feel some type of way, too, if Marvel resurrected Black Widow just to kill her all over again).
If Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange and buff Thor have proven anything, it’s that the MCU is becoming comfortable with uber powerful heroes. If these three can be crazy strong there’s no reason why the Hulk can’t be either, especially since he won’t be starring in anything of his own anytime soon. It’ll probably take Thor summoning the bi-frost to get Hulk off of earth before Hulk can take a step and accidentally crack the planet in half.
Whenever Hulk’s calmed down again and returned to Doc Green, he’ll be at a new level of power.
Wrap Up
The Hulk hasn’t been in the best of positions lately. Most of his storylines have either been unaddressed, or skimmed over. This comes off as somewhat disappointing because Endgame was expected to be the end-all, be-all story for the original members of the team. If Marvel has decided to continue the plots of these members, that’s cool, no one’s going to sit here and complain, but at least as far as the Hulk is concerned, there should be a lot more detail and time given to how the plot plays out. We want to know what the deal is between him and Black Widow because the MCU took the time out to make it a thing.
Beyond that, the Hulk is in need of a power up. Unless Marvel is planning on using Hulk’s nerfs in a clever way (which we wouldn’t put it past them to do), there’s really no reason for him to be as weak as he currently is, not when there are other heroes around him that can do pretty insane things on their own: Captain Marvel can travel at light speed with ease, and Doctor Strange can turn gravitational singularities into a swarm of butterflies like it’s nothing. At this point, we don’t really see any reason why the Hulk can’t trigger planet-wide earthquakes by walking. It’s all the same thing really.
Normally, we don’t ever really think there’s a reason to worry about an MCU hero who’s in a rough place because Marvel tends to correct them. But the Hulk has been suspiciously underused for quite some time now. It’s hard not to see why most people are worried about him. It’s almost as if Marvel isn’t sure what to really do with the character despite having plotlines with him that still need to be detailed and wrapped up.
Still, to Marvel’s credit, the Hulk hasn’t been exactly easy to write for, what with his inability to have a trilogy of his own. And most of the time the comics have no idea what to do with him either. If Marvel still does have plans with for the Hulk moving forward into the next couple of MCU movies, we think they’ve earned enough credibility to get the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they’ll surprise us, and the Hulk will be rejuvenated.
