The Two Hulks
My favorite superhero movie would probably be considered an odd choice, but I admit it unapologetically: I love The Incredible Hulk, the veritable black sheep of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Released just 42 days after Jon Favreau’s surprise smash Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk was the second movie to enter what would eventually be known as the MCU, the vast multimedia superhero ecosystem that has far expanded far beyond what anyone would have imagined back in 2008.
In the eight years since, Marvel has demonstrated an ability to handle their countless narrative threads deftly, weaving characters and events in and out of television series and movies. However, one major thread remains hanging: the story of Bruce Banner as played by Edward Norton.
Sure, Banner — now played by Mark Ruffalo after a 2010 recast — has appeared in two movies since The Incredible Hulk (three, if you count Iron Man 3’s post-credits scene). The Banner and Hulk that populate those scenes, though, bear little resemblance to the ones that starred in his solo movie. The personality, temperament, relationships and even Hulk-coping mechanisms that shaped Bruce in 2008 are very different from the ones we see now. These differences can easily be chalked up to the recast and refocused writing. At the same time, though, they open the story up to a reimagining that, strangely, keeps the Banner of 2008 alive, albeit in the shadows.
This reimagining, which I conceived while gritting my teeth through certain scenes in Avengers: Age of Ultron, is not meant to be taken as a theory of Marvel’s real intentions. Rather, it’s a way for me and anyone who enjoyed The Incredible Hulk to reconcile its existence with the MCU of today.
With that in mind, let’s explore the possibility of the existence of two Hulks.
In comic book lore, the Hulk as we know it isn’t a condition isolated to Bruce Banner. It takes various forms and is trigged by many different things:
We got a MCU-flavored taste of that in The Incredible Hulk through General Ross’s efforts to replicate the Hulk for military purposes. He didn’t quite succeed, though, as Emil Blonsky went through a series of bone marrow injections and a recreation of Banner’s infecting incident only to transform into the villainous Abomination. Would-be-Leader Samuel Sterns had his own gamma incident, too, when Bruce’s blood dripped into his head wound and started to transform him.
So, as it is possible within the MCU for the Hulk condition to manifest itself in multiple people, it’s not much of a stretch to believe that, if two people had devastating encounters with gamma rays, they would both become Hulks.
That’s where this theory takes its roots, presenting us with two Hulks: 1) the original, named Bruce Banner and 2) a man who, through circumstance, ends up adopting the name “Bruce Banner.”
Before we get into the “how” and “when,” let’s look at the ways these two men differ using facts established in the movies.
Bruce Banner is, by his nature, bookish, unassuming and calm. He meditates and uses a heart rate monitor to control his condition, having pinpointed his biological triggers. His love for Betty Ross informs a lot of his decisions. He has no interest in becoming a superhero (“I don’t want to control it. I want to get rid of it.”), exemplified by his/the Hulk’s decision to flee after the battle in Harlem and go back into hiding.
The other scientist — let’s borrow one of Bruce’s aliases from the comics and call him David Bixby — has an preexisting anger issue (“I’m always angry.”), which leads him to control his condition psychologically (“Avoiding stress isn’t the secret.”). He listens to music to escape from his darker thoughts and his Avengers teammates devise a “lullaby” method to keep the Hulk in check. Though he experiences guilt as a result the Hulk’s actions, he is at heart a team player and is fulfilled by being part of the Avengers.
Calling him David B. also provides us with a bonus Easter egg, making the alias Bruce adopted at the end of The Incredible Hulk a nifty parallel:
With those differences established, let’s piece together a timeline wherein all of this could have happened within the confines of the MCU.
2003 — A team that includes Bruce Banner and Betty Ross resurrects the Super Soldier program under the direction of General Ross. The scientists believe that they are working on improving the body’s ability to resist radiation and do not know about the General’s goal of using it for weapons application. With the project running low on funding, a desperate Banner volunteers as test subject, resulting in a freak accident that transforms him into the Hulk. He flees, living in the shadows for the next five years.
2006 — In an incident mirroring the Hulk’s comic book origin, David Bixby is bathed in gamma rays at a nuclear bomb testing site. The Marvel wiki describes this moment pretty succinctly:
Banner was present in the instrumentation bunker at the test site for the first underground detonation of the gamma bomb. Observing that a civilian had breached security and entered the restricted test area, Banner told his colleague Igor Starsky to delay the countdown while he tried to get the civilian to safety. Starsky, secretly a Soviet agent, did nothing, confident that Banner would die in the explosion, bringing the project to a halt. Reaching the civilian, a teenager named Rick Jones, Banner threw him into a protective trench. Before Banner could get himself to safety, the gamma bomb detonated. Intense waves of radiation reached the surface. Banner was irradiated with highly charged radioactive particles. Due to an unknown genetic factor in his body, Banner was not killed by the radiation, which instead caused him to transform into the Hulk for the first time.
With adjustments to make this scenario applicable to the modern day, Bixby could believably be involved in designing nuclear weapons. The guilt he feels for designing world-ending weapons could also lend itself to a desire to slip into someone else’s identity, which he eventually does. It also leads him to voice an objection to SHIELD’s plans for the Tesseract in Avengers, accusing them of trying to produce “weapons of mass destruction.”
As he is isolated in the desert surrounding the nuclear testing site, Bixby’s ensuing Hulk rampage goes undetected. When he recovers and realizes what has happened, he disappears and is assumed dead, a victim of the explosion.
Bixby has the advantage of knowing about the Hulk condition, being familiar with the “myth” of Bruce Banner that had filtered through the scientific community over the past three years. Though he’s never met Bruce, David feels a kinship with him and attempts to trace his steps to figure out how to manage his condition. Eager to remain dead to the world by keeping the world’s count of Hulks down to one, David assumes Bruce’s identity. He stays off the grid, though a few isolated “Hulk-outs” are recorded and mistaken for Bruce’s by Ross’s task force.
2008 — The events of The Incredible Hulk take place, with Bruce being found, captured and eventually escaping into the great unknown. David, watching news footage of the incidents at Culver University and in Harlem, sees the full potential (both good and bad) of the Hulk and becomes even more determined to control his condition in the hopes of using it for good.
Unlike David, Bruce has no interest in heroism, and focuses on keeping his condition in check to erase the Hulk from existence. In the time between 2008 and David’s Avengers recruitment in 2012, both he and Bruce lay low in separate parts of the world and find their own ways to manage their conditions. Bruce, with three more years of Hulk-dom under his belt, is more successful at it, and evades tracking by the government. David, with his underlying control issues, has a few Hulk-outs. In the beginning, SHIELD believes these to be Bruce, who is, as far as they know, the only Hulk in existence. Eventually, the truth is discovered, but is kept strictly between Nick Fury, Maria Hill and General Ross, their resident Hulk expert.
2012 — Fury sends Natasha Romanoff to recruit David, who, despite not being Bruce, possesses the same in-depth knowledge on gamma radiation that is needed to study the effects of the Tesseract. SHIELD, apart from Fury and Hill, believe him to be Bruce Banner, blurry photos, shaky eye witness accounts and the seemingly unique Hulk condition creating a case of mistaken identity. It helps that David’s already adopted the Bruce identity and has, as a result, dropped a few breadcrumbs along the way. Deep down, David is eager to serve a greater purpose and is happy to help Bruce live out his life undisturbed, so he accepts SHIELD’s mistake and officially takes on the mantle of Bruce Banner.
This “gaffe” is knowingly made by Ross, Fury and Hill, who have agreed to embark on a plan that would keep the real Bruce in the shadows. Ross, whose daughter Betty followed Bruce out of the country shortly after the events of The Incredible Hulk, has learned from his mistakes and seeks to atone for them by convincing Fury to allow this “new” Bruce to keep the identity and allow the other Hulk — a proven hero — to live in peace with the hands-off tracking Natasha referenced in her first meeting with David.
In Ross’s eyes, David’s SHIELD recruitment fulfills his original wish of using the Hulk for defense purposes. His alliance with Fury buys him valuable professional connections, leading to the lofty position he enjoys in Captain America: Civil War.
In Fury’s eyes, keeping the truth of “two Hulks” quiet prevents the mass hysteria that would result from people seeing the condition as a “disease” — one that could infect anyone — rather than the freak occurrence they currently believe it to be. Fury could be seen as referencing this newly-discovered “Hulk disease” at the beginning of Avengers when he makes a tongue-in-cheek remark about the harmful effects of gamma radiation to Erik Selvig. As far as he knows, gamma ray bombardment could turn anyone into a Hulk.
David’s true identity is never acknowledged outside of the trio of Fury, Hill and Ross, and he is never made aware that anyone knows he’s not who he says he is.
As an Avenger, the Hulk becomes a hero, restoring honor to the name of the man who first carried the great green burden.
