10 MCU Loose Ends That Drive Fans Crazy

5. How Exactly Did Banner And Hulk Reconcile Their Issues?

Avengers Endgame Hulk
Marvel Studios

Marvel Studios trolled everyone with its Avengers: Infinity War marketing, leading people to believe that Hulk would be unleashed during the final battle in Wakanda.

In reality, Bruce Banner and his angry green friend had relationship issues for the entire movie, with Hulk refusing to do any of the punching, forcing Banner to don the Hulkbuster armour in order to stand a fighting chance.

But the very next time we see Banner in Avengers: Endgame, he and the Hulk have somehow fixed their problems and merged personalities, becoming Smart Hulk. The movie never properly explains how this came to be, with that explanation actually being cut from Avengers: Infinity War. The filmmakers felt that audiences would just "go with it" when Smart Hulk randomly appears in Endgame, so that's how they did it.

The Banner/Hulk reconciliation again went unexplained in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, where Banner was back to his regular human self. Then, in the She-Hulk footage we saw a few months ago, he was back to Smart Hulk. What gives?

It's possible that She-Hulk will provide more of an insight into Banner and Hulk's newfound ability to merge and de-merge at will, which has gone completely ignored for the last several years. The character works without us knowing, sure, but such a pivotal moment in Banner's development does deserve some level of exploration.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!