Heading into the premiere of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, there was a lot of confusion surrounding the status of Bruce Banner in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After years of trying to coexist with the Hulk persona in his head, Bruce merged the two during the Blip, creating Smart Hulk. During Avengers: Endgame, Smart Hulk used the Infinity Stones to bring back the life that Thanos cast out of the universe, causing serious damage to his arm. That injury was supposed to be permanent, as was Smart Hulk, but a post-credits scene from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings showed a human Bruce Banner in a sling speaking to the new Avengers recruits.
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When the She-Hulk trailer came out, fans saw Smart Hulk in action once again, with two fully-functioning arms. It brought a ton of questions to the rules surrounding Hulk. Fortunately, the She-Hulk: Attorney at Law premiere this week quickly explained all of Bruce and Smart Hulk’s issues.
The She-Hulk premiere begins with Bruce in his human form once again. He explains to Jennifer Walters — his cousin — that he spent years creating an inhibitor device that he wears on his arm. The device helped heal his injury a little bit, but it mostly kept him in human form all the time.
Bruce and Jen are in a car accident early in the episode, and Bruce’s device breaks. This leads to the return of Smart Hulk. It also creates She-Hulk, as some of Bruce’s blood gets into one of Jen’s open wounds.
Thanks to some tests, Bruce learns that Jennifer’s blood is different than his, even thought it shares some properties. The added bonuses in Jen’s blood actually help Bruce out, as he uses her DNA to fix the injury on his arm. Unfortunately for Bruce, if he wants to return to human form, he’ll need to develop another device similar to the one that was broken during the accident. Given that it was a prototype, that’ll take some time.
So for now, Smart Hulk is the version of Bruce/Hulk that exists in the MCU, and his arm has completely healed from using the Infinity Stones.
What did you think of She-Hulk‘s premiere? Let us know in the comments!
