She-Hulk Can Tell The Hulk Story That Endgame Failed To

The She-Hulk series on its way to Disney+ brings with it an opportunity to finally give Hulk his proper due alongside his sensational cousin after a missed opportunity in Avengers: Endgame. While the character has historically been fairly simple and the comedic nature of the series seems to imply that the series will keep to those roots, the Tatiana Maslany-led series provides plenty of opportunities to explore the character in ways that have only materialized in the most recent comics. But She-Hulk also has some promising implications for her once-angrier counterpart the Hulk.

First introduced in The Savage She-Hulk #1 (1980), Jennifer Walters gained a tempered version of her infamous cousin’s powers after an emergency blood transfusion. Unlike Bruce Banner, Walters held onto the majority of her rationalizing ability, though her personality was enhanced. The distinctions from her cousin would eventually result in her becoming particularly popular, especially as the character became more comedically skewed. Nowhere was this more apparent than with her seeming awareness, early on, that she was in a comic book, walking a similar path to the infamous fourth-wall breaker, Deadpool.

The Hulk has perhaps been the single most difficult character for Marvel to realize on the big screen and is one of the greatest missed opportunities in a number of ways, which She-Hulk might be able to correct. After creative differences saw Mark Ruffalo step in to replace Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, the character’s portrayal in The Avengers was a tremendous success. Yet what followed was a series of questionable creative decisions, such as Banner’s relationship with Natasha Romanov in Avengers: Age of Ultron and the near-total absence of the Hulk in Avengers: Infinity War. The epitome of this, however, was the decision to introduce “Smart Hulk” in Avengers: Endgame without showing his transformation, depriving moviegoers of the chance to watch the resolution to Bruce Banner’s struggles with the Hulk unfold. Now, however, the upcoming She-Hulk series provides a chance to give audiences the story they were denied, just not in the way they perhaps expect.

One of the primary appeals of She-Hulk has always been her level of control. This, in turn, resulted in her becoming something of a poster child for self-love and confidence in direct contrast to her more brooding cousin. While that could still be the case here, the series provides the opportunity for the character to grow into that role as opposed to becoming that way purely because she gains these new abilities. After all, with Bruce now seemingly at a point of equilibrium with Hulk, there’s less of a need for her to simply be a foil to him. She could have very similar issues wrangling this more robust side of herself and while the personality woes would be far less volatile and potentially less destructive, audiences would get to see them play to their natural conclusion.

There’s also a new angle to the relationship that the two cousins can have through this series. While Smart Hulk has occurred in the comics before, it’s usually short-lived or something bestowed upon characters other than Banner, with the Savage Hulk always making a comeback at some point. It’s unclear how this might work with Banner’s human appearance in the Shang-Chi post-credits scene, but Smart Hulk’s sustained presence, however, could entirely flip this dynamic. While it’s unlikely that she’ll be totally unable to control herself, it could be that this new Bruce Banner is able to help her get acclimated to this change, having been through something similar, himself. Ultimately, She-Hulk could not only deepen the relationship between the two, but also actually use that to deliver on what was frankly a missed opportunity thanks to the Avengers: Endgame time skip.