Welcome to Thanks, I Love It, our series highlighting something onscreen we’re obsessed with this week.
The multiversal origins of Marvel’s What If…? create almost infinite possibilities for storytellers to chop up, remix, flip, reverse, and rewrite the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Insofar the show has immersed us in universes where Peggy Carter is a super soldier, T’Challa is Star-Lord, and in the most recent episode, where most of the Avengers are murdered before they can become a team, but that third premise also pulled off a truly impressive trick — it gave Marvel fans a glimpse of what an alternate version of our universe would look like. That universe is the one where Mark Ruffalo starred as Bruce Banner in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk.
The Incredible Hulk is one of the more skippable entries in the MCU for two reasons. The first reason is that the movie is not good. It’s not unwatchable, but compared to the humor and excitement of its predecessor Iron Man, it’s a bit of a fart under the blanket. The second reason is because Ed Norton played Bruce Banner for one movie and promptly dipped from the franchise entirely, making The Incredible Hulk the only standalone Marvel movie to star an actor who never appeared in character again.
Norton has elaborated on his reasons for leaving the MCU in a handful of interviews. He wanted to take Hulk in a more cerebral direction and ran into creative differences, he didn’t want his career to be tied down with franchise obligations, and he was concerned at the time that Marvel wouldn’t be able to afford him (yes, really). All of those reasons are valid but also besides the point, since the key impact of Norton declining to return was the eventual casting of Mark Ruffalo to take over the role in 2012’s The Avengers — a role he has crushed for nine years and will continue to crush for as long as they’ll have him.
Since Episode 3 of What If…? recaps a twisted version of most of Marvel’s Phase One movies, some of its scenes take place in the timeline of The Incredible Hulk. The scenes are brief, mostly covering Bruce hiding out at Culver University, hulking out when confronted, and then exploding into a green mushroom cloud, but they’re memorable because they feature a Bruce Banner voiced by and modeled after Mark Ruffalo.
“The universe where Mark Ruffalo starred in a standalone Hulk movie would be very different to ours.”
Having a Ruffalo Hulk interact with Betty Ross (voiced by Stephanie Panisello, as Liv Tyler did not reprise her role for the series) and take down a platoon led by General Ross (Mike McGill, since William Hurt didn’t reprise his role either) is the closest the MCU has gotten to retconning not only Ed Norton’s Hulk, but Ed Norton’s very existence in the MCU.
The universe where Mark Ruffalo starred in a standalone Hulk movie would be very different to ours. He might have brought enough charm and lovability to transcend the movie’s shortcomings and made The Incredible Hulk another MCU hit. There might actually have been sequels (the initial plan was for The Incredible Hulk to be a duology, but the second movie never surfaced) that dove farther into Bruce’s character. He might not have had that weird Age of Ultron plot where him and Black Widow have a thing because he’d have his own romantic interest from his movies — maybe Liv Tyler would have stuck around, who knows?
The point is that What If…? has lived up to its name and made Marvel fans question the possibilities of our own timeline. Now that’s immersive television.
What If…? is streaming on Disney+
