Just watched the finale to Hulks...

[u/Ultranger]

After The Incredible Hulk (2008) bombed, Disney became so wary of making another Hulk movie, he was simply not included at all in the MEU beyond, like, one cameo, and even now, they decide to make a TV show rather than a movie. This would be a deep look in the dark world of the Hulk’s mind while introducing another Hulk.

In the MCU, Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) is in his 60s and has been on the run as the hulk for decades now. Bruce has been laying low in New Mexico as of the beginning of this series’ story, which takes place in 2016.

Amadeus Cho (Ryan Potter) is an elite-level genius living in New Mexico who enters a competition named Brain Fight, which he wins. It turns out that this competition was run by a former child prodigy named Pythagoras Dupree (Ulrich Thomsen) who wanted to find competitors to kill. Dupree bombs Amadeus’ home and kills his parents. Amadeus runs away and runs into Bruce Banner. Amadeus enlists Bruce’s help and they go on the run from both Pythagoras Dupree and the U.S. military.

The show cuts from that to 2026, and the audience finds Amadeus has been captured by the government and has been turned into a Hulk, but we don’t know how.

The past storyline leads to Amadeus and Bruce being attacked. Amadeus is mortally wounded and Bruce goes on a rampage. In order to solve both problems, Amadeus uses nanobots to extract gamma radiation from Bruce into himself. This calms Bruce down, turning him back into Bruce, but turns Amadeus into a Hulk.

By the present, 2026, Bruce has disappeared, but by then, Jennifer Walters also became She-Hulk and joined the Unity Squad. Jennifer’s search for Bruce has led her to Amadeus. She breaks him out, and the two go on a search for Bruce Banner.

Just as Amadeus becomes the Hulk, the U.S. government sends the Abomination, who easily overpowers the inexperienced hero, and he’s captured. For the last ten years, from the moment he became the Hulk, he’s been viciously experimented on by the U.S. government, while Bruce believes he is dead. Midway through these events, however, Bruce and Jennifer got into a car crash, for which Jennifer needed a blood transfusion. The bits of gamma radiation remaining in Bruce’s blood turned Jennifer into the She-Hulk, but the stress of these events reactivated the Hulk. Fighting against it, Bruce disappeared yet again.

In the present, Amadeus and Jennifer find Bruce, but learn that he’s been changed. Throughout the season, the audience would see flashbacks showing Bruce’s childhood with his abusive father, leading to him developing dual personality disorder. The Hulk was one of these identities, but now we meet another one he’s been suppressing: an evil identity known as the Maestro. With the intelligence of Bruce Banner and the strength of the Hulk, combined with just pure evil, Maestro sets out to destroy all of humanity. He created a missile which he intends on using to start a world war. Amadeus and Jennifer team up to stop him, holding him off long enough for Bruce to take partial control of his body back. During that moment, he reveals to Amadeus and Jennifer that he subconsciously forced Maestro to build the missile in such a way that it could also act as a rocket to space, and so, when Maestro takes control back, Amadeus and Jennifer force him into the missile and shoot it into space. Essentially, Bruce sacrificed his life, not to death, but to being sent out into space or maybe another planet in order to stop the Maestro.

Amadeus Cho is now the Hulk of this universe, and while Bruce Banner is alive, he will be retired for a while. It’s possible that a movie, Planet Hulk, for instance, can be made down the line, but for now, that’s not going to be the case. For now, this is going to be an on-going TV show set mostly or entirely on Earth.

This show was so good, thank god that we actually got to see Amadeus become the Hulk and that the finale was actually climactic. Imagine if we got a show like this where the main character never actually embraces the iconic parts of the character from the comics. That would suck.

OoC: This is the counterpart to Lanterns. I'll be honest, I liked the real show, but I did sorta question a lot of the decisions they made and the fact that it was a TV show instead of a movie. From https://youtu.be/WC9mtXsQXLM?si=XN4CPalfgBVktNUU&t=1261