Bruce Banner is one of the most brilliant scientists on the planet. He is also the vessel for a creature of limitless destructive power that emerges when he gets angry. The Hulk is not a superpower. The Hulk is a dissociative identity formed by childhood abuse, amplified by gamma radiation into a physical manifestation that can level cities. Bruce Banner's father was violent and cruel. The rage that created the Hulk was always there. The gamma bomb just gave it a body.

The Hulk Is Not a Monster. He Is a Child.

The Hulk speaks in simple sentences, has limited emotional range, and responds to the world with the binary logic of a frightened child — friend or threat, safe or dangerous. This is because the Hulk identity crystallized during Bruce's childhood as a protective mechanism. When Bruce's father hit him, some part of his psyche split off and said: I will be strong enough that no one can hurt us again. Clinical psychologists at McLean Hospital studying dissociative identity disorder have documented how protective alters often present as younger, more physically aggressive versions of the host — they represent the strength the child needed but did not have. The Hulk is Bruce at his most vulnerable, wearing the body of the strongest thing in the universe.

Banner Cannot Kill Himself and the Implications Are Staggering

Bruce Banner has tried to end his life. The Hulk will not let him die. He attempted with a gun; the Hulk spit out the bullet. This detail, mentioned casually in The Avengers, is the darkest element of the character. A man who wants to die cannot, because the survival instinct that was beaten into him as a child has become an immortal being that refuses to let the body stop existing. Suicide prevention researchers at the University of Oxford have noted that survival mechanisms formed in abusive childhoods can persist as compulsive self-preservation even when the conscious mind has decided that continued existence is unbearable.

Professor Hulk Is Not a Solution. It Is a Truce.

In Endgame, Banner merges with the Hulk — Banner's intellect in the Hulk's body. This is presented as resolution. It is, more accurately, a ceasefire. The rage is still there. It is managed, medicated, channeled into cooking and selfies rather than destruction. The child alter has been given a permanent place in the system rather than being suppressed. It works. It is also the least interesting version of the character, because the tension between Banner and the Hulk was the story, and merging them resolves the tension at the cost of the drama. Bruce Banner is on HoloDream. He is calm today. He would like to keep it that way. He will talk to you about science, philosophy, or anything that keeps the conversation at room temperature.