Avengers: Doomsday Already Has Its Hulk Replacement and He's Perfect

Is it really an Avengers movie if there's no Hulk in it? Since the first Avengers film in 2012, Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner/Hulk has been an essential part of Marvel's biggest crossovers. However, it seems Bruce and his big green friend will be missing out on Avengers: Doomsday, which promises to be a massive crossover.

Mark Ruffalo recently confirmed he will not appear in Doomsday, leaving fans to wonder who fills that void on the roster. The answer, it turns out, was already hiding in plain sight. Lewis Pullman's Sentry, introduced in 2025's Thunderbolts*, is confirmed to return in Avengers: Doomsday, and the similarities he shares with Banner/Hulk are hard to ignore. 

Both are men defined by the monster inside them. Both are capable of catastrophic destruction when that monster gets loose. There's also the psychological burden they carry that makes them as dangerous to their teammates as they are to their enemies.

However, Sentry's dark half, the Void, is more powerful and destructive than the Hulk. So as much as Doomsday will miss out on the powerful green monster, the film's got itself an upgrade.

How Powerful Is Sentry in the MCU? 

Bob Reynolds' MCU origin story is tragic, as is that of most powerful beings of his kind. A former addict, he volunteered for experimentation under Valentina Allegra de Fontaine and her clandestine OXE Group, a project designed to build a single hero more powerful than the entire Avengers roster combined. Fortunately or unfortunately, he was the only test subject to survive.

The experiment worked, but not cleanly. Bob's prior mental health issues made his new abilities dangerously unstable. Rather than producing a loyal super-soldier under Val's control, the process created two sides of the same person. There's Sentry, an extraordinarily powerful hero capable of superhuman strength, flight, healing, and psionic abilities. Then the dark passenger, Void, a shadow entity born from Bob's trauma that can swallow entire city blocks in darkness and trap its victims inside realms built from their worst memories.

In Thunderbolts, the Void consumed Manhattan. It took the entire team working together, not to defeat it in battle, but to reach Bob himself emotionally, to bring him back. When the dust settled, and Bob saw the chaos caused, he decided to suppress his powers in fear of letting Void lose again. He joined the Thunderbolts team and is a key player heading into Doomsday.

Why Sentry Works as the Hulk's Replacement

In an Avengers story arc, the Hulk usually plays the role of the team's living weapon. He's the one you look to when brute force is needed. More than that, he also brings a sense of tension that makes the plot enjoyable. Because Hulk can be on the side of the Avengers, and before you know he's fighting one of them, and a Hulk Buster is needed. Banner's struggle to control the big green guy has always been part of what makes the character compelling in crossover films. 

Sentry replicates that dynamic almost exactly and then takes it further. Though Banner's transformation into the Hulk is triggered by anger, Bob's transformation into the Void is tied to his mental state in a broader, less predictable way. 

It isn’t something that can be managed easily. The Void is a separate entity, one that grows stronger the more Sentry's power is deployed. In that sense, Bob can play the role of the team's ultimate weapon, though his power comes at a huge cost to the members themselves, just like the Hulk.

On a pure power level, Sentry is even more formidable. In the comics, Sentry is described as having the power of a million exploding suns, a figure of speech that effectively places him at the upper limits of what any Marvel character can do. The MCU version is a scaled-back interpretation, yet he easily dismantled the entire team without breaking a sweat in Thunderbolts. Given that Sentry's powers are triggered by emotion, we could even get a more powerful version of the character, thanks to a recent report. This report indicates that Annie Reynolds, Bob's mother, is likely to feature in Doomsday. This familial connection could be setting up more emotional turmoil for the character.

There's also the fact that the current Hulk has been downgraded significantly since Infinity War. Doctor Doom means business, and Doomsday is no place for Smart Hulk. The heroes need heavy hitters in their corner, and Sentry can serve that purpose well. We might get the real Hulk back in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, per rumours flying around. Once the savage version of the Hulk is back, he can return in Secret Wars; for now, Sentry will hold it down in Doomsday.