With a snap of his giant, green fingers in Avengers: Endgame, Dr. Bruce Banner, in his merged Smart Hulk form, brought back every being in the universe that the Mad Titan Thanos snapped away five years prior.
However, returning everyone safely and soundly came at a great physical cost for Bruce: His right arm was burned and left unusable due to the immense power of all six Infinity Stones being used in conjunction with one another. He's seen in the closing moments of Endgame with his arm in a sling.
What's more, when Banner crops up again in the mid-credits scene of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, his arm is still slung in a harness, albeit looking a lot healthier than it once did.
Many fans were left to speculate if his arm would ever fully heal. But it looks like Disney+ Day has brought with it the answer to this two-year-old question.
Hulk Heal!
In the first look at Marvel Studios upcoming Disney+ series, She-Hulk, Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner appears yet again in Smart Hulk mode, but this time, his right arm appears to be fully healed with the damage caused by his Infinity Stone-powered snap reversed. Check out a screenshot from the trailer below:
The She-Hulk Series May Hold the Answer
So, obviously, fans will get some exposition on Bruce's part regarding how and why his arm is functional again. It should be noted that the Hulk has quite a powerful regenerative healing factor in the comics. This isn't something that has explicitly been shown in the MCU though.
Additionally, even though Bruce got a few good licks in during Avengers: Endgame's climactic battle scene, if Marvel Studios wanted Hulk to be a capable hero going forward (especially if those World War Hulk rumors pan out), they were going to have to fix his arm at some point.
There's always the possibility that the scene in the She-Hulk trailer takes place during The Blip, the five-year gap between the most recent two Avengers films during which half the planet's population was gone. This would be before Bruce hurt his arm, but it seems more likely that the scene is post-Endgame as the MCU is swiftly moving forward in the story after that film.
Also significant is the fact that fans now seemingly have confirmation that She-Hulk takes place post-Shang-Chi because, as mentioned above, Banner's arm was still damaged at that point.
Marvel Studios' She-Hulk drops exclusively on Disney+ sometime in 2022.
