It’s been six years since Avengers: Endgame introduced one of the biggest unsolved mysteries of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it’s a shame we might never get an explanation. As the penultimate project of the Infinity Saga and the culmination of eleven years of adventures in the MCU, Avengers: Endgame was transformative for the franchise. A five-year time-jump took us into the future in the wake of Thanos wiping out half the universe’s population with the Infinity Stones, where we saw the surviving Avengers embarking on the Time Heist to reverse this damage and bring everyone back.
The Avengers succeeded in collecting the Infinity Stones from various periods in the MCU’s history, and it fell upon Bruce Banner’s Smart Hulk to wield the new Infinity Gauntlet. This led to the creation of a huge MCU mystery. When Thanos used the Infinity Stones, he was transported to Soulworld, where he briefly spoke to the young Gamora. When Tony Stark used them later, a deleted scene revealed he would have met his teenage daughter, Morgan. We still don’t know what Smart Hulk saw in Soulworld, however, and, six years later, it seems unlikely we’ll ever get this question answered.
What Could Smart Hulk Have Seen in Soulworld?
The Soulworld seen in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame’s deleted scene seems to be adapted from the Soul World of Marvel Comics. This is a pocket dimension contained inside the Soul Gem, which serves as a purgatory for souls collected by Adam Warlock, the stone’s protector. The properties of the MCU’s Soulworld haven’t been explained, but it seems to follow a similar idea. After using all six Infinity Stones, Thanos found himself in Soulworld, where the archway he’d first met Gamora had been recreated, and his young adoptive daughter questioned him about the cost of his actions.
Smart Hulk presumably found himself in Soulworld after similarly using all six Infinity Stones to bring everyone killed by Thanos back to life in Avengers: Endgame. We haven’t seen this moment, however, and Avengers HQ was quickly attacked by Thanos, meaning he had no time to process what had happened. There are many possibilities when considering what or who Bruce Banner could have seen in Soulworld, perhaps the most obvious being Natasha Romanoff. Romanoff, who had previously had a romance with Banner, sacrificed her life on Vormir so that Clint Barton could acquire the Soul Stone.
This had a huge impact on all the founding Avengers, but Banner in particular. Personally, controversially, I always liked the romance between Banner and Romanoff, so it was heart-breaking to see her sacrifice herself before ever getting closure with Smart Hulk. Having Banner see Romanoff in Soulworld could have given him this closure. Another popular theory suggests Banner could have seen another lost love, Betty Ross, who most recently appeared in Captain America: Brave New World, while Endgame writer Christopher Markus has stated a draft script included a conversation between Banner and the Hulk, which would have also been seriously cathartic. Unfortunately, we might never know for sure who Smart Hulk saw in Soulworld.
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