Warning: This article contains spoilers for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law episode 1.
Typical, you wait ages for a mutant to come along, and then a bunch of them drop all at once. After Professor X’s cameo in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Ms. Marvel blew all our minds by confirming that Kamala Khan isn’t an Inhuman in the MCU after all, but a mutant. This was a huge move from Marvel Studios as it made clear that the studio is willing to change a character’s origins from top to bottom to fit them into its no-doubt ambitious plans for the X-Men.
Spoilers incoming!
And maybe, just maybe, it’s possible that She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has pulled the same trick. The first episode of the latest Marvel show to hit Disney Plus landed this Thursday, and it turned out to have a lot to offer those who care deeply about Marvel lore. For starters, we now know more about Steve Rogers’ love life than we did before. Meanwhile, we also got our best explanation yet for why Bruce Banner became the Hulk that’s got us wondering something pretty momentous. Is Bruce secretly a mutant himself?
There’s something about the Banners
We’ve always known there was something special about Bruce Banner’s blood, but She-Hulk helps us understand the full picture for why that is. The pilot episode’s opening scenes reveal that Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) transforms into She-Hulk when her cousin (Mark Ruffalo)’s blood accidentally enters her system during a car crash.
Later on, in Banner’s lab, he explains to Jen that just a drop of his blood would constitute “a lethal dose of gamma radiation” for anyone else, but not for her. Bruce reveals that, due to their familial connection, they both possess “a rare combination of genetic factors that allow [them] to synthesize gamma radiation into something else.” The something else, of course, being a giant green rage monster.
Interestingly, Jen’s body synthesizes gamma radiation differently (some would say better) than Bruce’s, as her transformation is far less unstable and Bruce is able to use her blood to heal his injured arm. The exact reasons behind the Banners’ unique genes are left unclear, although it’s possible they’re not just unique but… mutated.
Could Bruce have been a mutant all along?
Back in The Incredible Hulk, Banner’s blood is the key to unlocking General Ross’ plans for a new super-soldier serum, but we simply assumed this was just because of his transformation into the Hulk and not the importance of his own genes. TIH also made it seem like anyone who came into contact with Banner’s blood would become a Hulk or something similar, like Abomination and Samuel Sterns. She-Hulk retcons the chances of this happening as very slim, unless you have the Banner genes.
With Tim Roth’s Emil Blonsky returning later this season, we may get a better understanding of how it all works soon, but for now, the obvious answer to why the Banners are so special is that they’re secretly mutants. Bruce’s talk about something in their genes allowing them to unlock the potential of gamma radiation is extremely similar to Bruno’s explanation for why Kamala can bond with her great-grandmother’s bangle and no one else can — because she’s a mutant.
In Marvel Comics lore, Hulk is officially classified as a mutate. A mutate, like Spider-Man and Captain America, is someone who was given powers by some external factor, so their genetic alteration was artificially induced, not natural. The MCU has already blurred that distinction, though, thanks to its retcon about Kamala, whose own innate mutated genes required the Clandestine bangle to bring out her powers. So it seems feasible that Bruce and Jen could be classified the same way.
It’s also worth pointing out that Bruce and Jen’s powers manifest in different ways, which recalls how mutants in the same family often have related if separate abilities — like Cyclops, with his optical energy blasts, and his brother Havok, who fires energy blasts from his torso. Again, the jury is still out on whether this is really where Marvel is going with this, and while it would certainly be a bold development, outing a founding Avenger as one of them would be an intriguing way of establishing the X-Men in the MCU.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law continues Thursdays on Disney Plus.
