Mark Ruffalo returns in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, with the just-premiered Disney Plus series bringing back Bruce Banner in his Smart Hulk form. As introduced in Avengers: Endgame, Smart Hulk — not a name Bruce chose for himself — is the perfection combination of brains and brawn, with Banner retaining his personality but getting the benefits of the Hulk’s indestructible big green body to go with it.
That’s all well and good, but fans are just starting to realize that one thing makes exactly zero sense about him. Specifically, why the heck does he need glasses? Throughout both Endgame and the pilot episode of She-Hulk, Smart Hulk is shown donning a pair of eyeglasses when he gets to work. But, as originally pointed out by user adamfish1981 on the r/MarvelStudios subreddit, this doesn’t fit with everything we know about Hulk’s physiology.
Banner’s Hulk form is known to heal pretty much all wounds and infirmities. For example, back in The Avengers, Bruce recalled how he tried to kill himself but Hulk simply spit out the bullet. Obviously, his arm was badly injured thanks to his use of the Infinity Gauntlet in Endgame, but even that was finally healed in She-Hulk thanks to cousin Jennifer’s super-blood. Therefore Hulk should have perfect eyesight.
So why the glasses? Marvel has made no attempt to explain it yet, so we’re left to speculate that, actually, maybe Smart Hulk doesn’t need them at all but Bruce keeps using them anyway out of habit. In his human form, if he was concentrating on his work, he would don his glasses, so he’s simply carried on doing so even if it’s not strictly necessary.
The real reason, obviously, is because Hulk in a pair of glasses is an easy bit of visual exposition to tell the audience that we’re watching Smart Hulk not regular Hulk. Still, it’s not hard to imagine Tatiana Maslany’s Jen mocking her cuz for his useless glasses in a future episode. Admit it, Bruce, you just wear them ’cause you think they make you look clever.
