Marvel’s Phase Three seems to be marked by multiple high-profile team ups. Ant-Man is coming back, with The Wasp at his side. Captain America’s sprint through the Civil War will showcase nearly a dozen different superheroes. And now we’re getting a report that Thor: Ragnarok could have a meaty cameo from Mark Ruffalo’s jolly green giant, The Hulk.
JoBlo is going on record with this rumor, stating that Ruffalo’s Hulk will team up with Chris Hemsworth’s Thor to handle "what amounts to the Norse Apocalypse" in Thor: Ragnarok. Here’s a twist, though. They are reporting that the war will occur on a distant planet that isn’t Asgard, and isn’t Earth. JoBlo says that Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sif (Jaimie Alexander) are confirmed for the third Thor movie, which may be directed by Taika Waititi.
When last we saw Hulk, he’d escaped the action at the end of The Avengers: Age of Ultron and had ditched his Quinjet somewhere in the vicinity of Fiji. Marvel fans (and, yes, ourselves included) have spent a decent amount of time deducing places where the wandering behemoth could be heading. The prevalent notion was that Hulk would end up in space, either teaming with the Guardians of the Galaxy or setting up his own Planet Hulk story.
Those options remains open even if Hulk teams up with Thor for Thor: Ragnarok. In fact, if Thor embarks on a celestial adventure with the God of Thunder, it almost makes those other possibilities more likely. Thor and Hulk battling forces on a distant planet? What if, at the end of that conflict, Bruce Banner (Ruffalo) decides to stay on that remote rock, realizing it’s the only place where he’s not a threat to anyone?
Thor: Ragnarok is schedule to occur before The Avengers: Infinity War – Part 1, which is when we expect to see Thanos (Josh Brolin) landing on Earth to challenge our planet’s mightiest heroes. So let’s say that at the end of Ragnarok, Hulk is alone on a distant planet, working shit out. He could be brought back into the fold for Infinity War – Part 2 to lay the smack down on Thanos. Or he could linger, alone in the galaxies for longer. No matter how you slice it, dropping Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok makes sense in the grander scheme of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as it answers where Hulk might have gone after Age of Ultron, and it gives Thor some needed Avengers assistance as he conducts his search into the mystery of the Infinity Stones.
Thor: Ragnarok is slated to open in theaters on November 3, 2017.
