Is He a Monster?

"Is He a Monster" is the second episode of the Disney+ animated series The Incredible Hulk. It was released on September 23, 2035.

Synopsis
Trapped by the Leader, Hulk must rely on his allies to escape.

Plot
Following the events of the previous episode, Rick Jones goes to a phone and contacts Betty Ross to explain her of Hulk's capture by a mysterious force. The two then decide to find him.

On an unknown location, Hulk's alter-ego, Bruce Banner, wakes up in a cell and duscovers he us being held captive by "The Leader". Once a janitor named Samuel Sterns, he obtained a Gamma mutation of his own after being exposed to some chemichals, and now aims to mutate all beings on Earth to create a new order where he is ruler. The Leader explains to Banner that he aims to obtain the Hulk's own DNA to figure out the genetic code needed for the mutations to happen, so he injects Banner with a dosis of Gamma adrenaline to trigger a calmed transformation.

In order to find Banner, Betty hacks a goverment satelite and uses his Gamma energy signature to locate him. She manages to locate the Leader's fault and sends Rick his location, managing to avoid being caught by her father, General Ross, in the process. Betty manages to hack into the system and contacts the Hulk. Hulk at first refuses to trust them thanks to his generally negative experiences with humans, but ultimately agrees to. Betty guides the Hulk to free himself from his cage, while Rick goes to disable the Leader's security system. During their time, Hulk and Betty start develping a bond between each other, with Hulk briefly becoming happy for the first time in his existence.

Betty and Rick guide Hulk to the exit, while Hulk is touched by the generosity they show towards him. As the trio almost finds away out, with the three bonding further along the way, they are intercepted by the Leader, who captures them. Aside from planning to use the Hulk for his experiments, the Leader also plans to use Betty and Rick as test subjects. The Hulk becomes overcome with fear at the possibility of the Leader killing him, until Rick and Betty calm him.

Main cast

 * Josh Keaton as Bruce Banner
 * Fred Tatasciore as Hulk
 * Sarah-Nicole Robles as Betty Ross
 * Chris Pratt as Rick Jones
 * Sam Elliot as General Ross
 * Willem Dafoe as The Leader

Guest cast

 * Steven Blum as Emil Blonsky
 * Al Ewing as Clay Quatermain
 * Phil LaMarr as Humanoids

Writing
Showrunner Sage Cotugno called the epusode "Hulk's time to shine", with the story focusing on "establishing the Hulk not as this raging beast, but as this very angry child in a nuclear body" after the first episode focused on Banner. For Hulk's relationships with Rick and Betty, Cotugno wanted to "build up to that" instead of establishing a friendship between all three from the beginning "to give Hulk this taste of friendship. This brief cease tothe emptiness inside him that he can't understand, but eventually realizes". For Betty's bonding time with the Hulk, Cotugno researched on relationships between mothers and traumatized children.

Trivia

 * The idea of the Leader using adrenaline to induce a controlled Hulk transformation is a nod to Doc Samson doing the same in the comics once.
 * Upon seeing Banner waking up, the Leader calls his transformation "some neat trick", an homage to his vouce actor Willem Dafoe's role in the Spider-Man films as the Green Goblin, who said the same regarding Spider-Man's "Spider sense" in the MCU film Spider-Man: No Way Home.
 * The episode's ending is an homage to the "Stitch is Lost" scene from Lilo & Stitch. "The Lonely Man" from the 1970s Incredible Hulk series also plays during the scene.