The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure (Prologue)

Every now and then I come out of my shell and risk ridicule by suggesting, ever so softly, that in the pantheon of the Marvel Entertainment Universe, the best representation of an enneagram 9 is not the stoic Vision or the empathic Mantis but the Incredible Hulk. People think I’m kidding. I’m not.

The enneagram is a system devised to explore human personality. Organized by nine spaces in three triads, it considers how individuals learn to go through life, how their inner logic is derived from their essential identity but damaged through trauma and misunderstanding, and ultimately how they might confront the inner barriers to their becoming their true selves.

The enneagram 9 is commonly thought of as the peacemaker, the person most invested in establishing or restoring equilibrium to an environment. “Can’t we all just get along?” is something of a mantra to the 9 (at least in caricature). People come to rely on the 9’s quietude, unflappability. You might say they enable it.

The first goal of the enneagram is not to classify a person for the sake of social organization; it is rather to help a person come to an awareness of their shadow self, the thing that is keeping them from a full and fulfilling experience of life in community. (It is, in fact, pretty easy to damage people through a preoccupation with enneagram numbers.) If there is any fictional character in the modern imagination that would benefit from such help, it is the Hulk—a man-monster alternately reclusive and disengaged from society, on the one hand, and violently destructive, on the other.

What is keeping the Hulk from a full and flourishing life? And what is the internal logic that drives the Hulk’s dysfunctions? We can ask the same questions of ourselves. The challenge we are led through with the enneagram is to stare the monster in the face and not flinch, and to come out the other side closer to shalom for ourselves and for those around us.

So then, over the course of a series of posts, I'll be taking a close look at the Hulk, or Bruce Banner as he’s known to his friends. I’ll skip over the two major films in which the Hulk is the central character, not because they’re unhelpful to my argument but because they aren’t as deeply rooted in our cultural imagination, so only the true nerds would know or appreciate the references. No, for now we’ll stick with Marvel’s movies in phases 1-3, starting with The Avengers, in which the Hulk plays a significant, though not central, role.

Final prefatory note: I am by no means an expert on the enneagram. I am, I believe, an enneagram 9, and so I think I bring some helpful perspective to bear on the question. (I did run this article by a friend or two who are enneagram experts, and they seemed to think it would be harmless.) If you find yourself wishing for better footnotes and more overt references to Richard Rohr, may I advise you to relax? It’s an article about a comic book character.

Check back here for new installments over the next several weeks. If you want to pick a fight with me along the way, feel free. But fair warning: You may like me in my resting enneagram 9 state, but you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Part Four, "Hulk Like Raging Fire"

For previous posts in this running series of posts on the enneagram (including the rationale for the series), click here.

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The Marvel universe is intricately interwoven. It’s a delight to sit down to watch a film focused on any one character and to be treated to an appearance from another. Thor: Ragnarok is an especially gleeful example, with a brief cameo from Dr. Strange and the prominent inclusion of the Incredible Hulk.

Several films after Age of Ultron we finally learn where Hulk has been hiding — in space, where he is celebrated as a gladiatorial champion. He revels in the cheers of the crowds and gripes to Thor about how he was treated on earth. He has slipped into the six space again - that enneagram space where nines go when they've succumbed to stress, a space with a complicated sense of loyalty and betrayal. Unlike Age of Ultron, however, in this film we see not Bruce but Hulk move from nine to six. "Earth hate Hulk," he complains. "Thor go; Hulk stay." He has given his loyalty to this battle-crazed planet that has made him both its champion and its prisoner.

A planet enamored with violence is only too happy to let Hulk be Hulk, but a planet enamored with violence is no place to make a life. Hulk has enjoyed his exile, but he needs to make his way home. For whatever reason, I'm reminded of Walt Whitman:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) ...

(Whitman’s omission of punctuation is perhaps prophetic; he contradicts himself “very well,” thank you very much. All large and multitudinous persons do. But I digress.)

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. ...

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Hulk wants a world that loves him, or at least doesn't hate him, or at least lets him be. Bruce Banner wants to be his own person, to be sought out for himself, to be accepted contradictions and all.

He has reason not to trust that what he wants will come to pass. Thor continues to see both Bruce and the Hulk as discreet challenges to be managed rather than a whole person to be cared for. He tells Hulk that he prefers Hulk over Bruce; he tells Bruce he prefers Bruce over Hulk.

Technically it’s Thor’s movie, so we allow it, and technically the movie is a comedy, so we laugh. But the capacity to be manipulated, to be absorbed into another person’s drama, is a particular vulnerability of the nine. For the Hulk, it’s just another way for his personality to be suppressed and subsumed.

Nines are always at risk of losing their selfhood. It’s no small wonder that Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America all have three films named after them; while Hulk has two feature films, his last solo outing was more than a decade ago. (Black Widow and Hawkeye, the other two original Avengers, have no feature films to date, for what it’s worth, but that’s another story and in any case it's in the process of being remedied.) Hulk is widely acknowledged as the “strongest Avenger,” but his willingness to be contingent, to be absorbed into another person’s story, makes him particularly vulnerable to losing touch with himself.

***

In previous posts I've commended a couple of books on the enneagram to you: Alice Fryling's Mirror for the Soul and Chris Heuertz's The Sacred Enneagram. In this post I'll point you to the immensely popular The Road Back to You by Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile. This winsome and gracious introduction the enneagram takes a different starting point than the other two books; you jump quickly into the characterizations of the nine enneagram spaces, which is immensely satisfying for the enneagram-curious, and Ian's tone (he is the primary writer and the dominant voice in the book) is friendly and pastoral. Considering how tender a thorough discussion of the enneagram can be, establishing such a tone is a real kindness.

The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Part Three: "You're Confusing Peace with Quiet"

Part three of a series. Read the prologue here.
Read part one here.
Read part two here.
***

The next film to feature the Hulk, Avengers: Age of Ultron, demonstrates early on that the team has figured out a way to manage the monster. Tony (with Bruce’s help) has developed special Hulkbuster armor for Iron Man in case Hulk goes on a rampage. But that's the remedy of last resort. Natasha has developed an incantation, a liturgy, that calms Hulk down and restores him to himself after most battles.

Just because the Avengers have developed these workarounds, however, doesn’t mean that the Hulk has been fixed. At a party, Natasha asks Bruce, “How long before you trust me?”

Bruce confesses, “It’s not you I don’t trust.”

Under stress the nine goes to six, a complicated Enneagram space that struggles with loyalty. Some sixes are hyper-loyal to a fault, assuming that they’ll be made safe by an unflinching association. Other sixes are more oppositional, assuming that their supposedly safest places are not safe at all. Bruce wrestles with this stress-induced loyalty by keeping his team at arms length. But as I said, it’s complicated, and when Tony invites him to help put “a suit of armor around the world,” Bruce goes along with the plan against his better judgment. “Peace in our time,” Tony says. “Imagine that.” That’s the way to a nine’s heart.

Age of Ultron is in some ways a Frankenstein story, and Bruce here plays Igor to Tony’s Frankenstein, helping him to build his own monster, Ultron, an artificial intelligence that develops self-awareness and an Oedipal rage toward Tony. The world is at risk once again, and Bruce, acting out of his damaged sense of self, is complicit.

Bruce is swayed by the prospect of peace, as most nines are. Natasha calls him on it in a particularly knowing way. “All my friends are fighters, and here comes this guy who spends all his time avoiding the fight because he knows he’ll win.” For Bruce, the avoidance of conflict is the path to peace. Ultron offers a cutting insight for him and all of us: “I think you’re confusing peace with quiet.”

Age of Ultron is preoccupied with the monsters in all of us - which is, in a way, also the agenda of the enneagram, which helps us to identify the false self that is subsuming and suppressing our true self. Natasha shares the story of her tragic background with Bruce and asks, “Still think you’re the only monster in the team?” The Vision reflects out loud on his essential nature: “Maybe I am a monster. I don’t think I’d know if I were one.” And Stark, once again manipulating Bruce’s loyalties, asserts plainly: “We’re monsters, buddy. We gotta own it.”

The marvelous monstrosity of the Hulk is that pain and increased stress only make him stronger, more invincible, more monstrous. He is not safe for the world, and he knows it. “Where can I go? Where in the world am I not a threat?"

He also, however, knows that the world is not safe for him, and after a particularly destructive battle he realizes that, now that “the world has seen the Hulk as he really is,” he has to disappear or he will never find his elusive peace.

Ultimately the Avengers defeat Ultron and save the day. But Bruce can’t be coaxed into acceptance of the monster within him — nor can he accept the acceptance he’s been offered by the team. Natasha tricks him into converting into the Hulk and tells him, “Now go be a hero.” He takes off to fight — nines are famously agreeable — but after the fight is over, he cuts his friends off and runs away. He is seeking peace — a peace that sounds suspiciously like quiet.

“Humans are odd,” Vision says near the end of the film. “They think that order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won’t be. But there is grace in their failings.” Bruce has failed at self-acceptance, failed at intimacy with those who love him, failed to trust, failed to live in the truth. His friends have failed him as well, managing and manipulating him, drawing out whatever incomplete aspect of his essential self is most convenient to them at the time. The Hulk will run away, looking for peace. The world will be left without his strength. We won’t see the monster on earth ever again.

***

In the previous post I commended to you Alice Fryling's book Mirror for the Soul. In this post I'll point you toward Chris Heuertz's sweeping and moving book The Sacred Enneagram. Like Alice, Chris is not overly preoccupied with the enneagram numbers/spaces but rather with the enneagram's agenda - a deeper understanding of the self, a more gracious and graceful way of moving in the world. Worth a read for real.

The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Part Two: "I'm Always Angry"

For previous posts in this running series of posts on the enneagram (including the rationale for the series), click here.

Having left Bruce Banner in the rubble of the building he destroyed, we now travel to New York, where the rest of the team has rallied for the final battle of the first Avengers movie. Things are about to get crazy. Bruce arrives late to the party but just in time for the worst of it. As the team steels for an attack, Captain America says, “Dr Banner, now might be a really good time for you to get angry.”

That’s when we learn the truth behind the Hulk: “That’s my secret, Captain—I’m always angry.”

Nines live in the gut triad. Whereas other triads act from the head or the heart, nines act on instinct, and just as often on impulse. Anger is the key emotion of the gut triad, and while eights give vent to their anger and ones seek to suppress it, nines prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist. They disassociate from their anger, banishing it from their presence.

Of course this is impossible, as we discover that Bruce has learned. But it’s the wish fantasy of the nine that they can protect the world around them from the monster within them. The catastrophe is all the more pronounced when the lie behind this logic is born out. The heroics we observe from the Hulk are especially destructive, with inordinate collateral damage. In a comical moment, the Hulk and Thor team up to put the beat down on an invading alien, destroying a building in the process. They enjoy the victory for a moment—then Hulk punches his ally Thor out of the shot.

In the end the team has won, but it looks as though it cost them Tony Stark—until Hulk shouts him back to life.

Nines make for good friends, and they are often appreciated for their contribution to the greater good. But the unreconciled self is never far removed from their besetting struggle, so that even the most constructive contributions of the Hulk - of any enneagram 9 - may involve an undercurrent of violence.

***

There are lots of good books on the enneagram. I'll mention some of them in this series. A particular favorite of mine is Mirror for the Soul, by Alice Fryling. Alice's book approaches the enneagram slowly, inductively, in a way that I find especially helpful for identifying your type and finding spiritual practices and postures that interact productively with your type. You can get it here.

The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Part Five: "The Brains and the Brawn Together"

For previous posts in this running series of posts on the enneagram (including the rationale for the series), click here.

***

The Avengers: Infinity War begins where Thor: Ragnarok ends. The Hulk has never been beaten before, but we’re not long into the film before Hulk suffers defeat at the hands of Thanos (who may also be a nine, but that’s another story). With nowhere left to hide in the universe, Hulk hides inside Bruce, refusing to emerge even when he is desperately needed. Bruce will have to find another way to be a hero.

Ironically, he puts on the armor of the Hulkbuster first introduced in The Avengers: Age of Ultron. We see Bruce elated — great power with no corresponding loss of control. He gets a taste of a different kind of life, foreshadowing the fulfillment of his arc to come. (Shown here with the film's audio over some random animation.)

The endgame for Bruce is further foreshadowed in his appeal to the Vision — the second, more evolved monster he helped Tony create (after Ultron; see part three of this series) — to lay down something that seems central to his identity but is only the most obvious thing about him: “Your mind is made up of a complex construct of overlays...all of them learning from each other.” We may contain monsters, but we also contain multitudes. Bruce is coming to recognize that a persona is something distinct from a person. In a way, the Vision, like the Hulk, has been imprisoned by what the people around him have understood him to be. As Thomas Merton wrote, "The person must be rescued from the individual" - who we really are must be distinguished from and privileged above what we've made ourselves up to be.

Consider this thought experiment: Thanos’s intent is to eliminate half of all life. The climactic moment in the film is when he snaps his fingers to achieve his vision. Is it possible that only Bruce or the Hulk — not both — will survive? We don’t find out in Infinity War; we have to wait for the endgame.

***

The reveal of “Smart Hulk” in The Avengers: Endgame is thrilling to the superfan — this iteration of the Hulk was wildly popular in the comic books — but as much is concealed as revealed. There’s nothing more basic to superhero films than the origin story, and yet we meet Smart Hulk without the benefit of watching him come to be. Set five years after Thanos’s snap, Smart Hulk is firmly established in society: he poses for pictures with adoring children, eats in restaurants, wears cardigans, and is thoroughly comfortable in his own skin. It’s a happy ending — one of the few eucatastrophes we observe in the wake of the Infinity War — and the film is nowhere near over. How did this happen?

“For years,” Smart Hulk explains, ”I’d been treating the Hulk like he’s some kind of disease, something to get rid of.” Again we see the disassociation that enneagram nines resort to in privileging peace over emotional expression. ”I put the brains and the brawn together, now look at me — I’m the best of both worlds.” There is no longer Bruce and “the other guy,” no longer the Hulk and “puny Banner.” He is an integrated self, a person with no persona. He has no secret identity, no mask. He is a fully realized self.

This transformation happens offscreen, as many transformations do. Spiritual growth is soul work, and much of it happens in secret. But even such secret transformations can be epically impactful. It’s the Hulk who speaks kindly to Thor and helps coax him back into action after Thor has effectively checked out of life. While other Avengers treat Ant-Man like a second-class citizen, Hulk happily gives him his food after Ant-Man’s tacos are blown away by an approaching space craft. (Remember, it’s a superhero movie. Just go with it.) Hulk is ebullient, light of heart, compassionate, kind. When he is confronted with his past behavior, he is embarrassed by it, but he isn’t paralyzed by it. It’s Smart Hulk who is sent to persuade the Sorcerer Supreme to part with a stone she is sworn to protect—and he succeeds. She prophesies over him as she hands over the stone: “I’m counting on you, Bruce—we all are.”

Much has been made of Iron Man’s ultimate sacrifice at the end of Endgame, but it’s worth noting that Tony Stark's death was an act of violence: He died in the process of killing Thanos and his entire army. His final act was punctuated with an ego-soaked assertion of his persona: "I am Iron Man." Contrast this act of mass destruction with the Hulk, who like Iron Man put on the glove with the expectation that using it would kill him, but rather than using it to destroy, he brought half of creation back to life.

Thor, notably, wanted to be the one to wear the glove and make the sacrifice play - the latest example of him desperately trying to prove himself as “the strongest Avenger.” But Hulk was the one to do it, and he made the case calmly and soberly, not seeking to make a name for himself but seeking the greater good. “It’s like I was made for this,” he says not with a flourish of ego but a sigh of acceptance.

Hulk doesn’t die, but he is left permanently scarred, a good reminder that the truth will set you free, but it will send you off with a limp.

Flourishing nines reflect the best characteristics of the enneagram three — “the achiever.” Undaunted and ambitious, threes can accomplish great things, and the Hulk certainly does that. He no longer seeks a peace that looks suspiciously like quiet. He seems, actually, to seek the opposite: the confounding complexity of a universe twice as crowded as it once was. A flourishing nine seeks not to make peace but to make shalom — an environment of flourishing — and Smart Hulk’s ambition is met with success.

We all learn a lesson from Endgame, articulated succinctly by Thor’s mother Frigga, with echoes of Thomas Merton:

“Everyone fails at who they’re supposed to be. ... the measure of a person — of a hero — is how well they succeed at being who they are.”

Thor ends Endgame at the beginning of that heroic journey; the Hulk has already arrived, and the universe is blessed for it.

***

In previous posts I've commended several books on the enneagram: Alice Fryling's Mirror for the Soul, Chris Heuertz's The Sacred Enneagram, and The Road Back to You by Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile. In this post I'll commend to you a book about the Hulk. Hulk: Gray is an origin story, written decades after the Hulk's origin. A thoughtful, poignant consideration of how hard it must be to crave peace and love but be plagued with loneliness and violence. The Hulk, it seems, could be any one of us.

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Want another email in your life? I put out a quarterly newsletter about music, books, work, and midlife. I'd love to send it to you. Sign up for Middling here.

The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Epilogue: “More to You Than You Like to Show”

What follows is an epilogue to a running series on the Enneagram. For previous posts, click here.

***

The Hulk, it can at last be acknowledged, does not exist. He was the figment of Stan Lee’s imagination when he was introduced to the world more than fifty years ago. He’s been a comic book character, a television character, a cartoon character, and a movie character. He has never been flesh and blood.

So a series of posts like this is something other than a diagnosis of an actual, lived personality. This series has been, essentially, an extended confession. In labeling the Hulk an enneagram 9, I have been projecting onto this fictional being what I think is true of myself. I suspect any person of any enneagram type could have done something similar, finding quirks of the character that echo back some basic truth about themselves. A friend recommended I assign an Avenger to every type, but I think for me this deep dive with the Hulk has been more intellectually honest. In any event I’ve found it a helpful excuse to try to better understand myself.

At the outset of this series I said I would disregard the two official Hulk movies. They were both released before the Mark Ruffalo version of the character was introduced as part of the fully conceived Marvel universe. I’m still inclined to disregard the Ed Norton film — as good an actor as he is, that film seemed most interested in blowing stuff up. (It was, incidentally, retrofitted as part of the Avengers continuity when a scene featuring Tony Stark was tacked onto the credits. I mention this only to shore up my nerd cred.)

But I recently revisited the Ang Lee-directed film simply titled Hulk. I loved that movie when it was released back in 2003, and while its virtual lack of CGI effects leaves it looking pretty dated today, it still stands as the most thorough exploration of the character.

We first meet not Bruce Banner but his father, David, a scientific genius who becomes obsessed with discovering a cure for a genetic deformity he has accidentally passed to his son. His compulsiveness gets worse as Bruce grows from an infant to a toddler, ultimately getting him fired from his job, bringing calamity to his community, and subjecting his home to tragic violence.

Enneagram scholar Chris Heuertz identifies our parents’ inevitable inability to shield us from the tragedy of the world, and our subsequent efforts as small children to recover some safety and security, as a seminal moment in our formation in enneagram types. We create “programs for happiness” (borrowing from Fr. Thomas Keating) that demonstrate insight into what’s going on around us, but we are simply not mature or sophisticated enough to count the cost of these programs, even as we increasingly rely on them to order our worlds for us.

Young Bruce gets hurt while playing with a friend. He doesn’t cry, even though he’s obviously in pain. A neighbor parent is surprised, but Bruce’s mom is not. “Bruce is like that,” she says, with a sigh of resignation. “He’s just really bottled up.”

Bruce learned this response to trauma. His dad is combustible; it does no good to add to the stress of a moment. Even as his mother screams in terror and his father runs toward him with mania in his eyes and a knife in his hands, Bruce sits still, watching passively. He loses both parents that day, but he fully realizes the persona that will accompany him into adulthood.

Inevitably our programs for happiness betray us. St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 that to mature is to leave childish things behind us, and we might be forgiven for grunting “Duh!” in response. But it turns out that leaving behind these childish things is incredibly difficult. What shapes us in childhood is deeply rooted in us, and we spend decades reinforcing the flawed logic of the meaning we assigned to things when we were little.

By the time we meet the adult Bruce, we realize quickly that he is pretty good at sabotaging himself. The obvious love interest, Betty Ross, is his former girlfriend and current coworker. When Bruce asks her if they can still work well together after having been “close,” she jumps on the point: “We were close?”

Bruce is flummoxed by the question, but his response is reflective of how his programs for happiness have betrayed him: after decades of passive impassiveness—sloth, the besetting sin of the enneagram 9—he is unable to express himself to someone he clearly loves and who clearly loves him: “If I could be more, whatever, you know ...”

Betty demonstrates great compassion and insight in letting him off the hook while also letting him know he hasn’t fooled her: “I figure there’s more to you than you like to show.”

Eventually Bruce is exposed to radiation that will unleash the Hulk inside him. Along the way we learn that his father is alive and keeping tabs on him. His father has not changed; he views the world (and Bruce) in the same way—as inherently adversarial, someone/thing to be exploited and dominated. When he first reveals himself to Bruce, he elicits feelings that Bruce doesn’t know how to manage, and the monster almost emerges. His father’s response is belittling, cynical, lacking in love: “You’re going to have to watch that temper of yours.” Good luck with all that.

Bruce eventually does discover that the Hulk is living inside him. Betty is with him as he processes the experience: “What scares me the most is that when it happens, when it comes over me and I totally lose control, I like it.”

I identify with this fear. I regularly indulge in fantasies of giving vent to my anger. These fantasies are not physically violent, but they are what you might call rhetorically violent. I imagine myself saying things that are biting and penetrating, digging into vulnerabilities and leaving my opponents fully defeated and broken. There is no effective counterargument in these fantasies: I am always right and always fully vindicated. There is always someone permanently impacted by the encounter.

It’s worth quickly noting that I rarely — hardly ever — actually engage in such arguments. When I do, I don’t know how to feel afterward. I recently called our insurance company in a fit of rage over a rise in our rates and an accompanying letter that I very much did not like. When the representative explained the issue and reduced our rates by 60 percent — 60 percent! — I said “Thank you” and “I’m sorry” repeatedly. I didn’t know what to do with so much anger that had yielded such great results, and I felt incredible guilt. But I also felt enormous — like one of my fantasies had become reality, like I had been right about everything for my entire life.

I still don’t totally know how to think about that experience — and I still feel really bad about how I talked to the customer service rep.

Why do people like me treat anger as a disease? Why do we respond to it in extremes — either dissociation or violent expression? Betty offers her diagnosis as a condemnation of Bruce’s father: “All you’ve given Bruce is fear — fear of life.” I think she’s right: if sloth is the perpetual challenge of the nine, I think fear might be the underlying motivation.

But, as St John reminds us, perfect love casts out fear. Hulk movies don’t have happy endings per se — the hero is still a monster at the end of it — but they do have moments of reconciliation. We see Bruce find a place where he can make a meaningful contribution to the world. We see him start to manage and channel his rage in at least slightly more productive ways. But the moment that was most striking to me came before all that. It came when the Hulk comes face to face with Betty and she helps him find his way back to himself.

Bruce: You found me.
Betty: You weren’t that hard to find.
Bruce: Yes I was.

At the end of the film Bruce has become a monster but he has discovered his humanity. The path to that discovery was love. It’s love — the perfect love of God that St John evokes but also the stumbling but significant love of the people around us — that reconciles us to ourselves. It’s love that empowers us to become the best, fullest version of ourselves. It’s love that defeats our demons and helps us live in the truth.

It’s love that every nine needs — and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and every one. “So let us love one another,” writes St John, “for love comes from God.”

That’s it.

***

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The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Part One: "I'm Sorry, That Was Mean"

For the rationale for this running series of posts on the enneagram, click here.

We first meet Bruce Banner, in the first act of The Avengers, in a remote village in Kolkata. He has taken himself off the grid and entered a monkish life: celibacy, solitude, service. Serenity. His life there is interrupted when an emissary (Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow) is sent to “persuade” him to help confront an imminent threat. She marvels at the fact that he hasn’t had “an incident” (by which she means becoming the Hulk) in over a year. She’s all the more impressed given that he’s set up shop in a deeply impoverished, justice-deprived corner of the world - not exactly the best place to avoid stress.

”Avoiding stress isn’t the secret,” he replies, and we are introduced to a running theme for Bruce throughout the film. We won’t learn the secret until the world is about to end.

Turns out it’s not the Hulk that Natasha is looking for. The government needs Bruce’s expertise in gamma radiation to track down a weapon. But come for Bruce and you get the Hulk as a bonus, whether you want him or not.

Bruce is savvy. As we’ll see in future scenes, he’s always assessing the situation, considering what might cause the “other guy” (his language for the Hulk) to emerge. ”You brought me to the edge of the city—” he notes to Natasha. ”That’s smart.” He even tests the situation, startling Natasha to react instinctively with her military training. He apologizes as she pulls a gun on him. “I’m sorry. That was mean. ... Why don’t we do this the easy way where you don’t use that and the other guy doesn’t make a mess?” An entire military contingent stands down, and Bruce/Hulk joins the Avengers. He has made peace, in a manner of speaking.

We next see Bruce at a flying military base. (Remember - it’s a comic book movie. Don’t overthink it.) All the members of the fledgling Avengers are being introduced to each other, taking stock of each other. Bruce, unlike the others, moves to the margins, avoiding direct encounters. We’ll learn from Natasha in a future film what drives this behavior.

Two people—Loki, god of mischief, and Tony Stark, the insatiably curious Iron Man—are interested in seeing Bruce release the beast. Loki has scornful, malevolent reasons: He mocks Bruce as “a mindless beast who makes play he’s still a man” and wants to manipulate him for his own purposes. But Tony, a self-made superhero who clearly enjoys the savior business, is convinced that the Hulk is inherently heroic.

Bruce is unconvinced. Unlike Tony, whose heroic persona is securely encased in armor, “I’m exposed, like a nerve—it’s a nightmare.” As tensions mount, he gives voice to his motivation to keep the Hulk contained. “I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good" — note that he equates goodness with the active suppression of a central aspect of himself — "until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk.” The enneagram 9, it is widely understood, is happily left alone. No people, no problems. A lonely existence is a small price to pay for peace.

We return to the film’s steady tease: “You want to know my secret? ... You want to know how I stay calm?” He’s interrupted before he can tell us. Soon enough, his anger takes over and the Hulk finally emerges. Chaos ensues. Loki wins this battle, and we watch Hulk fall to the earth.

But we learn quickly that the Hulk is not the mindless beast Loki takes him for. We learn that he took care that no one would be hurt by his fall. “Son,” says an observer,” you’ve got a condition.” But whatever condition he has, the Hulk is human, created good, capable of good.

***

Check back here in a couple weeks for part two.