Iron Man’s death in Avengers: Endgame not only tore fans’ hearts out but also devastated his friends. As Tony died on the battlefield, he was surrounded by many of his loved ones and superhero allies. A widely-seen deleted scene expanded on this by featuring all of the Avengers kneeling in honor of their fallen comrade. Nearly all of them, that is. Strangely, Hulk is nowhere to be found when everyone’s mourning Stark and doesn’t show up again until Bruce Banner appears at Tony’s funeral.
Though we were denied a proper farewell for the Science Bros., fans have now finally spotted Hulk’s whereabouts during Iron Man’s death. If you look closely during the deleted scene, the Jade Giant can actually be seen situated near Black Panther. He’s hard to pinpoint because he’s hidden behind some debris and the scene fades to black a couple of seconds after he appears, but he is there.
See for yourself in the screenshot below:
It’s strange that we focus on several characters who hardly know Tony or who even haven’t met him before, such as Valkyrie and Shuri, but Hulk is sidelined when one of his best friends dies. As ScreenRant points out, maybe the filmmakers felt that the full-CG hero would take away from the real human emotion of the scene. Or it was simply done as a cost-cutting measure, to save on creating these extra VFX shots.
As we’ve been told before by the directors and writers, despite being three-hours long, there was still only time to do so much in Avengers: Endgame, so certain character dynamics had to fall by the wayside. Unfortunately, Hulk was hit twice in that regard as we also didn’t get much of Banner and Black Widow, though at least there was a moment where he got to grieve his old flame after her demise, unlike with Tony.