Rumor: How The Hulk (Maybe, Possibly) Finds His Way To 'Thor: Ragnarok'

Almost everything we know about Thor: Ragnarok is built on rumor, conjecture, and offhand comments from Mark Ruffalo. We know that Cate Blanchett is probably joining the cast. We know the plot will involve Thor and the Hulk teaming up to go on some kind of cosmic road trip. We know that Taika Waititi of What We Do in the Shadows fame is on board to direct. But beyond that? Be skeptical.

So be skeptical with this new rumor that claims to know exactly how the Incredible Hulk ends up the third Thor adventure. If you want to know more, grab your pinch of salt and follow me.

This new report comes from the good folks over at Geek.com, who are new-ish to the superhero movie scoop game and therefore must be treated with the appropriate amount of skepticism until they have a solid track record. I will say this much: the writers behind this recent wave of spoiler-filled reports (including the identity of Blanchett's character) aren't the kind of people who make things up out of thin air. So consider all of this accurate or, at worst, simply misinformed – I have it on good faith that there's nothing malicious going on here.

And with that said, this next report does involve some potential spoilers, so feel free to turn back now if you want to know as little as possible.

Still with me? Okay. So according to this scoop, Tom Hiddleston's Loki and Cate Blanchett's Hela team up, take over Asgard, and exile Chris Hemsworth's Thor deep into outer space, where he lands on an alien planet, gets imprisoned, and finds himself forced to fight in a gladiatorial arena. And then:

Thor knows that he has to get to some MacGuffin weapon object to defeat Hela and Loki (could this be the Infinity Gauntlet that Thanos is in possession of, or maybe an assemblage of Infinity Stones?) and he has to get off the planet. Thor runs through all of his alien opponents in gladiatorial combat, even without his trademark hammer. Finally, Thor has to face the current champion of the arena, and wouldn't you know who that ends up being? The Hulk.

And this is where an old rumor rears its head. Years ago, there were rumblings that Marvel Studios was planning a Planet Hulk movie, which would adapt the celebrated storyline where the Hulk finds himself stranded on a distant planet and forced to battle in an arena. If this report is accurate, we now know where the Planet Hulk movie went – it vanished into the new Thor movie.

Geek.com's report goes into further detail and includes some additional spoilers that I have deliberately not recounted here. If you want to know more, you can follow this link and learn as much as you care to know. In any case, it's easy to see where the movie goes from here: rather than kill each other in the ring, the former Avengers break out together and buddy cop their way across the galaxy to prevent the Norse Apocalypse.

Like all big movie rumors, this could change. Or it could have already been changed and this report is based on an old script. We'll only know for sure when Thor: Ragnarok opens on November 3, 2017. In the meantime, Taika Waititi's new movie is playing at the Sundance Film Festival and our own Angie Han says it is excellent.