Who is Thunderbolt Ross? The Hulk Villain’s Origin & Powers Explained

General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross is the Incredible Hulk’s oldest and most committed enemy, hunting the iconic Marvel hero ever since his first appearance in 1962. He’s been featured in the MCU, turned in a Hulk himself and played an integral role in the comics.

Ross first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #1, just a few panels after Bruce Banner himself. In charge of Banner’s research into the gamma bomb, Ross hated the scientist even before he became the Hulk. He pressured Banner to rush the tests, shouting “The trouble with you is you’re a milksop! You’ve got no guts!” As a result, the researchers failed to see a teenager driving into the blast zone.

Does this make him responsible for the accident that left Banner in the bomb’s path and his own archenemy’s existence? The story also introduces his daughter, Betty, who would later become Bruce’s love interest and, eventually, his wife. So who is he, what has he done, and what can he do?

The Origins of ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross

Ross grew suspicious of Banner’s disappearances whenever the Hulk was around, and he got plenty of opportunities to investigate his suspicions as head of the government’s Operation Hulk task force. This was an ideal situation for Ross: not only did he get to indulge his resentment of Banner, but he also got to return to active duty after many unhappy years behind a desk.  Their relationship stayed more or less the same for decades; he was so obsessed with defeating the Hulk that Deadpool Killustrated suggested he was a parallel-universe version of Moby-Dick‘s Captain Ahab.

Still, their feud had its ups and downs. When Bruce Banner gained control of the Hulk in the seventies, Ross no longer had an excuse to fight him. He even, under protest, gave Banner his consent to marry Betty. But of course, that couldn’t last. Before Betty and Bruce could complete their marriage ceremony, their old enemy the Leader reverted the Hulk to his old, violent self. As a result, Ross took charge of a new unit of “Hulkbusters” based out of New Mexico.

When Bruce and Betty tried to marry again, he was less understanding. This time, he appeared at the ceremony himself, packing a gun and shooting the best man before Betty managed to talk him down. During Peter David’s classic run, he seemed to finally warm up to Banner — but when Betty died from the radiation poisoning she had caught from the Hulk, accelerated by his enemy the Abomination with a transfusion of his own blood, Ross declared all-out war on him again.

The Red Hulk

In 2008, writer Jeph Loeb and artist Ed McGuinness introduced a mysterious new Hulk. He quickly made an impression beating up some powerful people: punching out the cosmically powerful Watcher, taking advantage of zero gravity to lift Thor’s hammer. He even killed the Abomination, with some very un-Hulk-like use of firearms. After years of investigating, Bruce Banner discovered this Red Hulk was General Ross. “Thunderbolt” had agreed to let an alliance of the Marvel Universe’s greatest evil geniuses called the Intelligencia irradiate him and send him to enact their plans in return for bringing Betty back from the dead. This gave Ross all the powers of the original Hulk: he had the strength “of a nuclear explosion,” could leap enormous distances, and even if something managed to injure him, he could heal. In addition, he could absorb energy to make himself even stronger.

Captain America found the Red Hulk imprisoned in Gamma Base after a battle with the original and invited him to join the Avengers. This wouldn’t be the last super-team Ross joined as the Red Hulk. He joined the Circle of Four with Venom, Ghost Rider, and X-23 for a battle with the demonic Blackheart where he bonded with both Venom’s symbiote and the Spirit of Vengeance. When Daniel Way and Steve Dillion relaunched Thunderbolts for Marvel Now!, they put him in charge — fitting, given his old nickname. Ross recruited a team of classic Marvel antiheroes including Venom, Ghost Rider, Deadpool, and Elektra for a black-ops government strikeforce.

Where Is He Now?

In Gerry Duggan and Mark Bagley’s storyline The Omega Hulk, Bruce Banner developed a new personality: Doc Green, as strong as the Hulk, but a whole lot smarter. With some help from Deadpool, Doc went to work taking the gamma powers away from every other Hulk in the Marvel Universe. The Red Hulk monitored his progress, and after nearly being beaten by Doc Green, he hid out in the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, prepared to absorb its energy if Banner found him again. Unfortunately for him, Deadpool shot him with a bullet that blocked his energy-absorbing powers, and Ross became an ordinary human being again.

When an evil Captain America took over the United States for HYDRA in Secret Empire, Ross joined the resistance, earning a pardon for the many crimes he’d committed throughout his career. In Ta-Nehisi Coates and Leinil Francis Yu’s ongoing run on Captain America, Ross turned his attention from Bruce Banner to Steve Rogers. His pardon secured him a job investigating terrorists cloned from the super-soldier Nuke. Ross froze Rogers out of the operation, allegedly because of his civilian status and his doppelgänger’s actions in Secret Empire. In reality, he was part of the Power Elite masterminding the attacks. This turned out to be a bad decision, as his co-conspirators hired an assassin codenamed the Foreigner to murder him and frame Captain America.

That doesn’t mean we won’t be seeing him again soon. Al Ewing and Joe Bennett’s The Immortal Hulk has revealed that thanks to gamma radiation’s connection to the otherworldly One-Below-All, no Hulk can stay dead very long. That series has already dropped hints of Ross’s return, as Betty and Bruce attend his funeral waiting for the other shoe to drop. His body went mysteriously missing as the Cult of Carnage dug it up to extract the symbiotic codex he’d gotten from Venom in Absolute Carnage. It’s safely buried now, but there’s no telling when Thunderbolt Ross might claw his way back out…

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