Thor vs Hulk: Who Would Win?

Now, this seems like an interesting comparison, doesn’t it? Thor is an Asgardian god and is known as one of the most powerful characters in Marvel’s universe, especially some of his iterations. On the other hand, Hulk is likewise known as one of the most powerful beings in Marvel’s universe and some of his iterations have been described as extremely dangerous. The two of them are, luckily, on the same side, but what would happen if the two of them actually clashed against each other? We’ll examine that in today’s article.
While a lot of people do think that Thor is the strongest Avenger, recent in-universe developments have confirmed that Hulk is stronger and there is no more doubt about who the strongest Avenger is. Since the comics officially confirmed it, we can only declare that Hulk would win this duel.
Our comparison is going to be divided into three sections. The first is going to bring an overview of the two characters, after which we are going to compare their powers, including their signature weapons. Finally, we’re going to bring you a detailed analysis of the two characters to determine which one would win in a direct clash.
Thor and his powers
Thor Odinson is a fictional comic book character created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby for the American comic book publishing house Marvel Comics. His first appearance occurs in Journey into Mystery #83 (1962). Inspired by Norse deity of the same name, Thor, known as the God of Thunder, is the heir to the throne of Asgard, son of Odin and Gaea.
Thanks to the powers derived from his dual heritage and the enchanted hammer Mjolnir, Thor is one of the strongest and most important protectors of both worlds, a founding superhero member of the Avengers and one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe.
Thor is the son of the father of the gods of Asgard, Odin, and the spirit of the Earth Jord (an avatar of Gaea). Odin’s goal was to have a son who had powers not derived solely from the homeland of the heavenly gods. So Odin created a cave in Norway, where Jord gave birth to Thor. Thor is raised among the Asgardians in the belief that Frigga, his father’s lawful wife, was also his biological mother.
He spent his childhood throwing himself into the most disparate adventures together with his envious adoptive brother Loki, his friends Balder, Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg and his first love, Lady Sif.
Soon, not denying the strength and nobility of his heritage, Thor becomes the best warrior of Asgard, skilled enough to be able to wield the enchanted hammer Mjolnir and to recover the ring of the Nibelung on behalf of his father under the guise of “Siegfried”, giving life to the legend of the same name.
However, all this leads the Asgardian prince to develop an arrogant, impulsive and almost warmongering character, which is why Odin decides to teach him the value of humility by exiling him to Earth (without memory or powers) in the body of a young and frail medical student Donald Blake who, after ten years, opens a private clinic in New York becoming a brilliant doctor known for his virtues of perseverance and compassion.
Realizing that he has learned his lesson, Odin makes his son go on vacation to Norway, near a cave, to find Mjolnir. Later Thor and his alter ego Donald Blake begin a double life, taking care of the sick in their private clinic together with nurse Jane Foster and defending humanity from evil.
The main adversaries faced by the “God of Thunder” during his first adventures are the Absorbing Man, the Destroyer, the Demoman, Zarrko, the Radioactive Man, the Lava Man, Cobra, Mister Hyde, Amora the Enchantress, Skurge the Executioner, Gargoyle and finally, his archenemy and adoptive brother Loki. After ha fight against Loki, Thor co-founded the Avengers with some of Earth’s heroes.
Falling in love with Jane Foster and life on Earth, Thor refuses to return to Asgard even after Odin marks the end of his exile, which creates numerous friction between father and son. Meanwhile, due to Loki’s machinations, the hero is drawn into a series of epic adventures such as facing the demon Surtur and the giant Skagg, alongside Odin and Balder, or proving his innocence from a false accusation before the Court of Gods; all these events force him to take a long period of absence from the Avengers.
Hulk and his powers
The Hulk is a fictional superhero appearing in stories published by Marvel Comics. Hulk is the alter ego of physicist Bruce Banner, who is a regular human, without any superhuman abilities. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the characters debuted in The Incredible Hulk #1 (1962) and is today regarded as one of Marvel’s strongest characters.
Dr. Robert Bruce Banner is a genius physicist, but a physically weak, socially withdrawn, and emotionally reserved human. During the experimental detonation of a gamma bomb, Banner saves teenager Rick Jones who has driven onto the testing field; Banner pushes Jones into a trench to save him, but is hit with the blast, absorbing massive amounts of gamma radiation. He awakens later seemingly unharmed by the incident, but that night transforms into a lumbering grey (yes, he was initially grey before having been recoloured) form. A pursuing soldier named the creature a “hulk”.
Originally, it was believed that Banner’s transformations into the Hulk were caused by sunset and undone at sunrise, but later, it was discovered to be caused by anger. Banner was, interestingly enough, cured in The Incredible Hulk #4, but chose to restore Hulk’s powers with Banner’s intelligence. He later became one of the founding members of the Avengers.
The Hulk is a green-skinned, hulking and muscular humanoid possessing a vast degree of physical strength. The two exist as separate dissociative personalities in the same body, and (generally) resent each other. The Hulk’s level of strength is normally conveyed as proportionate to his level of anger. Commonly portrayed as a raging savage, the Hulk has been represented with other personalities based on Banner’s fractured psyche, from a mindless, destructive force, to a brilliant warrior, or genius scientist in his own right.
Thor vs Hulk: Who is more powerful?
Our second section, despite a different title from our usual one, will still contain a comparison of the two characters’ powers. It won’t be a direct comparison as much as a listing of their powers abilities, which is going to serve as a basis for our analysis in section three of our article. Now, let us begin.
Firstly, let us see what Thor can do. Thor is a god and as such, he has a lot of the same powers his father, Odin, has. But he is still weaker than Odin. He is superhuman in most aspects (strength, durability, intelligence, longevity, etc.) but unlike Thanos, he is not immortal. He is practically invulnerable, but he does age and, like all the other Asgardian gods, will eventually die; it’ll just take him longer than your average bear to do so.
The thin with Thor is that he has access to a variety of unimaginable powers that stem from Asgard, the best-known being the powers of Mjolnir, the Stormbreaker and the Odin Force. Thor can also use other forms of energy and blend with them, as he did with Power Cosmic. There’s also the forbidden Warrior’s Madness, which can turn Thor into an unstoppable beast, but also destroy his psyche, which is why it was banned by Odin.
What about the Hulk? Being exceptionally strong, the Hulk is known for becoming stronger the angrier he gets. It is even speculated that there are no known limits to Hulk’s powers and he has truly demonstrated his enormous strength on several occasions. Banner’s subconscious influence limits his powers to a certain degree, but without him – his strength is practically limitless and is one of the strongest beings in the universe.
Along with that, the Hulk also has exceptional durability, regeneration, and endurance. He is practically invulnerable and although he can be killed, the degree of these powers varies between interpretations. It is known that he has endured solar temperatures, nuclear explosions, and planet-shattering impacts. He also has an exceptional healing factor that certainly makes him someone you wouldn’t want to face in combat.
Before we continue, let us see how the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z (2010) compares the two characters:
Thor | Hulk | |
Intelligence | 2/7 | 2-6/7 |
Strength | 7/7 | 7/7 |
Speed | 7/7 | 3/7 |
Durability | 6/7 | 7/7 |
Energy Projection | 6/7 | 1-5/7 |
Fighting Skills | 4/7 | 4/7 |
As we can see, Thor and Hulk are both like gods and are powerful as gods, despite the latter not being one. This, of course, has a lot of influence on our next section so we are certainly going to take that into consideration.
Thor vs Hulk: Who would win?
And now for the most important and interesting section of our article – the analysis. Here, we are going to use what we have found out about these two characters and analyze how all these facts would (or would not) help them in a fight against each other. Let us continue.
Had it not been for Marvel Comics, we would’ve had a very difficult job comparing these two. Namely, Thor and Hulk are very different characters – one is an actual god, while the other is a normal human who became a monster after a freakish incident involving gamma radiation. Yet, they seem to be on a very similar, if not the same, level of power. Sure, Thor has some abilities that the Hulk doesn’t – thunder and weather manipulation, extreme speed, divine knowledge, etc. – but that doesn’t seem to be enough as the Hulk is extremely durable and has a pronounced healing factor which makes him virtually immortal (not exactly, but he’s very close).
The winner here would certainly not be obvious were it not for Marvel’s stories. Namely, Thor and the Hulk have clashed on several occasions in the comic books, with the most notable clash taking place in Immortal Hulk #7, when the Hulk took a lot of Thor’s punches before beating him to a pulp. This was further confirmed in the more recent Immortal Hulk #46, when the two of them, after receiving several upgrades, clashed again but with the same result.
This settles the basic question – the Hulk is stronger than Thor and he would defeat him in a fight. Despite all of Thor’s divine powers, he could not defeat Hulk in a fight, simply because the Hulk is so uniquely powerful.
Now, let us answer some additional questions.
In what movie do Thor and Hulk fight?
As far as the MCU is concerned, Thor and Hulk have been part of the Avengers since the group’s formation. Although they haven’t always been on the best of terms, they did develop a solid friendship between them as time passed. Yet, somehow, in Thor: Ragnarok, the two of them ended up fighting. This happened solely because Hulk was kept as a gladiator on Sakaar, where he ended up after Age of Ultron. This is a brief reminder of what happened in the movie:
In the two years following the Battle of Sokovia, Thor has wandered the cosmos in search of the Infinity Stones and is now a prisoner of the demon Surtur. The latter reveals to Thor that his father Odin is no longer in Asgard and that the kingdom of the gods will soon be destroyed by Ragnarök, once Surtur joins his crown with the Eternal Flame. Thor breaks free and defeats him, taking his crown and thereby believing that he has prevented Ragnarök. Thor returns to Asgard and discovers that Loki is alive and pretends to be Odin. Thor forces him to accompany him to his father; with the help of Stephen Strange, Thor and Loki track down Odin in Norway. Odin reveals to them that he is close to death and that with her departure Hela, her eldest daughter, she will be freed from the prison in which she had been locked up millennia earlier. Hela was Odin's right hand man and she and he conquered the Nine Kingdoms, but when her lust for power grew out of proportion to her Odin was forced to imprison her. Odin dies and soon after Hela appears and destroys Thor's hammer, Mjolnir; Thor and Loki try to escape to Asgard through the Bifrǫst, but Hela chases them and throws them into space. Hela arrives in Asgard and proclaims herself the new queen, slaughtering the city's army and the Three Warriors, resurrecting her army of the dead and her loyal wolf Fenris. With the help of the Asgardian Skurge, Hela decides to use the Bifrǫst to conquer the other worlds, but Heimdall steals the sword that controls the bridge and escapes. Meanwhile, Thor crashes on the planet Sakaar, a landfill planet surrounded by numerous wormholes. Thor is captured by a bounty hunter named SR-142, who hands him over to the planet's ruler, the Grand Master. Thor also meets Loki, who has managed to get in the graces of the Grandmaster, and discovers that SR-142 is actually the last survivor of the Valkyries, legendary Asgard fighters killed by Hela. Thor is forced by the Grandmaster to fight against his old friend the Hulk; Thor almost manages to defeat him, but the Grandmaster manipulates the race to make the Hulk win. After the fight, Thor tries to convince the Hulk and SR-142 to escape with him to save Asgard, but they both refuse. Thor escapes and reaches the Quinjet which brought the Hulk to Sakaar; The Hulk follows him to bring him back and Thor mistakenly activates a video recording of Natasha Romanoff which causes the Hulk to transform into Bruce Banner for the first time in two years. The Grandmaster orders SR-142 and Loki to find Thor and Hulk, but SR-142 decides to help Thor and delivers Loki who, having lost the Grandmaster's trust, decides to follow them. SR-142 frees the other gladiators who, led by Korg and Miek, start a revolt. Loki helps the group find a spaceship to escape but tries to betray Thor, who anticipates his moves and leaves him stunned on Sakaar. Thor, Banner, and SR-142 pass through a wormhole and arrive in Asgard, where Hela is attacking Heimdall and the unarmed citizens. Banner transforms into the Hulk again to fight Fenris, while Thor and SR-142 face off against Hela. Loki and the gladiators come to the rescue and help the citizens of Asgard escape aboard a spaceship stolen from the Grandmaster. Skurge, repentant of his actions, sacrifices himself to allow the spaceship to escape. During the fight against Hela, Thor loses an eye; at that moment she has a vision of Odin and realizes that the only way to defeat Hela is to unleash Ragnarök and destroy Asgard, as Hela draws her power from it. Thor sends Loki to retrieve Surtur's crown to plunge it into the Eternal Flame; Surtur is reborn and destroys Asgard, thus killing Hela. Thor and the others flee aboard the spaceship along with the citizens of Asgard. Thor becomes the new king of Asgard and decides to bring his subjects to Earth. In one scene during the credits, the group is stopped by a huge spaceship blocking their passage. In the scene after the credits, the Grandmaster tries to calm the spirits of the rioters on Sakaar.
Who won the movie fight, Thor or Hulk?
Well, the fight between Thor and Hulk was a brief one, really, but it did have its clear winner – the Hulk – which further affirms our answer. The Hulk beat Thor to a pulp and here’s how it all happened:
Can Hulk lift Thor’s hammer?
We have already discussed that in order to lift Mjolnir, one has to be found worthy by the hammer itself. There are several criteria that one has to fulfill in order to be worthy, and we honestly do think that Hulk would fulfill them. The comics, as seen on the cover image above, do confirm it, as Hulk did manage to use Mjolnir in Avengers Assemble #4 (2002), when he whacked Thor with it. Okay, to be fair, Thor was still holding on to the hammer, but it still counts in our book. Therefore, we think that the Hulk could, indeed, lift Thor’s hammer.
And that’s it for today. We hope you had fun reading this and that we have given you all the information you were looking for. See you next time and don’t forget to follow us!