In Incredible Hulk (2023) #18, Bruce Banner and the Hulk are dragged into the final stage of the Las Vegas horror arc, where the Eldest reveals the true shape of her plan. Banner’s earlier deal to save Charlie Tidwell is exposed as the trap that let the Eldest bind the Hulk and use him as a living key for a ritual meant to unleash her imprisoned Mother — the primordial source of the nightmare mythos that has haunted this run. With the Green Door/Below-Place mythology hanging over everything, Eldest positions Hulk as the perfect vessel: a gamma creature built to endure, regenerate, and be “owned.” The issue is essentially the villain’s victory lap — Hulk is restrained and mutilated, Banner is psychologically broken down, and the ritual proceeds with the clear implication that if the Eldest succeeds, this won’t just be another monster problem; it will be an existential catastrophe tied directly to the oldest roots of gamma horror in Marvel.
In #19, the climax erupts when Charlie becomes the unexpected counterweight to Eldest’s control. Charlie’s fear and trauma are weaponized by the Eldest, but that attempt backfires: Charlie is empowered through the wolf-goddess connection that has been lurking in the background of the arc, and she transforms into a feral, supernatural predator capable of tearing through the Eldest’s Skinwalker cult. Eldest tries to crush her anyway — both physically and psychologically — and the confrontation becomes a savage, mythic brawl in the heart of the underground temple. That chaos gives the Hulk the opening he needs. Banner and Hulk reassert themselves, and Hulk’s resurgence is depicted as a grotesque rebirth: he breaks free, re-forms, and unleashes the full weight of his rage on the Eldest in a decisive, cathartic beatdown that ends the ritual and destroys her physical form before she can bring her Mother through.
The arc closes on consequences rather than celebration: Charlie is no longer “saved” in a clean way, and Banner may have permanently changed what Hulk is in the Marvel Universe. Charlie remains transformed and vanishes into the night, leaving Banner with the brutal reality that his bargain did not restore her life to normal — it simply moved her into a different kind of cursed existence. The Eldest, meanwhile, is not simply “gone”: even after losing her body, she persists as something vengeful and lingering, promising retaliation and implying that breaking the eternal bargain carries a cost. The biggest takeaway for Marvel continuity is that the book treats Hulk’s immortality and the Green Door era as something that can be damaged, redirected, or even ended by supernatural law — meaning Hulk may no longer be the unkillable, endlessly returning force he was during the height of the Below-Place mythology. Hulk wins the fight, stops an ancient catastrophe, and ends the Eldest’s immediate reign — but he walks away with his world scarred, his ally transformed, and his own “immortal” status thrown into doubt going forward.
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