The following contains light spoilers for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Season 1, Episode 1, "A Normal Amount of Rage", now streaming on Disney+.
The star of the new Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is Tatiana Maslany's Jennifer Walters. Yet as any fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe knows, no solo outing is just about a single character, especially this far into Phase Four. This show is also the first time fans get to spend with Bruce Banner post-Endgame, so it's nice that She-Hulk pays tribute to his bromance with the late Tony Stark.
Bruce Banner is a "different person" than when he fought Tim Roth's Abomination in 2008's The Incredible Hulk. This is one of the very Deadpool-like gags in the show, referencing that actor Mark Ruffalo replaced Edward Norton as the Hulk in The Avengers -- but it also has some narrative truth. The other reason that today's Bruce Banner is different from the Bruce of 15 years ago is that he became friends with Robert Downey, Jr.'s Tony Stark.
When Tony first learns of Bruce, it's at the very end of Iron Man 2, which happens the same week as The Incredible Hulk. Tony goes to meet Thunderbolt Ross, played by the late William Hurt, before he meets the actual Bruce and the two do scientific work together in the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Later in the film, Tony is the only one who just knows that Bruce will show up to "suit up with the rest of" the Avengers. At the end of that film, they go off together and a lifelong friendship is born. Before Bruce met Tony, he spent most of his time hiding from people. Having the (literally) most powerful billionaire in the MCU world as a bestie changed things for the better. In the She-Hulk: Attorney at Law series premiere, Bruce reveals to Jennifer just how much Tony did for him.
In Season 1, Episode 1, "Whose Show Is This?", Jennifer wakes up after her first transformations at a retreat somewhere in Mexico. Bruce reveals that Tony built him a retreat and a laboratory so he could have solitude and figure out how to blend his Hulk and Banner personas. When Bruce and Jennifer find themselves at his beachfront bar, Bruce tells her the story of how he and Tony built it together -- well, technically, he built it while Tony just drank and kvetched about the Avengers falling apart or losing to Thanos. Yet their friendship remained strong, with Tony even carving "B.B. + T.S." into the bar top. It's a subtle thing, but shows that even after the Avengers collapsed, the duo remained very close friends.
The MCU Phase 4 is all about grief, examining the trauma these superheroes suffer and the losses they endure. Spider-Man: Far From Home was the only movie that really focused on the death of Tony Stark. And given that Universal owns the distribution rights to solo Hulk films, any examination of Bruce's emotions has to come via his presence in another character's story. But She-Hulk writer Jessica Gao doesn't spend too much time on Bruce's reaction to Tony's absence. In fact, it's how subtle and unspoken it is that makes it so heartbreaking. The show's (and, thereby, the audience's) focus is on Jennifer and how becoming a Hulk changes her life. But MCU fans who know Hulk will be moved by the quiet grief Ruffalo is able to deliver (through a layer of CGI, no less!) as a standout dramatic moment.
That She-Hulk: Attorney at Law takes a moment to honor the Bruce Banner and Tony Stark bromance feels right. One fair critique of the Avengers is that very few of them seem to truly be friends. But even though they had only scant scenes across a handful of films, the Hulk and Iron Man friendship was one of the MCU's strongest.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law streams Thursdays on Disney+.