It Seems Incredible but NBC Is Killing the Hulk

Incredibly, the Hulk is dead.

At least he will be after NBC airs “The Death of the Incredible Hulk” on Sunday.

Any chance that at some future ratings crisis the network could revive the not-so-jolly green giant?

“I don’t see how,” said the Hulk’s alter ego, Lou Ferrigno. “The way he dies in the show--he falls to his death and breaks his neck --I don’t know how they could bring him back.

“I was surprised when I saw the script because there’s no cliffhanger ending, no clues that he might come back.”

In the show, David Banner (Bill Bixby) gets a job as a janitor in a top-secret government laboratory in hopes that he will find the means to stop himself becoming the Hulk every time he loses his temper.

Add to the plot some international terrorists who want to create super-being soldiers and you get lots of action, which ends with the Hulk’s death.

“David Banner says, ‘I’m a free man now,’ ” Ferrigno said. So is Bill Bixby, who not only plays Banner, but also was director and executive producer.

Ferrigno has enjoyed playing the Hulk, who began life in the CBS series that debuted March 10, 1978. “I’m a totally different person,” Ferrigno said, “and it has given me a chance to escape into the character.

“A lot of my anger was involved with the Hulk. Every one of us has a little Hulk inside of us. In one scene, I come into a house like a train, I see a wall, I want to smash it. I got the chance to do it, to fantasize. If I ever really went into a wall like that, I’d be in the hospital.”