Heroes Reborn was open-ended, so it absolutely was intended to be permanent if it worked. And, indeed, had it worked, more and more stuff would have likely been farmed out to outside studios, and the Marvel Universe as we know it today would have been fragmented and ruptured. Franklin’s ball was always a back door to the heroes’ return, yes, in the eventuality that that was the way things went, but it was far from a certainty. And the two Hulks came about because the Hulk wasn’t initially a part of the agreement, and then he was added in relatively late in the process, so that’s what was negotiated. Had things gone on longer, inevitably the Marvel Universe Bannerless Hulk would have had to have been done away with.