Clint Barton may be retiring, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe won’t be without a Hawkeye. In Hawkeye, the Marvel spinoff headed to Disney+, Jeremy Renner will return as the MCU’s resident archer to pass off his bow and arrows — and the Hawkeye code name — to a new generation.
On November 24, Jeremy Renner will officially begin the process of passing the bow to Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop when the first two episodes of the new series hit Disney+. Here’s everything that we know about Hawkeye so far.
Little MCU tie-in
Speaking with Games Radar, director Rhys Thomas described Hawkeye as “definitely a stand-alone thing.” “But yes, we know their past, and obviously what happened in Endgame,” Thomas said. “We know in these first two episodes that Clint’s dealing with the fallout of that.”
He went on to add, “It’s definitely a stand-alone thing in that we have this Christmas setting, and this very fixed timeframe story. But it being the MCU, of course, it all connects in some way as well. And we’ve got new characters, and this was teed up at the end of Black Widow as well. And so everything is always a nice entry point. But I think for the most part, the story is its own little world.”
TV spots
In the first official TV spots, Vera Farmiga is confirmed as Kate Bishop’s mom, Eleanor Bishop, and Kate thinks Hawkeye is the least popular Avenger due to “branding issues.”
Official release date
Hawkeye‘s official Twitter account released a new promo and revealed the release date for the first two episodes at the same time. The new series debuts November 24 on Disney+.
First trailer
The first trailer for the upcoming Disney+ series has arrived! We’ve finally got our first footage of Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop, the Hawkeye-obsessed young woman who will inherit Clint Barton’s bow in what looks almost like Marvel’s attempt at a Christmas series. It’s the most action-packed, Christmas-themed trailer you’ll see today.
Photos and video from the set
Any Marvel movie filming in New York City is bound to get a lot of attention, but Hawkeye seems to have fully immersed itself in the city, with an enormous amount of amateur photo and video hitting the web. Check out some of the footage and photos below, including the first look at Vera Farmiga and Tony Dalton in costume.
Production begins
Production notices around Brooklyn reveal that Hawkeye begins shooting in the first week of December. (Note: Anchor Point is a pseudonym for the show.)
Shortly after this announcement, our first set footage began to roll out. First, of Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld (playing Hawkeye’s successor, Kate Bishop) running into the subway. Then, later, we got our first glimpses of Steinfeld in full new-Hawkeye costume.
Concept art
Hawkeye is still a long way off, but artist Andy Park helped bring a little life to the project by sharing concept art of Kate Bishop as she’ll appear in the Disney+ series.
The star
Marvel is bringing in some impressive star power for Hawkeye, with Oscar-nominated actress Hailee Steinfeld offered the lead role in the series (according to Variety). Steinfeld is expected to portray Kate Bishop, the teenage girl who adopted the archer’s code name in the popular Marvel Comics series Hawkeye and went on to become a member of the Young Avengers superhero team.
No stranger to superhero and genre fare, Steinfeld recently played the lead role in the positively reviewed Transformers spinoff, Bumblebee, and voiced one of the main characters in the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse animated feature. Previously, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in 2010’s True Grit.
Speaking with Entertainment Tonight, Steinfeld described Bishop as “a badass.” “As I’m in the process of developing her, I’m working with some incredible filmmakers that are helping me bring her to life,” Steinfeld commented. “I can’t wait for people just to see how we are interpreting this character through the comics. In her own sort of ways, she’s such a badass. There’s no denying that. She’s so smart and witty and quick, and her physical ability to do so many things is through the roof. It’s really tested me, and it’s kept me going through quarantine, I will say, it’s given me a reason to stay with it.”
Release date and logo
At Comic-Con International 2019, Marvel unveiled its Phase 4 plans, including when we can expect to see Hawkeye grace the silver screen. According to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, Hawkeye will debut in fall 2021, around the same time as Thor: Love and Thunder.
During the presentation, Marvel also shared Hawkeye‘s logo, which should look familiar to dedicated comic readers.
Yes, that’s the same logo that was used on Matt Fraction and David Aja’s award-winning Hawkeye series, on which the show will be based.
The cast
Jeremy Renner has played Hawkeye in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2011, when the character made an uncredited cameo in Thor. He’s appeared in five Marvel movies, including three of four Avengers flicks (the character was on house arrest during Avengers: Infinity War) and Captain America: Civil War (an appearance in Captain America: The Winter Soldier was cut for scheduling reasons). It’s only fitting he’d get his own series.
Renner won’t be swinging into action alone, however. At Marvel’s big Comic-Con presentation, Feige confirmed that Hawkeye’s protégé would be none other than Kate Bishop, just like in the comics. Bishop debuted in Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung’s Young Avengers #1 in 2005 and assumed the Hawkeye name in issue #12 (Clint was dead around this time). Since then, Kate has played a supporting role in the Young Avengers books, big crossover events, and Clint’s own comics. She co-headlined Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye and got her own comic in 2017.
Rumors started circulating about actress Hailee Steinfeld being cast as Bishop as early as October but nothing was confirmed until recently. Despite set footage of Steinfeld in Bishop’s trademark purple, she didn’t confirm the casting until Disney’s 2020 Investor Day on December 10, 2020.
Marvel also announced that additional cast members include Vera Farmiga, Fra Free, and newcomer Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez, aka Echo.
The plot
Other than the general premise — Clint Barton trains Kate Bishop to take over as Hawkeye — details about Hawkeye are pretty sparse. Cut Marvel some slack: The show is over a year away. Matt Fraction and David Aja’s run on Hawkeye, however, lasted from 2012 to 2015. It’s considered one of the best Marvel comics of the modern era, and it’s going to be the basis for the Hawkeye television show, so we do have a rough idea of what’s in store.
Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye was a story about what the famous superhero got up to between world-ending threats. As the recap pages explained, “This is what he does when he’s not being an Avenger. That’s all you need to know.” The series’ ongoing plot was a modest tale about Clint’s attempts to save an apartment building and its tenants from the Russian mob. Character development and humor, not the action, drove the story.
The series’ heart was the relationship between Clint and Kate (and their dog, Lucky, aka “Pizza Dog”), with the grounded young heroine serving as an excellent foil to the in-over-his-head Avenger. If Marvel is going to get Hawkeye right, it needs to recapture that chemistry. More than almost any other MCU project, casting is going to make or break this one.