Black Widow saw Yelena Belova put forward the interesting notion that the characters within the Marvel Cinematic Universe still individually rank the Avengers by their abilities and power levels, despite their strength as a team. Much like Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton probably isn’t considered one of the ‘the big ones’.
That’s completely understandable when he’s a middle-aged and happily married father of two, who doesn’t possess any remarkable superpowers other than being very handy with a bow and arrow. Even the most recent promo for upcoming Disney Plus series Hawkeye poked fun at the subject, naming Clint as the least popular Avenger.
It’s about time the franchise’s resident expert marksman got his moment in the sun, and in a recent interview with Collider, Jeremy Renner explained why Hawkeye was exactly what he needed after a decade in the background of the MCU.
“We had talked about that. I talked about it with Kevin [Feige] at Marvel, and I was really excited. He said, ‘What do you think about doing a limited series on Hawkeye?’. I was like, ‘I think that’s exactly where he needs to live’. He’s a character that we’ve now spent a lot of time with, but we don’t know a lot about. We can spend a little bit longer in the longer form storytelling of at all, to have a greater understanding of Clint Barton, and why he is what he is and who he is and where he comes from, and that type of thing. I was very excited to explore Clint Barton in a six-episode thing.”
Of course, there’s every chance we could be seeing the mantle passed onto Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop on a permanent basis by the time Hawkeye‘s six episodes are over, but if that worst case scenario does happen, then at least Clint will manage to out on a high note as the star of his own project for the first time ever.
