Can the ‘Hawkeye’ Disney+ Series Make Up for the Way the MCU Treated the Character?
The Avengers movies have all been extremely successful for multiple reasons, and many of those reasons have to do with how they handled each comic book character.
Many Marvel fans are fans of a few characters but not necessarily the others, and the Avengers movies work because they make each character valuable and awesome in their own way.
For example, Thor gets to use his lightning abilities, Ant-Man gets to grow large, and Captain Marvel gets to single-handedly dismantle entire spaceships. However, some Marvel fans think that Hawkeye has gotten the short end of the stick, as they think that he wasn’t treated well in the movies.
That said, he has his own Disney+ show coming soon, and many Marvel fans are hopeful that it’ll treat his character better.
That time when Hawkeye was useful
Like Marvel fans talked about on Reddit, in the earlier phases of the MCU, Hawkeye played a far more significant role than he did in the later phases. For example, in The Avengers, Loki used the Mind Stone to control Hawkeye’s mind.
In the first parts of the movie, Hawkeye, while controlled by Loki, committed various crimes. Eventually though, the Avengers are able to free Hawkeye, and he’s fighting alongside the Avengers at the end of the movie.
Hawkeye gets an even bigger role in Age of Ultron, as the Avengers are forced to retreat to Hawkeye’s hidden home. Hawkeye also got to do some cool things in the movie, such as giving advice to Wanda. Because of that, many Marvel fans thought that Age of Ultron had the best portrayal of Hawkeye in the MCU. That’s mainly because the MCU doesn’t treat him very well after that.
How Hawkeye became less and less useful
The cool thing about the MCU is getting to see all the comic book superheroes and supervillains collide, and due to how diverse the Marvel comics are, there’s simply a lot of different comic book characters.
Hawkeye, like Marvel fans on Reddit said, is typically considered a street-level character, as he’s not actually that powerful when compared to characters like Captain Marvel or Thanos.
As a result, street-level characters like Hawkeye and Black Widow were largely sidelined as the MCU went on. In fact, in Infinity War, Hawkeye doesn’t even show up at all. That said, in Endgame, Marvel explained what Hawkeye was doing during Infinity War, but still, many fans weren’t happy about how Marvel treated him. While some fans blamed the inclusion of Hawkeye’s family for being why his movie character isn’t great, others were optimistic.
Will Hawkeye’s Disney+ show make up for things?
Like one Marvel fan said on Reddit, “I hope this show makes up for the total lack of justification Clint got in the MCU. Hes definitely tied for first as much fav hero and they just wasted him again and again. As Hawkeye fan it hurt.” The Hawkeye show, which is simply titled Hawkeye, is set to take place immediately after Endgame, so it should give him a chance to grow as a character.
Some fans think that Hawkeye should go back to fighting street-level criminals like mobsters and the like, while others are hopeful that Hawkeye will move towards how he’s portrayed in some of his more recent comics. That being said, others think that it may be time for Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye to move on.
Just like how Steve Rogers handed his shield to Falcon, many fans are thinking that in Hawkeye, Hawkeye will hand his bow over to Kate Bishop, who will become the next Hawkeye. That being said, Marvel fans will know soon enough about what the show’s doing as it’s slated to be released in either late 2021 or early 2022.
