Marvel fans were thrilled when it was reported earlier this month that the studio’s working on solo TV series for a bunch of its movie characters who’ve yet to get their own films. The first to be announced are shows for Loki and Scarlet Witch, with Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen set to reprise their roles.
This has naturally got fans thinking about what other heroes deserve spinoffs, and one that comes up a lot is Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye. After all, Clint Barton’s a founding member of the Avengers but has been brushed aside in the MCU for a few years now. Obviously not every MCU lover’s a big supporter of Hawkeye, though, and it’d be fair to say that Kevin Smith is one of those.
When discussing the Loki and Scarlet Witch series on his Fatman Beyond podcast, the concept of a Hawkeye TV show came up and instantly filled Smith with dread, as he cited Clint’s increased role in Avengers: Age of Ultron as a reason why we don’t need more of him.
“Oh god, come on. Didn’t they take like, remember in the middle of Age of Ultron, they showed us a whole episode of The Hawkeye Show and nobody wanted to watch it. We all tried to change the channel but it was a movie so we had to sit through it and $#!+.”
That said, there is one way in which Smith would want a Hawkeye series, and that’s if it meant that the character was killed off in the opening episode.
“The Hawkeye show that I’d be interested in is like, opening episode he gets killed and we spend the rest of the episodes with everyone going, ‘He was a pretty good guy.’ And then they go on some adventure and $#!+ like that.”
Though you might not agree with Smith’s opinion of Hawkeye – or hey, maybe you do – he might actually be onto something with the idea of Clint dying in the first installment. A TV series for Kate Bishop’s version of Hawkeye could be really interesting and the set-up for that could be Barton being killed off in the pilot episode, with Kate having to take over from him.
After all, Kevin Feige’s said in the past that he plans to bring the Young Avengers into the MCU in the future, so Kate Bishop’s a likely figure to show up at some point. With that in mind, maybe out of Smith’s hatred for the character of Hawkeye a good idea’s formed?