Hawkeye is the next MCU character to reportedly get a Disney+ series. The show is said to focus on him and another future Marvel superhero.
Disney is using its assets to its advantage when it comes to Disney+ programming, and that includes making sure it gets the best use out of Marvel Studios’ characters. You can now include Hawkeye on that list of characters, because he could be the next person to have his own Disney+ series.
Disney itself has not revealed this information (the only series Disney officially confirmed was the Loki series), but Variety has gotten the latest on the planned series. A brief synopsis of the series goes as follows, according to Variety:
"The project is said to be an adventure series in which Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, will pass the torch to Kate Bishop."
This is a major reveal, seeing as some believe Kate Bishop may have appeared in the Avengers: Endgame trailer. For those unfamiliar with the comics, Kate Bishop becomes Hawkeye (in a similar way that different people become Captain America or Captain Marvel). In the trailer, Clint Barton is seen in a flashback, guiding a young girl with a bow and arrow. Because it’s just a quick trailer, there’s no explicit mention of it being Kate Bishop, but the similarities between the two are just too obvious not to notice.
One thing to question about Clint and Kate is their relationship to one another. In the trailer, without context, it looks like Clint is spending time with his daughter. We know he’s one of the few characters who actually has a family, and after Captain America: Civil War, he’s put on house arrest and subsequently gets to have more family time. So it’s certainly plausible that this person is his daughter.
At the same time, Kate Bishop in the comics is not related to Hawkeye. Though he serves as a mentor to the Young Avenger, Clint Barton is in no way her father. It seems like Marvel Studios will have to find a way to link Kate and Clint since it doesn’t seem like they’ll be sticking to the comics. But then again, the MCU has always put its own spin on the comic series.
Much like with the Loki series, it’s unknown exactly when this one will take place. The obvious answer seems to be the post-Avengers: Endgame future, where Clint finally has the time to train his successor. And him running away to become Ronin during Infinity War also would make it seem like he’ll only have time on his hands to train Kate after Endgame.
Now, the Endgame flashback scene also gives way to the show possibly happening after Civil War but before Infinity War. It’s not guaranteed that Clint will survive Endgame, and so it may be possible that he’s already trained Kate before the snap happens.
Whichever way things go, it all points to the possibility of a Young Avengers movie happening in the not-so-distant future. We can at least add Kate as one of the slightly more confirmed characters for this movie, if and when it happens.
Our hopes, of course, is that the show happens after Endgame, which would confirm that Hawkeye lives. But we’ll have to find that out for sure when Avengers: Endgame comes out April 26.