There Are Actually 14 Heroes That Hawkeye Has Never Met In The MCU

In order for the two dozen or so films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) to hold together, writers need at least a few heroes and villains capable of jumping between franchises. For example, Bruce Banner (Edward Norton/Mark Ruffalo), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) have all remained mainstays since the first six movies that comprise Phase 1, which concluded with "The Avengers" (2012). Meanwhile, there's Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), a.k.a. Hawkeye  — the master archer and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who debuted in the third MCU installment, "Thor" (2011) and begins his television tenure with the Disney+ "Hawkeye" series in November. 

You might think hanging around for so long would guarantee that Hawkeye's met the entire MCU gang, but that is not so. In fact, there are a bunch of heroes with whom Hawkeye has yet to chat. Let's say essentially hypothetical meetings from the chaotic final battle or Tony Stark's funeral in "Endgame" don't count, and neither do characters from adjacent Marvel media timelines that aren't confirmed as part of the MCU — the Netflix shows, for example — or upcoming MCU endeavors. He hasn't met Kate Bishop yet, but we strongly suspect he's going to, so let's leave her off this list. Here are all the heroes Hawkeye hasn't gotten around to meeting yet.

The Guardians of the Galaxy and most of The Avengers famously join forces in "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018) and "Avengers: Endgame," but we don't see Hawkeye until the latter half of the monumental two-parter. That means the only Guardians Clint encounters are the cosmic heroes on-hand for "Endgame" — and their ranks are thinned considerably by the start of that particular film. 

Thanos hurls Gamora (Zoe Saldana) off a cliff in order to obtain the Soul Stone midway through "Infinity War." While time travel-oriented shenanigans in "Endgame" bring Gamora back into the MCU's ongoing events, that occurs after her window of opportunity to meet Hawkeye has already closed. 

Did the MCU cheat us out of a memorable encounter between two legendary warriors? Well, when you think about it, Gamora is an assassin who used to work for the side of evil, but switched moral polarities and became partners with a quippy white guy with projectile weapons and no superpowers. The only thing more repetitive and unnecessary than a meeting between Hawkeye and Gamora would be a meeting between Black Widow and Star-Lord.

At the highly traumatic conclusion of "Avengers: Infinity War," Thanos adds every Infinity Stone to his gauntlet and snaps his fingers. Instantly, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) disappears in a cloud of ash, along with half of all life in the universe. Everyone erased by "The Snap" stays dematerialized until the triumphant final sequence of " Avengers: Endgame," which means Star-Lord and Clint Barton never get a chance to exchange pleasantries. 

Maybe that's for the best? We have a difficult time envisioning these two getting along. The MCU's version of Clint is a pretty meat-and-potatoes "guy's guy"-type, whereas Star-Lord is a self-involved pop culture-obsessed goofball. Perhaps over time they could bond over their shared experiences of quipping and fighting with projectile weapons and not having superpowers.  

Ironically, Us Weekly reported that Pratt and Renner are literal next-door neighbors whose children routinely hang out together. So while their characters remain strangers, we can more-or-less take it for granted that the two actors have met on numerous occasions. 

While Rocket Racoon (Bradley Cooper/Sean Gunn) comes out the other side of Thanos's snap — a.k.a. "The Snap" — physically intact, his pal Groot (Vin Diesel) is not so lucky. 

As of "Avengers: Infinity War," we've seen Groot as a full-grown talking tree, an adorable sapling, and a curmudgeonly teenager tree. We'll probably see Groot in other forms, as he's slated to appear in the upcoming "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3," a Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special for Disney+, and maybe even more future MCU projects we don't know about yet. In any case, fans have seen a lot more of Groot than Hawkeye has. As far as we can tell — for the same reason he doesn't know most of the Guardians — Hawkeye has never heard the legendary proclamation, "I Am Groot" in person. 

Meanwhile, Renner costars with Cooper in "American Hustle" (2013), so Groot and Hawkeye have interacted indirectly, in the respect that their avatars from reality worked together on an unrelated and hugely acclaimed different film. 

Like the other Guardians dusted by The Snap, Drax The Destroyer (Dave Bautista) never bumps into Hawkeye in any instance of which the audience is made aware. 

We don't know what would happen if Drax and Hawkeye ever met, but it's safe to assume Clint would be completely annihilated by insults Drax had no idea he was making. The entire Kylosian species are notorious for their inability to understand euphemism or any other non-literal linguistic concept, and Drax in particular has not demonstrated much regard for the emotional wellbeing of folks occupying his immediate surroundings. In other words, Drax is frequently a massive jerk without deliberately meaning to cause any harm. 

After a few casually-deployed comments about how it must be tricky to feel adequate when your thing is shooting arrows and your teammate is the actual God of Thunder, or how hard it is to focus on fighting evil when folks keep saying you suck, Clint would surely be reduced to weeping pitifully. Perhaps the rest of the MCU regulars should be grateful that these two never had to work together in any context where innocent lives were at risk.    

Seeing as how Hawkeye doesn't meet any Guardians folks except for Rocket Raccoon and Nebula (Karen Gillan), it follows that he doesn't run into Mantis (Pom Klementieff). Considering Hawkeye is essentially a black ops soldier who accidentally fell into a superhero gig, and Mantis is an extraterrestrial empathic being more-or-less brainwashed by the malevolent living planet that raised her from a larval state, it's actually difficult to imagine two individuals with less in common. The fact that they both exist in the same shared fictional universe is a testament to the versatility of Marvel's roster of characters.    

Curiously enough, the positively whackadoo comic book history of Mantis begins with her arrival to the pages of Marvel comics with "Avengers #112" (1973), and she joins the team shortly thereafter. During her time with Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the ink and wood pulp iteration of Mantis strikes up a romantic relationship with The Swordsman — the ex-villain responsible for instructing a young Clint Barton in the ways of arrows and bows. It seems the comic book versions of Hawkeye and Mantis have both spent a lot of time with the same weird C-lister antihero, so we guess they've got one thing in common.

Hawkeye introduces himself to Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) in "Captain America: Civil War" (2016) during the gargantuan fight scene in the abandoned airfield midway through the movie, which also marks Clint's first encounter with Spider-Man (Tom Holland). But since Hawkeye is not among the Avengers who travel to Wakanda in "Avengers: Infinity War," and Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) winds up snapped out of existence until the end of "Endgame," the two characters remain relative strangers. 

But out of all the MCU characters Hawkeye hasn't met yet, isn't Shuri the most likely to make Clint's acquaintance in the foreseeable future? It may be speculation and rumor-mongering — but in light of Boseman's death in 2020 and the MCU's astute decision against recasting T'Challa, Shuri seems likely to inherit an expanded role within the Wakandan government, and by extension, within the MCU. So as long as Clint Barton remains part of the ongoing MCU story, and Jeremy Renner stays in the Disney Corporation's good graces, Shuri and Clint are bound to bump into each other eventually, right? 

Lady Sif (Jaimie Alexander) hasn't interacted with most MCU heroes; and as it happens, Hawkeye is one of those colorful crime fighters the Asgardian warrior would not recognize.

Sif is in "Thor" and "Thor: The Dark World" (2013), a pair of the "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." episodes from 2014 and 2015, and briefly (via an image) in the 2021 Disney+ series, "Loki." While Hawkeye made his MCU premiere in "Thor," Clint only pops by for a quick cameo, and Sif is literally on a different planet at the time. 

Sif hasn't met The Guardians of the Galaxy, either. However, since Alexander is a confirmed cast member of "Thor: Love and Thunder" (2022) — director Taika Waititi's insanely anticipated follow-up to "Thor: Ragnarok" (2017) — the chances of her exchanging insults with Rocket Raccoon look much higher than they seemed during those few years when the MCU apparently considered her an afterthought. Incidentally, does anyone else think it's wild that "Thor: Love and Thunder" includes two "Gilmore Girls" alumni — specifically, Melissa McCarthy and Sean Gunn? Because we definitely think it's wild. 

The last surviving member of Asgard's once-dominant battalion of horse-riding female soldiers, Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) arrived in the MCU as of "Thor: Ragnarok," swinging back into action for "Avengers: Endgame," and has yet to experience Clint Barton in any first-person sense. In fact, Clint's direct knowledge of Asgardians, in general, remains limited — he's met Thor and Loki,but that's about it. 

It's a little difficult to envision circumstances that might put them in the same room. We know a portion of the Disney+ "Hawkeye" series takes place in New York City, whereas at the conclusion of "Endgame," Valkyrie's beginning her reign as the king of New Asgard while Thor jaunts off for an adventure in outer space. So unless Hawkeye ends up needing to travel to Norway for some reason, we can take it for granted that he won't be getting any more familiar with Valkyrie.

Some MCU characters leap from film series to film series; others are more-or-less exclusive to one franchise or another. Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), a.k.a. The Wasp, clearly belongs in the latter category. We see her in "Ant-Man" (2015), "Ant-Man & The Wasp" (2018), for a few quick seconds in "Avengers: Endgame," and that's all the Wasp we've got so far. Based solely on the title of the film, viewers can guess she's very active in the upcoming "Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania" (2023). We can also confirm that assumption with official information from Marvel Studios, but none of that indicates that she'll be in the same vicinity as Hawkeye anytime soon. 

The funky thing about Clint Barton never meeting Hope Van Dyne, or the original Wasp — Hope's mom, Janet Van Dyne — is that they're frequent teammates and longtime friends in Marvel Comics. Janet joins The Avengers right on the ground floor in their first adventure, as depicted in "The Avengers" #1 from 1963. Clint becomes one of Earth's Mightiest Heroes in "The Avengers" #16 published two years later, and over the subsequent years, they've been members of multiple permutations of The Avengers and The West Coast Avengers. So while the comic book versions of Hawkeye and The Wasp know each other quite well, the movie incarnations of the two heroes are barely aware of each other's existence. 

Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) — the Sorcerer Supreme, and certainly a bona fide MCU A-list hero by the end of "Avengers: Endgame" — first encounters Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner at the onset of "Avengers: Infinity War." Like half of everyone in the universe, Strange stops existing at the end of "Infinity War," and resumes existing at the conclusion of "Endgame." So, as is the case with Shuri and most of the Guardians, he never finds himself in a place or time that allows him to get to know Hawkeye. Strange hasn't met either of the Captains America or Captain Marvel, either. He's got some catching up to do. 

Whether or not Doctor Strange will run into Clint Barton probably depends on how much more the MCU decides to do with the latter character. We know Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) debuts in the upcoming "Hawkeye" Disney+ series, leading, perhaps, to Clint's retirement. On the other hand, Kate and Clint could continue as separate characters who share a codename, like they do in the comics. Cumberbatch's confirmed upcoming MCU endeavors include "Spider-Man: No Way Home" (2021) and "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" (2022), both of which appear to carry significant implications for the MCU going forward. So if Clint sticks around, maybe he'll bump into Stephen Strange. Or maybe not?  

With a hilarious deadpan turn in  "Shang-Chi & The Legend of the Ten Rings" (2021), Doctor Strange's loyal assistant known only as Wong (Benedict Wong) is poised to breakout as an unlikely MCU star in his own right. Wong is enigmatic and stoic, and the character benefits immensely from Benedict Wong's comedic timing. Wong freakin' rules. But does Wong know Hawkeye? He does not know Hawkeye. 

As the mid-credits scene from "Shang-Chi..." makes abundantly clear, Wong is an incredible karaoke singer. Though it may be the case that the MCU character Clint Barton is not known as much of a crooner, actor Jeremy Renner spent a significant chunk of these most recent years developing his second career as a singer-songwriter. How has the music world received Renner's efforts? Well, one critic described the track "Heaven Don't Have A Name" as "some of the worst, most bland, basic, macho, personally-devoid pop-rock that I've heard in a long time."  Other critics were only slightly more generous toward Renner's deeply unnecessary and misguided attempt to reinvent himself. 

All that said, if Jeremy Renner the actor slipped through the reality-matrix and met Wong the fictional character at a karaoke bar, well, that would make one heck of a mid-credits scene — that's for darn sure.  

With the exception of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the Avengers gang doesn't meet Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) until she responds to a recently-dusted Fury's beeper alert during the after-credits scene of "Captain Marvel" (2019).  Meanwhile, Clint Barton is enjoying a comfortable life in Missouri with his family until they all suddenly vanish. After that, he embarks upon a kill-crazy rampage out of a lack of anything better to do. The Avengers eventually track Clint down and bring him back into the fold, but by then, Captain Marvel has gone too high, too far, and too fast to be within planetary range for a meeting with Hawkeye.  

The MCU's versions of Hawkeye and Captain Marvel don't have a ton of direct commonalities, but we can make connections if we look at them from perspectives outside of their shared film timeline. They're both headlining characters of some of Marvel Comics' most influential efforts of the millennium thus far — namely Matt Fraction and artist David Aja's "Hawkeye" series plus writer Kelly Sue Deconnick's multiple runs with "Captain Marvel," which both happened to begin publication in 2012. 

In addition, some members of the MCU faithful argue that the macro-franchise has underutilized both characters. Apart from his yet-to-premiere Disney+ series and "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (2015) — objectively the dumbest Avengers movie — Hawkeye doesn't get a ton of time to shine. Outside of her own movie, Carol's basically treated like a Deus ex Machina with dialogue.  

This one is a little redundant. As of this writing, "Shang-Chi & The Legend of the Ten Rings" — the MCU debut of its title character — has only been in theaters for a little more than a month's time. Ergo, a scenario where the MCU's iteration of Clint Barton could have encountered the MCU's version of Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) in a piece of media that would be available for our present-time viewing would require access to a time travel device of some kind.

But that doesn't mean they're not more likely to meet than some of the other aforementioned heroes yet to experience a face-to-face Hawkeye interaction. Shang-Chi lives on the same North American Earth continent as Hawkeye, after all. By the end of "The Legend of the Ten Rings," the unstoppable martial arts expert's pal Katy (Awkwafina) develops a knack for archery  — so if she ever crosses paths with Kate Bishop, another character named Kate who uses a bow and arrow, things could get awkward and confusing very quickly. Awkward and confusing moments can be fun as heck, as long as they're in movies where our participation need only be of a vicarious nature. 

While the multiverse as depicted in Disney+'s "What If?" animated series tells a different story, Howard the Duck has not yet directly interacted with any MCU heroes, including Hawkeye. 

This raises some intriguing questions — albeit the kind that drift away from our primary topic. Why has Howard decided to remain on the sidelines? Will he be making himself more visible and proactive within the larger MCU fray in any future films or television shows?  The rumor mill says maybe we'll see more Howard the Duck in the MCU, and the macro-franchise has had pretty good luck with grouchy talking animals in the past, but rumors are still just rumors.   

For now, we'll just have to be happy to see Hawkeye meet Kate Bishop, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), and Echo (Alaqua Cox), who are all expected to appear in "Hawkeye" the TV show, even though none of them are as awesome as Howard the Duck.