Hawkeye Is Inspired By One Of Kevin Feige's Favorite MCU Scenes

In the last year, Disney+ has offered fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe an unprecedented amount of content. With the releases of "WandaVision" and "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," as well as the first seasons of "Loki" and "What If...?," fans of one of the world's most profitable franchises are no doubt pleased with the number of characters they can follow and worlds they can dive into at this stage of the MCU's development. All the same, Marvel Studios isn't done churning out new material for Disney+ this year.

On November 24, the first two episodes of "Hawkeye" will be released exclusively on Disney+. Starring Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye, the series represents the first of the MCU's Disney+ series to focus on a member of the original Avengers team. The show will also introduce audiences to Kate Bishop, as played by fellow Academy Award-nominee Hailee Steinfeld. The Marvel-Disney+ show is reportedly primarily based on the critically acclaimed Matt Fraction and David Aja 2012 comic series of the same name about the expert archers.

With only a little more than a week before the premiere of the new series, the creative forces at Marvel are slowly pulling back the curtain to reveal more about the series. 

During a recent press event attended by Looper, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige opened up about his appreciation for a particular "Avengers: Age of Ultron" scene and the inspirational role it played in the development of the "Hawkeye" Disney+ show. He explained how Jeremy Renner made the most of his time onscreen in his earliest Hawkeye MCU appearances, but it was "Age of Ultron" where things took a turn in the actor's performance of the expert archer. "In 'Ultron,' we saw a little bit more, and then he just started stealing all the scenes. But it was always the intention to explore much more of the character's history as vast [as it is]."

He then revealed which very small scene in 2015's "Avengers: Age of Ultron" partially inspired "Hawkeye." The scene in question sees Clint (Renner) and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) surrounded by Ultron's army of sentient robots. He implores Wanda to help fight off Ultron (voiced by James Spader). To motivate her, he says, "When you go out that door, you're an Avenger." Feige concluded, "That was the kernel of how we could connect our MCU incarnation of Clint Barton into the Matt Fraction storyline and the relationship with Kate Bishop."

Feige emphasized that the new series exists primarily so that we can get more of Renner in the role of Hawkeye. However, the Marvel Studios head also said that the decision to introduce Hailee Steinfeld's Kate Bishop as a junior archer was heavily influenced by his wish to see the original Avenger in the role of a mentor — something he enjoyed about that scene with Wanda in "Avengers: Age of Ultron." He said, "There are moments in all of Jeremy's appearances where you see the mentor."