Spoilers ahead forAvengers: Infinity War.
Jeremy Renneris a major star and Hawkeye/Clint Barton has been in theAvengersmovies since the first one. And yet he was nowhere to be found on the marketing. So where’s Hawkeye? And for that matter, where’s Ant-Man/Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), who’s set to appear in his sequel alongside Wasp/Janet Van Dyne (Evangline Lilly) in a couple months?
In a scene where most of the oldAvengerscrew reunites at HQ, we get an explanation. While it appears that someCaptain America: Civil Warcharacters like Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Falcon/Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) have been on the run and living underground for the past two years, deals were offered to the group to be on house arrest. Both Barton and Lang took the deals because they had families to consider.
As far as not having to deal with two more characters, this is a pretty savvy way to write out Hawkeye and Ant-Man. For starters, it remembers that in this whole universe of superheroes, families are a rarity (Hawkeye’s was a surprise inAvengers: Age of Ultron), and yet Barton and Lang are both fathers. They have kids to consider, and it’s easily believable for the audience that they would be more concerned with their family’s safety in this event.
Granted, that makes theirCivil Warinclusion a bit nonsensical (why is fighting Iron Man more important than fighting Thanos?), but I can see arguments for it. For example, theCivil Warfight offered little chance of death and they disagreed with the Sokovia Accords. A direct fight against Thanos leads to a very likely chance of dying horribly, so better to let the other superheroes take this one.
The question now becomes whether or not Barton and Lang sit outAvengers 4. We’ve seen set photos of Renner in a new costume and new hairstyle forAvengers 4, so either it’s an alternate reality or we all just grieve in our own way. For Clint Barton, grief involves a makeover. In any event, next year I doubt we’ll be asking, “Where’s Hawkeye?” especially since writersChristopher MarkusandStephen McFeelytoldBuzzfeed: “We like Hawkeye,” said Markus. “We like Hawkeye so much we gave him a really good story.”
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