Jeremy Renner Confirms Clint Barton Is Going Deaf In Hawkeye
Actor Jeremy Renner confirms Clint Barton is going deaf in Hawkeye. The upcoming Disney+ series is the first solo project for the founding Avenger, who has been part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since a cameo appearance in 2011's Thor. Hawkeye will premiere episodes 1 & 2 on November 24, with the remaining four releasing on successive Wednesdays.
The master archer and one-time S.H.I.E.L.D. agent has made a number of key MCU appearances over the years, and Renner's character-arc ranks right up there with the Avengers' most transformative. A trip to his farm in Age of Ultron revealed him as a dedicated family-man, and he retires from active duty after the disaster in Sokovia. While Captain America: Civil War temporarily brought him back, he spent all of Infinity War under an agreeable house arrest, only to be shown at the outset of Endgame to lose his entire family to Thanos' snap. He spends a brutal five years as the vigilante Ronin until returning to the Avengers to undo the halving of the universe, reuniting him with an unchanged Barton clan.
While on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Renner reveals all that superhero work has taken its toll on Barton's body, leaving him hard-of-hearing in Hawkeye. The Marvel actor says the series used the comics to inspire their approach to the character on his way out of the avenging business, including his later use of a hearing aid. The style of the Disney+ series, Renner says, was also pulled from source material:
Yeah, hard-of-hearing, yeah yeah. So, that was implemented, which is great. ... So we used the comics a lot as a basis for the look and format of the show.
Hawkeye is set primarily in a post-Blip New York City and sees Barton, who just wants to spend a normal holiday season with his family, forced to confront his past when another archer - Hailee Steinfeld's Kate Bishop - is mistaken for his Ronin alter-ego. Bishop idolizes Hawkeye and wants to position herself as his successor, but in doing so, she inadvertently attracts the attention of the many enemies Barton made during his stint of vigilantism. He is forced to work with her to take them down, all while doing his best to keep his promise to finally be home for Christmas.
While many MCU fans are unsure what to think of Hawkeye, with the Avenger having often been written off as unworthy of a solo-project, fans of the comics are sure to be excited by Renner's admission of how much the source material was consulted. The Disney+ series is generally understood to be a farewell for Barton, particularly since Bishop does take over the mantle of Hawkeye, and those who feel he has been underserved by the films thus far are hoping creator Jonathan Igla gets him right. For those who aren't likely to be convinced to embrace Renner's character after all this time, Steinfeld is the real draw, as the ever-rising star could end up a key part of the MCU for the foreseeable future.
Source: Jimmy Kimmel Live