Judging by the two trailers for the new “Hawkeye” series on Disney+, it appears Marvel Studios is leaning hard into the Christmas comedy angle. It helps when you have an accomplished comedic actor like Hailee Steinfeld being added as a major part of the cast. But according to Bert & Bertie, the filmmaking duo that is bringing several of the “Hawkeye” episodes to life, there is still some darkness to be found in the series.
For those that remember, “Hawkeye” picks up after the events of “Avengers: Endgame,” where we saw Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) venturing down a dark path over the five years that his wife and children were snapped out of existence by Thanos. The character left behind his Hawkeye persona and became a violent killer vigilante named Ronin. And though he comes back to the good side by the end, the new streaming series is going to explore a bit more of that Ronin persona and its effect on Barton.
“[Jeremy Renner] wanted the darkness,” Bert teased (via GamesRadar). “He wanted to go there. And there are moments that the Ronin Clint resurfaces. It’s very important to have those depths that you can explore, so that he can come out of it.”
But again, if you see the trailers, it doesn’t appear like there is even a hint of darkness to be found in the show. And this is a Marvel studios project, to be fair, so we can’t fully expect some sort of Hard-R take on Hawkeye. And there seems to be plenty of the absurdity and silliness to be found.
“I think that Jeremy was on board from the get-go with the tone of the show being not super serious the whole time; the slight absurdity of it and that buddy-cop dynamic,” Bertie said.
As a fan of Hawkeye and the Ronin aspect of ‘Endgame,’ it’s exciting to know that perhaps the series will explore that darkness a bit more than the trailers for the show lead us to believe. Six episodes of holiday capers and jokes sounds like it could wear thin eventually, and the idea that maybe the secret sauce of the storytelling is this hard-hitting, emotional beat where Renner gets a chance to really get into that era of time where he was just murdering bad guys and gave up on humanity is an exciting prospect.
Of course, this is a Marvel Studios project, so again, it must be said that we can’t expect too much darkness or a deep-dive into that sort of emotional storytelling. There are explosive arrows to be shot and whatnot. Duh!
“Hawkeye” debuts on Disney+ on November 24.