Marvel Studios’ upcoming Disney+ series, Hawkeye, centered on the post-Endgame adventures of the former Avenger and expert marksman, has apparently just scored another win, mere days after landing Mad Men screenwriter Jonathan Igla.
Singer and actress Hailee Steinfeld, the Oscar-nominated star of True Grit and Bumblebee, is apparently in early talks to star alongside Jeremy Renner in the miniseries, as Hawkeye’s young apprentice Kate Bishop, a crucial member of the Young Avengers. Kate Bishop, an expert archer, fencer, and strategist, has long been rumored to make her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Hawkeye, but this confirmation is an exciting stepping-stone on the path toward having the Young Avengers team finally assembled in the MCU – with other Disney+ shows like WandaVision, Ms. Marvel and Loki also possibly hinting at the gang of teen superheroes, it sounds like the family-friendly streaming service could eventually be home to the team: which, honestly, seems like a great fit. Though, considering that Steinfeld is twenty-two years old already, this makes it look like Marvel’s casting choices for the Young Avengers will be skewing slightly older than expected.
We don’t really know anything about the plot of Hawkeye, or how much of it will be about Jeremy Renner’s iteration of the character versus Steinfeld’s fresher, younger take. But a quick look at Kate Bishop’s character bio opens some interesting possibilities for potential plot points: in the comics, Bishop has also donned the nickname “Hawkingbird” because she stitched her own outfit together from bits and pieces of Hawkeye’s attire, as well as that of another hero, Mockingbird, a.k.a. Bobbi Morse. Morse has already shown up elsewhere in Marvel, on ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., played by Adrianne Palicki – while both she and her partner, Lance Hunter, were forced to retire from the S.H.I.E.L.D. team early on, both characters are still very much alive in the MCU – and in fact, almost got their own spinoff series on ABC, which was cancelled before airing a pilot. Palicki would probably be willing to work with Marvel again on the Hawkeye series, and her character, displaying super strength, agility and martial arts prowess, seems like a good fit for this mostly powered-down group of civilian heroes: plus, the retired agent would probably have a lot in common with Hawkeye himself, who notoriously left the main Avengers team to be with his family.
So what do you think about the casting? Is Hailee Steinfeld a good fit for archer-extraordinaire Kate Bishop? Could this be an opportunity to have Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. crossover with the main MCU? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
There’s a lot of news to cover on this front: I would have posted much earlier, when there was a report that Ray Winstone had joined the cast of Marvel’s Black Widow solo movie, but I suspected that a bombshell report would drop in a few days more, so I waited patiently – and I was rewarded.
Black Widow is currently filming in the city of Budapest – an iconic locale in Marvel lore, having been mentioned as the site of some huge battle/catastrophic event by Black Widow herself, and fellow spy Hawkeye, multiple times throughout the Marvel movies. While some maintain that the city is probably being used simply as a stand-in for Russian locations, it gives us at least a little glimmer of hope that we will finally see the origins of this oft-mentioned, never-explained anecdote.
Whether or not we do, we will undeniably see the origins of the Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff – the movie is rumored to be a prequel, exploring Natasha’s years working as a KGB assassin and then as a rogue agent defecting to S.H.I.E.L.D. While this might seem disappointing to fans who want to see the character in the present timeline, you can expect the film to drop all sorts of hints and clues about things that will be very important to the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Marvel president Kevin Feige made this very clear, while also being very vague, when he said, while being interviewed, that, even though he can’t say whether it’s a prequel or not, “there are ways to do prequels where you learn all sorts of things you never knew before”. He actually said quite a few interesting things: I recommend you check it out for yourself here.
Those “things we never knew before” might include all sorts of things – events, big battles, encounters with other superheroes. And that’s what leads us back to Budapest for a minute, just so we can take a look at some very interesting details that might have been inadvertently (or deliberately?) revealed in behind-the-scenes images.
WARNING: this might be considered a spoiler to some, so if you don’t want to know any of the characters who might be in the film, you should go now! Also – Avengers: Endgame spoilers!
The image in questions shows Scarlett Johansson’s stunt double (maybe, we’ll get to that in a moment) riding a motorcycle at dangerously high speed through the streets of Budapest, sporting a long red braid – still no sign of the iconic short red bob-hairstyle that would definitively mark this as a prequel. Her hair still looks very much like how she wore it in her latest appearance in Avengers: Endgame. She’s not alone on the motorcycle: behind her, with arms wrapped around Natasha’s waist, is another woman, with a blond ponytail. She could be anyone, right?
Twitter | @builtfromhope
Well, it could be – except those two women on the motorcycle are apparently stunt dummies, not even stunt doubles. In other words, they’re basically pre-packaged mannequins: who come in packages. Which would necessarily be marked with the name associated with the mannequin inside the package. See where I’m going with this?
Yep, Twitter user @bestofwidows shared pictures of the boxes which apparently carried those dummies – one marked Natasha, the other marked…Yelena.
And the reaction from the general audience is probably similar to Thanos’ when he encounters Scarlet Witch in Endgame – “I don’t even know who you are.”
Oh, but you will. Yelena Belova is one of only a handful of well-known characters from the Black Widow comics – a dangerous assassin in her own right, equal to Romanoff in strength and agility, and a student of the Red Room program. Belova has been both a villain and an antihero in her comics appearances, but her most notable run has her initially working against Romanoff, only to team up with her and bring about the defeat of the Red Room. She is virtually a clone of Romanoff in every way, and even uses the moniker “Black Widow”, except that her hair is typically blond. Black Widow actress Scarlett Johansson supposedly had her character dye her hair blond in Avengers: Infinity War as an homage to Yelena Belova – which, naturally, has now begun sparking some rumors that the Black Widow in Infinity War actually was Yelena Belova, and that in this prequel we’ll discover that there never was a Natasha Romanoff or something like that. It’s a cool premise, but highly implausible: more likely is that a young Yelena will be introduced in this upcoming movie and will then make an appearance in the present timeline soon after – similar to how Captain Marvel’s prequel origin film ended with a startling post-credits scene of her arriving at Avengers HQ after the events of Infinity War.
There’s still the slim chance that this movie isn’t, in fact, a prequel: why haven’t we seen Natasha’s classic hairstyle? Why does she seem to be dressed in civilian attire in all the behind-the-scenes photos, such as she wore throughout Avengers: Endgame, rather than her black outfit? I can’t answer those questions yet, but I can propose a theory. Two, in fact.
My first theory relies on the movie being a prequel: I suspect that Budapest is not serving, at least in this case, as a stand-in for a Russian city. I think what we see here is a young Natasha Romanoff rescuing Yelena Belova from the clutches of their KGB captors, trying to bring her into S.H.I.E.L.D custody with her: something will go wrong, and Yelena will not be saved. In this scenario, we might also see Natasha’s friend and lover, Hawkeye, and maybe a team of S.H.I.E.L.D agents attempting to assist the Russian rogues. Ming-Na Wen of the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D has already expressed her wish to be in the Black Widow movie, portraying a younger version of her character, Agent Melinda May. This would be the perfect place to have her appear: and with the recent cameos of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D actors Clark Gregg and Patrick Brennan in Captain Marvel, plus James D’Arcy of the TV show Agent Carter appearing in Avengers: Endgame, it seems like Marvel has begun to embrace its outlying spinoffs for the first time since Avengers: Age of Ultron.
My other theory, while much more unlikely, has basically the same premise, but the setting is now sometime in the post-Endgame universe. Here, Natasha would be brought back to life (there are dozens of theories on how this could be achieved), and would go on a search for her father, Ivan, whose identity was finally revealed to her after years of searching in Endgame, shortly before her death. As one of the last things Natasha would remember, it would make sense for her to try and find her father and any living family members, after being resurrected – this hunt would take her to Russia, where she would run into Yelena Belova and a similarly-resurrected Red Room. It’s unlikely, but still worth mentioning.
Either way, we now know that Yelena Belova is indeed going to be in the Black Widow movie – most likely portrayed by Marvel newcomer Florence Pugh, whose likeness the blond stunt-dummy apparently carries, and who recently arrived in Budapest.
The last bit of news concerning the movie comes from a small, blurry photograph of the film’s first official logo:
Twitter | @ripmarvel
Prepare yourselves for May 2020, folks. We’re in for a ride.
You can also watch my video review of this news story on YouTube!
