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Kevin Feige Explains Why Hawkeye Was Absent From Avengers: Infinity War Marketing

Will he or won’t he be in the film?

One of the more prominent discussions in the days and months leading up to the hugely anticipated release of Avengers: Infinity War is “Where’s Hawkeye?” The character, played by Jeremy Renner, is an expert archer and one of the original Avengers. However, he’s been absent in all of the film’s marketing materials and his name isn’t even on the poster. The omission has sent fans into much speculation. Feige and the film’s directors, Anthony and Joe Russo though, are loving every second of it.

Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige explained Hawkeye’s absence from any form of Avengers: Infinity War promotional materials, and he referred to the supposed snub as “one of the best things that ever happened to Hawkeye.” Feige added

I think it’s one of the best things that ever happened to Hawkeye. We [at Marvel] love Hawkeye. There are big, big story things coming up for Hawkeye and Jeremy Renner is as strong an actor as anyone in the MCU and awesome as this character. But ‘The guy with the bow and arrow jokes’, right? There are a lot of ‘Guy with bow and arrow jokes.’

He even makes ‘Guy with a bow and arrow’ jokes in some of the movies. So I love that people go from ‘Oh, Hawkeye is just lucky to be there’ to ‘Oh where is he? He’s not there? Whats going to happen? We need Hawkeye. We want more Hawkeye.’ I love it. It’s the best.

The Russos are eating it all up too, but their reasons for not including him are very specific.

As we were working on both films, we were thinking about story real estate. We had the luxury of cracking both scripts at the same time and we wanted to give each character, especially the original Avengers, their moments.

It led us to certain choices, especially considering the events of Civil War where [Hawkeye’s] included in this group of insurgents and has to deal with the ramifications of siding against the U.S. government. So that led us to a very specific story with him that, as I’ve said before is a long play, not a short play. Audiences just need to be patient.

Audiences probably don’t need to be patient much longer. The hotly anticipated Avengers: Infinity War opens on April 25.

Source: Comicbook.com