The ink isn’t quite dry on Loki yet, but Disney is already preparing us for its next TV show in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: first there’s What If…?, which is debuting on Disney+ on August 11, and then there’s Hawkeye, starring Jeremy Renner as the most famous archer in comics.
We’ve heard a fair amount about the show, including that Hailee Steinfeld will play Hawkeye’s protege Kate Bishop. But there’s a lot more we don’t know, and because nature abhors a vacuum, rumors have rushed in to fill that space. For instance, the proprietors of the Marvel Studio Spoilers subreddit have the skinny on a juicy rumor about the Hawkeye show. If you don’t want to know the details, best turn back now, because there will be SPOILERS from here on out.
Still here? Alright, the word is that a character from Daredevil, the first and most popular of the Marvel series to premiere on Netflix a while back, will appear in Hawkeye: the villain Kingpin, played by Vincent D’Onofrio.
“We are excited to reveal that, according to our verified sources, Vincent’s Kingpin is going to make his MCU re-debut in Hawkeye this year,” the mods write. “The source indicated that Daredevil was also supposed to make his MCU re-debut in Hawkeye alongside his role in Spider-Man: No Way Home, but scheduling for Hawkeye didn’t work out. Kingpin will instead be filling that void.”
"The source that we’ve been in communication with has also implied that Hawkeye will be airing around the same time that Spider-Man: No Way Home will be in theaters, because the two MCU projects share some connections. This lines up with previous verified information that we received that suggests an October release for Ms. Marvel, and a November release for Hawkeye."
Indeed, there were reports that Charlie Cox, who played the title role in Daredevil, was going to show up in the upcoming movie Spider-Man: Far From Home, although all of this is unconfirmed. I hope you’re all downing your grains of salt right now.
That said, I can picture a scenario where all of this hangs together. The MCU is all about the multiverse right now, which really got going in the season finale of Loki. The Marvel Netflix shows are kiiiiinda part of the MCU — they make reference to stuff that happened in the movies — but not really, since there’s never any direct crossover. But if the producers explain that away by saying that the Netflix shows happened in a different universe, they can bring those characters in. And now that the universes are bleeding into each other, it’s not high time to finally make a crossover happen.
We don’t have many plot details about Hawkeye just yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it involved the multiverse; that’s the way a lot of Marvel stuff is going. Loki was all about it, WandaVision touched on it, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has a title that speaks for itself, Spider-Man: Far From Home is heavily rumored to involve it, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will touch on it…why wouldn’t Hawkeye get in on the fun?
Star Wars casts live-action Thrawn and Ezra Bridger?
As long as we’re talking about unsupported rumors, let’s cross into Disney’s other big franchise: Star Wars. In season 2 of The Mandalorian, ex-Jedi knight Ahsoka Tano made her live-action debut, played by Rosario Dawson. She was on the hunt for Thrawn, a powerful official in the Empire last seen blasting into hyperspace at the end of Star Wars Rebels, with hero Ezra Bridger in tow.
It seems very likely we’ll see a live-action Thrawn and Ezra sooner or later, probably in the upcoming Ahsoka Tano show on Disney+. According to LRM Online, Disney has cast actors to play both of them. For Thrawn, it’s tapped Lars Mikkelsen, who voiced Thrawn in Star Wars Rebels.
And as Ezra, Disney has reportedly hired Mena Massoud, who played the title role in Disney’s 2019 Aladdin remake with Will Smith. This was bolstered by a shirtless selfie Massoud posted earlier this year where he referenced one of Ezra’s lines from Rebels:
Literally all of this is just rumor for now, but it sure does provide fodder for discussion. Let her rip.
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