Hawkeye boss teases new villains: the Tracksuit Mafia

During his time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye, has fought aliens lifeforms, been away to alternate universes, and has survived to tell the tale. In fact, he’s one of the only remaining survivors from the original team of Avengers. But his new solo project will show him in a completely different light.

In Hawkeye, Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) teams up with Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) and realizes that in order to get home to his family in time for Christmas, he must first confront past enemies he made during his time as Ronin, as seen briefly in Avengers: Endgame. The enemies in question are a group named the “Tracksuit Mafia,” which comic fans might know pretty well from Matt Fraction’s beloved run with the character. See them in action below:

You would assume that a bunch of folks in tracksuits wouldn’t prove much of a threat to Barton, but executive producer Trinh Tran thinks otherwise. “We wanted to make sure that they weren’t going to come off in a way that seems completely silly and not threatening to our heroes,” she told SYFY Wire.

"Clint has experienced events such as fighting off aliens and Thanos, [and now] he’s down to fighting Tracksuit Mafias. But, as I said, it is a little bit more of an intimate family story that feels like it’s connected yet still feels standalone. He is stuck on a mission that he is trying to get out of, and these are the goons that he has to deal with. All he wants to do is get home to his family for Christmas for the holiday season."

Although Hawkeye is the main character, the show also introduces Kate Bishop to the MCU. The series opens with a starry-eyed Bishop watching Barton fight during the Battle of New York. However, it wasn’t always that way. “We actually toyed with two different versions — starting with Kate or starting with Clint,” Tran said. “And because we were introducing a new character into the fold we thought it would be interesting to connect them through Kate’s point of view.”

SYFY Wire also had to ask whether Daredevil makes an appearance in Hawkeye, given that the show takes place on the streets of New York City and all? “I think our focus is really on making sure that we land these characters right, for this show,” Tran demurred. “And then see how that all works out in the future.

Fans are also wondering if Daredevil — hopefully still played by Charlie Cox as in his Netflix series — will have a cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Then again, it feels like pretty much everyone is rumored to have a cameo in that movie.

Hawkeye was originally meant to be a movie, not a TV show

Interestingly, Trinh Tran recently revealed to Den of Geek that the original idea for a solo Hawkeye project was to make a movie. “When we first started talking about it and developing Hawkeye, it was supposed to be a feature,” she said.

"It was back in 2017 when we were still filming Infinity War and Endgame. The early discussion was, what is the story of Clint Barton and Kate Bishop on the feature side? Then as we were sort of diving into the research and going through all the comics, there was a lot of great stuff that we absolutely love, so we were trying to figure out, how do we have enough time to tell Clint’s story?"

From WandaVision to Loki, the Disney+ line of Marvel TV shows has been very successful, so a Hawkeye series makes complete sense. I’ve got no doubt Kate Bishop will make her first foray to the big screen soon enough, anyway.

Will Hawkeye hit the target? The six-episode series premieres November 24 on Disney+ with new episodes arriving weekly all the way through Christmas!

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