The Black Widow reveal on Hawkeye was a surprise even for the writers

Hawkeye has been a great addition to the already impressive slate of Marvel shows on Disney+. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure how great this show would be, but it has been consistently surprised me week after week. The friendly chemistry between Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton/Hawkeye) and Hailee Steinfeld (Kate Bishop) is exciting and hilarious.

And then there are all the connections to the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe. For instance, at the end of the most recent episode, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) shows up and fights Hawkeye. Before this, we last saw her mourning the death of Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) at the end of Black Widow. In that scene, Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) shows up to inform Yelena that Hawkeye is responsible for her sister’s death, which explains why Yelena is gunning for him now.

Marvel knows how to keep a secret, even from its own employees

According to The Hollywood Reporter, it was writer Jonathan Igla’s idea to bring Yelena into Hawkeye, and this was before anyone on the writing team knew about Black Widow’s post-credits scene. Igla was the first to find out about it, and had to keep it himself for a long while.

Likewise, Black Widow screenwriter Eric Pearson was in the dark as to where things were leading when Marvel told him to write the post-credits scene with Yelena and Allegra. Pearson asked what the purpose of the scene was but Marvel gave him the old “don’t worry about it” line and that was that. He told THR that he felt “super guilty” about adding a post-credit scene that someone was going to have to contend with down the road.

Marvel sounds like a confusing place to work, but at the end of the day I don’t think it really matters because they’re making quality content. Who cares what order it happens in or how it happened?

And speaking of secrecy, this week is when we finally find out if the rumors about three Spider-Men being in Spider-Man: Now Way Home is true. And we might see Vincent D’onofrio back as the Kingpin on Hawkeye as early as this Wednesday! That’s not asking for too much, is it?

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h/t The A.V. Club