It doesn’t seem like Clint Barton/Hawkeye will return for Avengers: Doomsday, but that doesn’t mean the character’s time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is over. The MCU will be getting a soft reboot in Phase Seven, and one of the biggest questions fans have is what Avengers movies will look like going forward. The old team is done, and it doesn’t feel like Marvel Studios is positioning the New Avengerz/Thunderbolts or Sam Wilson’s (Anthony Mackie) Avengers squad to be franchise headliners. So who will take on the Avengers mantle, and all the box office gold that comes with it?
There are rumors that Avengers: Secret Wars will finally bring the Young Avengers squad together: Marvel Studios has been seeding that team’s debut for years. Now Jeremy Renner has fans wondering if another Avengers squad could be getting their MCU debut soon – and fans have been waiting a long time to hear.
Jeremy Renner is a social media pro, so you always need to take his posts with a grain of salt, as Renner knows how to work fans (or work them up) better than most Marvel stars. That said, this post doesn’t feel like that:
To be honest, this looks like Jeremy Renner sharing a pic of some West Coast Avengers and Hawkeye comic books that he was signing at an event. You can clearly see his signature on the books, and there are countless other images of signed memorbilia to verify that he did autograph the comics pictured above. So, the internet may be interneting again, let’s all take beat and consider that.
…Now that we’ve done that: as I said above: Jeremy Renner has been a pro at engaging the MCU fanbase since the early 2010s, so it’s hard to believe that he didn’t know what kind of buzz this kind of Instagram story post would cause. The West Coast Avengers has long been rumored to be the next chapter of the Hawkeye franchise; the Disney+ series laid that foundation with Clint Barton mentoring Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) as Hawkeye II; both characters have led their own respective iterations of the West Coast Avengers. So, if Kate is linking up with Ms. Marvel and other young heroes for a Young Avengers (or Champions) team-up, it’s possible Marvel Studios would place Renner at the head of a West Coast Avengers project.
i was wondering the same but some of those are signed so i wonder if he was just impressed by the collection while doing a signing session for someone – trust me i want him back so i hope he's teasing
True to its name, the team is a secondary Avengers squad that is headquartered in California. Their roster has included Tony Stark, Jim Rhodes, Hawkeye (founder), the Vision, Scarlet Witch, Moon Knight, U.S. Agent (John Walker), Spider-Woman, America Chavez, and others. The books always tried to inject a more fun, laid back, West Coast flavor to the Avengers formula, but was also the source of some classic storylines, like “Vision Quest”, where Vision is stolen, dismantled and rebuilt as White Vision, shattering his marriage to Wanda/Scarlet Witch. That story was loosely adapted into the WandaVision and VisionQuest Disney+ series, one of the most acclaimed and popular corners of the MCU.
There is a lot we don’t know about who (or what) we’ll see in the Avengers: Doomsday sequel film, Avengers: Secret Wars, but we do know what we’re getting after the Marvel Multiverse Saga is done: A fresh start. Kind of. There will be a mix of old MCU characters and franchises and new additions like the X-Men; West Coast Avengers feels like it could be a great catch-all for a lot of the characters who still fan-favorites but have gotten lost in the shuffle. And as star of both the big and small screens, Jeremy Renner could lead the project, no matter which format Marvel chooses to do it in.
For now, there’s no confrimation at all that Marvel Studios is developing a West Coast Avengers project. Avengers: Doomsday will be in theaters on December 18th. Do you want the West Coast Avengers in the MCU? Let us know in the comments!
