Hawkeye EP Trinh Tran Explains New Sides Clint Barton

Hawkeye‘s executive producer Trinh Tran talked about how the new sides of Clint Barton emerged in the Disney+ series. Marvel Studios has had the archer on-hand since Thor back in 2011. Comicbook.com had the chance to speak with the producer about how the subtle shift in the character has happened. It’s no secret that Clint has become a more relatable character in the MCU since the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron. (Some viewers still want answers about the Ronin days during The Blip and his actions during that period.) One thing that was important for Marvel Studios was focusing on how human Hawkeye and Kate Bishop are in the MCU. Running around with literal metahumans and gods as normal people.

“That actually is one of the reasons why I wanted to do “Hawkeye”. It’s the intimate, more personal stakes story and not another world-ending big scale, 64 heroes all coming together, but really just focused on Clint and Kate, you know? These two highly skilled archers and, what is their story? We haven’t had any chance in any opportunity to tell Clint Barton’s story,” Tran revealed.

“So I think the door was wide open in terms of what it can be while still preserving, obviously the 10 years of, you know, his life with the Avengers, and then also introducing somebody new into the world,” the executive producer observed. “So, it’s that smaller intimate family, set in the holidays, which I love, that was why I gravitated towards this particular one. And most importantly is because they are humans, they don’t have the superpowers. And it was just something a little different from what I’ve done in the past.”

She would add some clarity about how the shift was encouraged by the Matt Fraction and David Aja run on Hawkeye. 

“The Clint Barton from the “Avengers” movies was sort of inspired by “The Ultimates” comics, right? He’s sort of the bad-ass, serious archer,” she began. “What I thought was really interesting is there is the Fraction, lighter tone, humorous Clint Barton that I absolutely loved and could not put down when I started reading it. And I was like, well, how do we inject that into the version that we’ve already created? And, how do we sort of meld that into one person?” 

“And we thought the best person to do that is Kate Bishop because she is the complete opposite of who Clint is. She is a ball of energy, she doesn’t stop talking, she speaks her mind, and we felt that she can actually pull that side of him out right in the series, and that was what was fun about it,” Tran added. “And that was what was a part of the inspiration from the Fraction run is the constant bickering and bantering between the two of them. And we wanted to really inject that into the series, and Jeremy is hilarious and he was so game to actually show that different side of him and putting him into situations like, you know, the LARPing scene in episode two that you guys have seen. It’s just like, how does he react to that, you know? And that was what was fun about bringing that side to life.”

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