Warning: this story contains spoilers for Wednesday’s Hawkeye Episode 6, “So This Is Christmas?” Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) takes aim at the Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) in a post-credits scene reportedly cut from the Hawkeye finale. The penultimate episode of the season confirms it’s Wilson Fisk, the old sparring partner of Daredevil (Charlie Cox), who is the whispered-about “big guy” behind Maya Lopez’s (Alaqua Cox) Tracksuit Mafia and the criminal conspiracy involving Eleanor Bishop (Vera Farmiga). Maya seemingly fatally shoots “Uncle” Fisk for his hand in her father’s death, and a post-credits scene ends Hawkeye with a show-stopping musical number from Rogers: The Musical.
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According to The Cosmic Circus, a filmed but deleted coda would have confirmed that Fisk survives the point-blank shooting that occurs off-screen. (In the comics, Maya’s bullet blinds Fisk for a time as he rebuilds his criminal empire.)
The scene sees Barton sending Kingpin the retrieved Ronin sword he used to kill William Lopez (Zahn McClarnon), Maya’s father, who dies by the blade of Barton’s masked ninja alter-ego before the events of Avengers: Endgame. The sword comes with a warning: stay away from his protege-slash-partner Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) and his family, including his retired S.H.I.E.L.D. agent wife Laura (Linda Cardellini).
Marvel visual effects artist Elaina Scott claims a different deleted post-credits scene would have revealed the fates of the Tracksuit Mafia bros sized down by a trick arrow equipped with Ant-Man’s shrinking technology. Hawkeye instead ends with a holiday gift: an extended scene from Rogers: The Musical.
“It wasn’t planned that that was going to be the way that the show was going to close… I was curious, like, ‘Is this slot going to be reserved for teeing something else up?’ in the tradition that Marvel’s known for,” Rhys Thomas, who directed the finale, told Collider of the musical sequence. “[Marvel Studios] made the decision to put the musical at the end there, which honestly, I was slightly conflicted about because as a fan, I’m like, ‘The people, they want to see something, they want to know what’s coming next. Is this going to disappoint?’”
Ultimately, Thomas said, “It’s like, no, no, no, it’s Christmas, it’s light. We’ve got so much blood in this episode, it’s just fun. It’s a fun release at the end, and it’s a nice way to send people off. That’s how that came about and in terms of what it was.”
For D’Onofrio, who returns to the Kingpin role he last played three years ago in the canceled Marvel-Netflix series Daredevil, the actor hopes to return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for spinoff series Echo and beyond.
All episodes of Marvel’s Hawkeye are now streaming on Disney+.
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