Ever since the Black Widow post-credits scene, it's seemed that Hawkeye and Yelena Belova are heading on a collision course.
The moment saw Florence Pugh's former-Widow at the graveside of Natasha Romanoff, who sacrificed herself in Avengers: Endgame for the Soul Stone – rather than let Jeremy Renner's Clint Barton be the one to go over the edge. In Black Widow, Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Val told Yelena that Hawkeye was responsible for Natasha's death, and put the archer firmly in Yelena's crosshairs.
12DOVE sat down with Hawkeye director Rhys Thomas, and asked whether we'll be seeing the Avenger and assassin at each other's throats in the series.
"I can't speak to that," he tells us. "But yes, we know their past, and obviously what happened in Endgame. We know in these first two episodes that Clint's dealing with the fallout of that. But in terms of how they meet, I can't – I'll just pretend I don't know. Imagine it's a happy meeting, where they talk over coffee and work things out."
With the MCU becoming a sprawling behemoth of interconnected stories across multiple movies and TV shows, we also spoke to Thomas about how Hawkeye slots into the wider whole.
"It's definitely a standalone thing in that we have this Christmas setting, and this very fixed timeframe story," he reveals. "But it being the MCU, of course, it all connects in some way as well. And we've got new characters, and this was teed up at the end of Black Widow as well. And so everything is always a nice entry point. But I think for the most part, the story is its own little world."
Hawkeye arrives this November 24 on Disney Plus, with the first two episodes premiering together. In the meantime, check out our complete guide to Marvel Phase 4 for everything else the MCU has in store for us.
