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hawkeye-avengers-endgame.jpg

Why Does Hawkeye Have a Sword in 'Avengers: Endgame' and Who The Hell is Ronin? I'm Glad You Asked

By Mike Redmond | Film | December 7, 2018 |

By Mike Redmond | Film | December 7, 2018 |


hawkeye-avengers-endgame.jpg

If you’re alive on Planet Earth and have internet access, there’s a pretty good chance that you watched the Avengers: Endgame trailer that hit this morning. And while Marvel doesn’t exactly tip a lot of its hand as to how our heroes are going to completely reverse the events of Avengers: Infinity War, because you don’t just turn billion dollar franchises into fart dust, the trailer does reveal that some of the team is notably effed up. Specifically Hawkeye, who is apparently dropping bodies with a sword and looking like he should be telling Oliver Queen that he’s failed this city.

But there’s actually a convoluted comic book history about Hawkeye’s new duds, and since my Charlie Cox still wants to be Daredevil post is getting buried alive in an avalanche of Avengers news — A tidy little metaphor for the Netflix shows, right? — I’m going to nerd out about something that people are actually going to read, dammit.

So right off the bat, here’s the look Jeremy Renner is going for:

ronin-hawkeye.jpg

That guy there is Ronin, a ninja assassin person that appeared in Marvel Comics in the mid-aughts and would soon become a costume/alias that at least six different characters would pick up and go, “Well, shit, I guess I’m this guy now.”

One of those characters was Clint Barton (Hawkeye) who presumably died in a spaceship explosion when Scarlet Witch went crazy. Except, just kidding, he’s still alive because death is on par with catching a cold in the comic books. And soon the Marvel Cinematic Universe! But before Barton became Ronin, he first took a crack at replacing Captain America, because in an entirely separate event, Steve Rogers had just been shot in the head and died. (He got better.)

Have I driven home the point that comic book deaths are stupid yet? Because, wait, there’s more.

After The Avengers shot him down as the new Cap, Barton went, “Whatever, I’ll just run around with sword and nunchucks,” and joined the New Avengers as Ronin. (Did I mention there are New Avengers? There are New Avengers.) And here’s where shit goes way off the rails. Part of Hawkeye’s transformation into Ronin is that he’s still in mourning from the death of his wife Bobbi Morse a.k.a. Mockingbird, because superheroes only bone other superheroes. The dude is going through some dark stuff hence why he became a badass ninja as one does during difficult times like, for example, Domino’s screwing up my order last night. There will be blood.

Anyway, please enjoy this fine quality synopsis from a Marvel Wiki that will either make you want to read the shit out of some comics or learn to just watch the movies and never once ask about any of this stuff ever again, for the love of God:

During the Skrull Invasion, Barton headed to the Savage Land with the New Avengers to investigate a crashed Skrull ship. There, both they and the Mighty Avengers came across many heroes from years past including a “Hawkeye” and a “Mockingbird”. This “Hawkeye” was discovered to be a Skrull, but after Clint questioned “Mockingbird” of her miscarriage, he truly believed her to be his late wife. Teammates Luke Cage and Wolverine were more suspicious. This was justified later, when Clint was proven wrong by Mr. Fantastic, whose technology forced the Skrulls to revert to their true forms. Clint did not hesitate in shooting the Skrull Mockingbird impostor dead with one of Black Widow’s firearms. Enraged by such deception, Barton became more dedicated to opposing the invading Skrulls without any second thoughts about killing them. During the final battle with the Skrulls alongside dozens of superheroes, he used his old bow and quiver of trick arrows (dropped by the wounded Kate Bishop) to kill several Super-Skrulls and to severely wound Queen Veranke, who orchestrated the entire invasion while posing as Spider-Woman. After the fighting, it was discovered that the people replaced by the Skrulls were alive and well, including Bobbi.

Haha! How have I had sex?

So in a nutshell, Hawkeye has a history of becoming a ninja whenever life kicks him in the teeth, which adds to the theory that Jeremy Renner’s version of the character has lost his family in The Snappening at the end of Infinity War. Or “The Decimation” as it’s now officially called because, oddly, Marvel doesn’t want to reference an event where everyone saw a bunch of naked celebrities even though Wreck-It Ralph 2 is literally named after the time Kim Kardashian went bare ass in a magazine. Wreck-It Ralph 2, the children’s Disney movie.

Good talk.



Header Image Source: Marvel/YouTube