Hawkeye

Clint Barton is the Avenger most frequently dismissed and, as a result, the most interesting test of the franchise's capacity for ground-level storytelling. He has no powers, no armour, no serum — just a bow, arrows, and forty-odd years of field experience. Avengers: Age of Ultron gave him his domestic life (wife, children, a farm in the middle of nowhere) specifically to make the sacrifice of an ordinary person legible alongside the extraordinary ones. His grief-driven turn as the vigilante Ronin following the Blip is the franchise's darkest detour.

The Hawkeye Disney+ series (2021) reframes Clint's story through Kate Bishop, a 22-year-old who idolises him without knowing what he did as Ronin or what it cost him. The series is Christmas-set, deliberately lower-stakes than the Avengers films, and uses that tonal shift to examine what recovery looks like for a soldier who has been at war for twenty years. Hailee Steinfeld's Kate Bishop is among the MCU's best new characters, and the mentor-student dynamic gives Clint a purpose that combat alone hasn't provided. Watch Avengers: Endgame before Hawkeye for full emotional context.