Series Phase 4 — Multiverse Opens (2024–2025)

Hawkeye (Season 1)

Name: Hawkeye (Season 1)
Released: 2021-11-24
Duration: 300 min
Rating: 7.8
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Hailee Steinfeld, Tony Dalton, Alaqua Cox, Fra Fee

"This holiday season, the best gifts come with a bow."

Released November 24, 2021 5h ★ 7.8TMDB ✦ Recommended

Former Avenger Clint Barton has a seemingly simple mission: get back to his family for Christmas. Possible? Maybe with the help of Kate Bishop, a 22-year-old archer with dreams of becoming a superhero. The two are forced to work together when a presence from Barton’s past threatens to derail far more than the festive spirit.

How to watch Watch before Wakanda Forever.

Watch note

Kate Bishop becomes Hawkeye. Kingpin (Wilson Fisk) returns as the crime boss behind it all — directly setting up his Born Again arc as Mayor of New York.

Why It Matters in the MCU

The Hawkeye series is the MCU's most deliberately holiday-flavored production and its most grounded street-level New York story, using the five-day Christmas countdown structure to build a case-of-the-week procedural that happens to involve superheroes. Hailee Steinfeld's Kate Bishop is the series' strongest creative success — a character with none of Clint Barton's trauma and all of his skill, whose fan-girl relationship with her mentor complicates both of them. The Eleanor Bishop/Kingpin connection reintroduces Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk to the MCU in a way that validates the Netflix run without requiring viewers to have seen it.

Watch These First

16 titles lead into Hawkeye (Season 1) — 36 hours in total, 12 of them essential.

Captain America: The First Avenger Essential 2h 4m ★ 7.0
Thor Essential 1h 55m ★ 6.8
The Avengers Essential 2h 23m ★ 8.1
Iron Man 3 2h 10m ★ 6.9
Thor: The Dark World 1h 52m ★ 6.5
Captain America: The Winter Soldier Essential 2h 16m ★ 7.7
Guardians of the Galaxy Essential 2h 1m ★ 7.9
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 2h 16m ★ 7.6
Avengers: Age of Ultron Essential 2h 21m ★ 7.3
Captain America: Civil War Essential 2h 27m ★ 7.4
Black Panther Essential 2h 14m ★ 7.4
Spider-Man: Homecoming 2h 13m ★ 7.3
Doctor Strange Essential 1h 55m ★ 7.4
Thor: Ragnarok Essential 2h 10m ★ 7.6
Avengers: Infinity War Essential 2h 29m ★ 8.2
Avengers: Endgame Essential 3h 2m ★ 8.2

Create a watch plan for these 16

Opens the planner with just these titles, so you can set your own pace.

Where It Fits in the MCU

Hawkeye (Season 1) sits at position 122 of 165 in the MCU's story-chronological order, placing it within the Phase 4 — Multiverse Opens (2024–2025) era. It is rated Recommended — enriches the story but not strictly required. Watching in story-chronological order provides the most coherent character development experience — individual arcs build naturally toward the franchise's major crossover events, with each film's post-credits scenes carrying forward into what follows.