We’re now only a month away from the end(game) of the MCU’s decade-long franchise… well, at least this part of it. Today we got a look at the second Avengers: Endgame trailer, which was filled with nostalgia, sadness, a few answers, and most importantly for this post, a vague pre-Snap moment between Clint and a young woman holding a very big bow and arrow.
The most obvious option here is that it’s his daughter Lila who we met in Age of Ultron, but according to the official MCU timeline, she was only around five or six years old in 2015, which means that she would be around nine or ten in 2019. The sequence we see is clearly pre-Snap, so she would likely have been even younger then, which means the girl holding the bow and arrow who appears to be almost as tall as Clint is, and very proficient with the weapon, might just be someone else—namely Kate Bishop.
First introduced in the 2005 Young Avengers series by Jim Cheung and Allan Heinberg, the character was the first woman to take on the mantle of Hawkeye, and since her introduction she’s been a fan favorite character that comic book readers have adored. Kate has grown in prominence over the years and starred alongside Clint in David Aja and Matt Fraction’s critically acclaimed Hawkeye run, which positioned the pair as an unconventional mentor and mentee, with Kate desperate to help the man who held the title before her.
She was a core team member in Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillen’s brilliant 2013 Young Avengers series, which focused on the young heroes’ interior lives and saw Kate gain even more of a fanbase. Kate later went on to star in her own solo book Hawkeye by Leonardo Romero and Kelly Thompson. So basically, she’s well established as Hawkeye.
Since the end of the MCU as we know it is upon us, fans have been wondering if the Young Avengers might make an appearance in Endgame as a way of introducing a new team of heroes to the ever growing world. Kate is an obvious first choice as she has a distinct connection to one of the established team members, and even has history with Scott Lang’s daughter Cassie—if they go the expected route of aging her up and introducing her as the hero Structure—who wanted to become a member of the first Young Avengers team that Kate was a part of. It would be an exciting move as this could be the start of introducing an inclusive team of young heroes who have a massive fan base, like Kate, Kamala Khan, Hulking, Prodigy, and Wiccan.
The moment we see in the trailer could be nothing more that Clint teaching his daughter how to shoot, but this young woman looks older than Lila would be, plus she’s wearing an archery glove, which is a signature part of Kate’s look.
There’s also the matter of the time jump. If Clint was training Kate before the snap, maybe she tries to hunt him down after he goes rogue as Ronin. Which would make her a late teen by the time we join the Avengers in Endgame. Or perhaps in the MCU, Lila Barton becomes Hawkeye after her father takes off, leaving him thinking that his family was lost in the Snap?
Whatever happens we’ll know soon as the film hits on April 27!
Images: Marvel