The Avengers are in a strange place right now, with many characters departing and several new ones arriving all at once. I can never decide if the pandemic was a blessing in disguise for Marvel, or just a regular ol' curse. By disrupting the filming and release schedule of the MCU, the pandemic meant Marvel's momentum was disrupted right when it needed to pick up pace after Endgame. However, it also gave us all a break from impending superhero fatigue right after the biggest event in superhero cinema history, and allowed the television arm of Marvel Studios to lead from the front, rather than risk losing itself in the crowd amongst the endless stream of movies. With things so chaotic, there's room for lots of twists and turns, and perhaps a chance for a new hero to emerge – perhaps Kate Bishop will be that hero.
Kate Bishop is the new Hawkeye, with her training and eventual succession set to be the driving arc of the Hawkeye TV show coming in December. Jeremy Renner will bow out as Clint Barton, and Hailee Steinfeld will step in as Kate Bishop. One Hawkeye in, another Hawkeye out. It makes sense that Bishop would just step into Barton's old role in the Avengers, hopefully with a little more personality, but the Avengers don't really exist any more. Iron Man, Black Widow, and Vision are dead, Captain America time travelled away, Thor is off-world and still overweight, and Scarlet Witch seems to be in the middle of a heel turn. Only Hulk is left – there are no Avengers for Bishop to join.
Related: I Can’t Believe Marvel’s Avengers Is Pinning Its Hopes On A Guy Called ClintThe Avengers is too important a symbol in the MCU – and too lucrative of a property in the real world – for Marvel to abandon it. There are obvious candidates to step in; Spider-Man, Ant-Man, Wasp, Captain Marvel, the new Captain America, and Hulk once more could form the new Avengers, with potential for Valkyrie, someone from Wakanda, and if Karen Gillan gets her wish to remain in the MCU post-Guardians 3, Nebula to join the squad. Hell, Howard the Duck might even appear. The Avengers will likely return in some form, but a team of the Anti-Avengers already seems much more cohesive, and that could draw Bishop's eye too.
Yelena and US Agent are the confirmed members of Valentina's anti-Avengers, who may end up being The Thunderbolts if Ross is on their side. There's always a chance that Abomination, Agatha Harkness, Zemo, Ghost, and White Vision could join up too. There are some clear comparisons to the original Avengers in there. Yelena is Black Widow, US Agent is Captain America, Abomination is Hulk, Agatha Harkness is Wanda Maximoff, White Vision is Vision, obviously. They don't really have a Thor, and Zemo's wealth and gadgetry plus Ghost's suit kind of combine for Iron Man, but remember, aside from Yelena and US Agent, these are rumours anyway. If this is the direction the MCU is heading in, the Hawkeye stand in is clear – it should be Kate Bishop.
Kate Bishop is not a villain in the comics, but the MCU has played around with morality before. Agatha Harkness is not an out-and-out villain in the comics either, but she was in WandaVision. Similarly, Yelena is just the second Black Widow in the comics, and while the MCU may take her down this route, having her team up with Valentina suggests she'll be a darker character, at least for a while. It's this team-up that makes Bishop's role so important too – Yelena has been tasked with killing Clint Barton, after being told that he murdered Natasha. Technically, this is true, but practically speaking, Clint and Nat fought over the right to commit suicide in order to spare the other, and after Clint lost the fight, Nat dove off a cliff. To call him Nat's killer deliberately misses the point.
With Barton leaving the MCU after Hawkeye, his fate is open ended. Typically, in this scenario you'd expect a fight scene between Clint and Yelena, possibly involving Kate Bishop, before Yelena learns the truth and they become best buds. Yelena and Nat have a similar fight when they first meet in Black Widow, even though everyone knew they both had to survive and work together for the rest of the movie. With Renner leaving though, Barton might actually die. If Yelena kills him, that would seem to set her pretty firmly on a villain arc, but what of Bishop?
It could be that Bishop witnessing Barton's death – or being unable to prevent it – is the final motivation she needs to fill his shoes, seeking out the Avengers in order to avenge her mentor's death. If that's the case, that means she's the one who causes the Avengers to assemble, which makes her pretty darn important. Alternatively, she may be convinced that Barton killed Black Widow, and therefore joins up with the anti-Avengers – but Bishop would remain a sympathetic character. She's only there because she's naive and believes Valentina's lies, and that will give her a crucial part to play in however the potential Thunderbolts arc shakes out. She's also the strongest connection to the original Avengers, given that Hawkeye was likely more talkative about his time with the team in the months he has been training her than Natasha was in her brief time with Yelena.
She's not the obvious candidate for a key role in the MCU. Spidey and Captain Marvel draw bigger crowds and are far more established, while the original Hawkeye took until Endgame to become an interesting character at all – and even that was because he had stopped being Hawkeye and turned into Ronin. Then again, while the big showstoppers in Endgame were the typical big name heroes, as far as the plot is concerned, the key figure is Ant-Man. He's one of the lowest grossing heroes of the bunch, but because of his unique position within the story, he became irreplaceable. Bishop doesn't have anything on the level of Pym Particles to bring to the table, but her human touch could place her at the heart of the MCU in Phase 4.
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