Hawkeye: Jeremy Renner Reacts to That Big Ant-Man Easter Egg

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Episode 3 of Hawkeye.

Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye is officially halfway through its first season after the premiere of Episode 3 on Disney+, which raised plenty of questions while Clint Barton and Kate Bishop strengthened their partnership. This new entry held some particularly thrilling teases for the show's final stretch, most prominently the first possible signs of Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin becoming MCU canon.

With this series being Renner's first-ever solo project, Marvel Studios has a chance to pay tribute to the MCU's long history thanks to Clint Barton's standing as an original Avenger. This started with a flashback to 2012's The Avengers and Clint referencing the sale of Avengers Tower, and with three weeks left, the opportunity is there for much more of the same on this front.

The most recent of these callbacks came when Hawkeye utilized a special Pym Tech arrow to stop the Tracksuit Mafia in its tracks, tying back to the MCU's Ant-Man franchise. Amongst other details from this entry, Renner took a moment to share his thoughts on everything that came to fruition at the halfway mark of Season 1.

Ant-Man's Pym Arrow in Hawkeye

Hawkeye star Jeremy Renner spoke with Marvel about everything that went down during the car chase in Episode 3 of Marvel Studios' latest Disney+ show

Part of the fun in this scene, as Renner noted, was Clint and Kate trying to communicate with each other after Maya Lopez destroyed Clint's hearing aid. This only added to the frustration Clint already feels working with Kate as she tried using his specialized arrows for the first time.

“Another interesting part of that car chase sequence is they're communicating, but not. One person can't hear anything and [the other’s] talking a lot. And yeah, there's some fun character bits in there of her trying to grab some arrows that she's really not worthy of slinging."

Those trick arrows included putty arrows, smoke arrows, and even others like a USB arrow, although that one wasn't very useful during this particular scene. The highlight, however, was the Pym Tech arrow that Clint used to take out the Tracksuit Mafia.

Renner loved the idea of a Pym arrow thinking back to Clint's "relationship with Ant-Man" in past movies. He also felt that it helped the show feel even more set into the MCU with the Avengers ties:

“If you're going to have a special tip arrow, it should be a Pym arrow. Because [of Hawkeye’s] relationship with Ant-Man. That was such a cool, cool thing. Now we're talking; now we're feeling more Avenger-like.”

While Renner didn't get a sense of how cool the giant arrow would look when he shot that scene, he was still excited to see how it would turn out in the final cut::

“You don't really know what’s happening all the time when you're filming it. When you do see it, like maybe a preview, you think like, wait, what? That's going to be in the visual effects? And so yeah, that was something I got very, very, very excited about and can't wait for that to land.”

Ant-Man's Fun Place in Alongside "Arrow Guy"

Ant-Man and Hawkeye have certainly had an interesting relationship over the past few years in the MCU, which started shortly before the airport battle in Germany from 2016's Captain America: Civil War. Clint Barton picked up Scott Lang from San Francisco and recruited him to Captain America's team, and they also teamed up for the time heist in 2019's Avengers: Endgame.

Director Rhys Thomas even admitted that Paul Rudd's Ant-Man was a cameo he wanted to include in Hawkeye, although it didn't come to fruition in the end. Thankfully, Hawkeye's new Pym tech arrow paid tribute to that friendship perfectly as the enlarging technology gave the master archer quite the advantage in battle.

With Ant-Man set to star in his upcoming 2023 threequel Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, there are no signs pointing to when he and Hawkeye may team up again for another battle together. No matter when that happens, it seems to be a bond that still remains strong with nods such as the one just seen in Renner's solo project. 

The first three episodes of Hawkeye are now available to stream on Disney+. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania recently completed filming and will release in theaters on July 28, 2023.