'Hawkeye' director wanted to feature a cameo from this Avenger (and no, it wasn't Spider-Man)

When Spider-Man: No Way Home was released into theaters ahead of the Hawkeye finale, many fans began to speculate that Tom Holland's Peter Parker might show up to take on Kingpin (Vincent D'Onofrio) alongside Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). After all, No Way Home clearly features a number of billboards for Rogers: The Musical, placing the film around the same time as the latest MCU television show.

Sadly, the friendly neighborhood vigilante never showed up for the big climax at Rockefeller Plaza, but the exciting prospect of seeing him swing into action was also on the minds of those who had a direct hand in making the series.  "I think I asked that question too, because I was just like, 'We’re in New York and especially in this finale, there’s a lot going down here, it feels like someone might come to help,’" director Rhys Thomas — who helmed the first, second, and last episodes — admitted during a recent conversation with Metro.

The filmmaker went on to reveal that he had a different invertebrate-inspired Avenger in mind to make a cameo appearance, and that certain someone was Paul Rudd's Scott Lang/Ant-Man.

It's unclear how the pint-sized hero would have factored into the story, though if we had to guess, we'd wager it would've been at the expense of the Captain America musical on Broadway, which inaccurately depicts Ant-Man as being present for the Battle of New York in 2012 (which, given the whole "Time Heist" in Avengers: Endgame, isn't totally untrue). However it would have gone down, Thomas wanted to capitalize on the "fun" and "amusing" dynamic Rudd and Renner share in real life. "Ultimately, we had a lot of characters in the show and so, it was determined that we’re going to keep it focused to [Clint]," the director added.

Thomas also wanted a small reference to "Winter Friends" (a fictional holiday special featured in the Matt Fraction/David Aja comic book run that heavily inspired the plot and look of Hawkeye), which didn't pan out either. "We started down the line of making that episode and I worked with Matt Fraction a little bit on figuring it out," he recalled. "The idea of it was it would just be Lucky — Pizza Dog — would be watching TV, and it would just be a moment of him watching this that the audience get to see."

All six episodes of Hawkeye are now streaming on Disney+. Scott Lang returns to the MCU in in 2023's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where he will clash with Jonathan Majors' Kang the Conquerer (a belligerent variant of He Who Remains).