The Best Thing to Ever Happen to Hawkeye Is Not Being on the Infinity War Poster

This according to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige.

One of the most prevalent discussions in the days and months leading up to the release of Avengers: Infinity War is “Where’s Hawkeye?” The character, played by Jeremy Renner, is an expert archer and one of the original Avengers. However, he’s been in virtually none of the film’s marketing materials and his name isn’t on the poster. The omission has fans clamoring to find out why. Well, Feige and the film’s directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, are loving every second of it.
“I think it’s one of the best things that ever happened to Hawkeye,” Feige told io9. “We [at Marvel] love Hawkeye. There are big, big story things coming up for Hawkeye and Jeremy Renner is as strong an actor as anyone in the MCU and awesome as this character. But ‘The guy with the bow and arrow jokes’, right? There are a lot of ‘Guy with bow and arrow jokes.’ He even makes ‘Guy with a bow and arrow’ jokes in some of the movies. So I love that people go from ‘Oh, Hawkeye is just lucky to be there’ to ‘Oh where is he? He’s not there? Whats going to happen? We need Hawkeye. We want more Hawkeye.’ I love it. It’s the best.”

The Russos love it, too, but they have a very specific reason for not including him.

“As we were working on both films, we were thinking about story real estate,” Joe Russo told io9. “We had the luxury of cracking both scripts at the same time and we wanted to give each character, especially the original Avengers, their moments. It led us to certain choices, especially considering the events of Civil War where [Hawkeye’s] included in this group of insurgents and has to deal with the ramifications of siding against the U.S. government. So that led us to a very specific story with him that, as I’ve said before is a long play, not a short play. Audiences just need to be patient.”
We probably won’t have to be patient too much longer. Hawkeye is bound to appear in Avengers: Infinity War on April 27 or Avengers 4 next year.