Taking down assassins.
Hanging out with Gods.
Jumping through time.
Saving the world so many times that it's routine - and all this from one of the only Avengers
with no powers.
Here's Hawkeye's entire timeline in the MCU explained.
Baby Clint was born in Iowa to one Edith Barton.
A headstrong lad, he dropped out of high school, preferring to spend his time working on his
exceptional marksmanship.
After maturing into adulthood, Clint met and married a woman named Laura.
It was around that time that Clint's skills with weaponry of all kinds drew the attention
of Nick Fury, who personally hand-picked him to be a part of SHIELD.
Clint soon developed a reputation as one of SHIELD's most skilled operatives, and one
of Fury's most trusted men.
When Clint and Laura decided to start a family, Fury helped keep their personal data out of
SHIELD's files, and also found a farmhouse for the couple in Missouri to raise their
children away from the eyes of their enemies.
During his early years in SHIELD, Clint's work was fraught with danger.
After becoming known as one of SHIELD's most dangerous agents, the increasingly infamous
archer found himself in the crosshairs of the many international criminal organizations
that SHIELD was in the business of stopping.
One of the criminal organizations hired a man called Marcus Scarlotti, an assassin and
one of the most dangerous men in the world.
The details of Clint cand Scarlotti's battle have remained mostly a mystery, but we do
know that Scarlotti came closer to killing Clint than any other opponent had before.
"Marcus Scarlotti was behind the attack.
An assassin.
Almost killed Barton a few years back."
Clint himself was also unable to take down Scarlotti, and the master assassin continued
to operate from the shadows.
After becoming one of SHIELD's top agents, Hawkeye was assigned increasingly complex
missions of an international nature.
For one such mission, Clint was assigned the task of locating and eliminating a dangerous
new Russian assassin called Black Widow, who was stated to be a threat to global peace.
Clint managed to track down Black Widow in Russia, where she turned out to be one Natasha
Romanoff.
During their interactions, Clint realized that there was a potential for good in Natasha,
who had been forced to become Black Widow by a clandestine Russian program called "Red
Room."
Instead of killing her, Clint offered Natasha the chance to defect from Russia and become
a SHIELD operative.
Natasha accepted the deal, and she and Clint teamed up to put an end to the Red Room once
and for all.
To that end, they tracked down Dreykov, the leader of the Red Room, to a secret location
in Budapest.
Natasha and Clint arranged to bomb the building Dreykov was operating from.
As a result, special forces pursued Clint and Natasha, forcing them to engage in a brutal
firefight before hiding out for 10 days in the ceiling of a subway station.
With Dreykov supposedly dead, Natasha officially joined SHIELD and became Clint's partner on
many new missions — as well as his close friend.
"It's just like Budapest all over again."
"You and I remember Budapest very differently."
Years later, Clint was instructed by Nick Fury to go down to New Mexico to help investigate
a strange object that was of special interest to SHIELD.
Arriving at the site in 2011's "Thor," Clint was joined by Agent Phil Coulson and put in
charge of watching over the facility which housed the object — a hammer-shaped construct
that no one seemed to be able to lift.
From his vantage point, Clint watched an unknown blond, hulking man tear through the guards
protecting the facility and make his way to where the hammer was located.
Clint had the intruder in his bow's crosshairs, but Coulson ordered him to wait so they could
see what the blonde stranger, later revealed to be Thor Odinson, would do with the hammer.
Clint was witness to Thor's initial failure to lift the hammer.
He also saw Jane Foster leaving the facility, and allowed them to leave so Thor and Jane
could be secretly tracked.
Later, Clint witnessed Thor regain his power and battle the Destroyer sent by Loki.
After Thor won, Clint helped transport the body of the Destroyer to a secret SHIELD facility.
After the events of New Mexico, Hawkeye was tasked with breaking into SHIELD's Helicarrier
as a means of testing the giant machine's defenses.
Upon breaking through the last level of security, Clint obtained secret files pertaining to
something called "The Avengers Initiative."
Soon afterward, Clint was put in charge of the security detail for Project PEGASUS, a
team founded to explore the nature of the Tesseract that had been previously used during
the Kree-Skrull war in the 1980s.
Fury brought in Thor's friend Erik Selvig to examine the powerful object.
As shown in 2012's "The Avengers," Clint saw the Tesseract as a doorway through space,
and reasoned that the doorway could be opened from both sides.
That was when the Tesseract started acting up, and Clint and his security team were caught
unaware by Loki's arrival.
In the ensuing battle, Clint managed to save Fury's life, but at the cost of becoming a
mind-controlled slave to Loki along with Selvig.
Still under Loki's thrall, Clint helped to create a method of disrupting the Tesseract
using iridium technology.
Loki wanted to test Earth's mightiest warriors in preparation for ruling Earth: to that end,
the God of Mischief allowed himself to be captured and brought on board the Helicarrier
that also contained the entire Avengers team.
While Loki distracted the people on the Helicarrier with his mind games, Clint led an aerial assault
against the Helicarrier itself.
He almost succeeded in taking down the giant machine, but was brought back to his senses
at the last minute by Black Widow.
"Why am I back?
How'd you get him out?"
"Cognitive recalibration - I hit you really hard on the head."
Now free of Loki's mind control, Clint vowed to make up for his earlier actions by aiding
the newly formed Avengers in their fight against the God of Mischief.
Clint joined the other heroes in the battle against Loki's alien army in New York.
He was able to hold off the army long enough to fire an exploding arrow at Loki, which
briefly took the villain out of the battle.
Finally, Hawkeye and the other Avengers combined their forces to stop Loki's army, imprisoned
the God of Mischief, and stepped out of the shadows to become heroes for all of mankind.
Clint was now officially a member of the Avengers.
After the Battle of New York, the team of heroes learned that Loki's enchanted scepter
had passed into the hands of prominent HYDRA agent Baron Strucker.
Strucker had already used the scepter to carry out experiments on humans, with the most successful
products of such tests being Wanda Maximoff and her twin brother Pietro.
While the Avengers managed to retrieve the scepter at the start of 2015's "Avengers:
Age of Ultron," Wanda slipped a bit of hypnosis into Tony Stark's psyche to make him paranoid.
With the help of Bruce Banner, Tony began work on an AI named Ultron that could defend
humanity against any alien threats.
The AI eventually broke free of Tony's programming and became sentient.
Ultron decided that humanity needed to be destroyed, meaning that Clint and the other
Avengers once again had to step up to save the world.
After a long and hard-fought battle, during which Clint was forced to reveal the existence
of his secret family farm to the other Avengers, they were able to destroy Ultron.
Pietro died while saving Clint, and Wanda became an ally to the heroes.
A new member was also added to the team in the form of Tony's former AI butler-turned-sentient-cyborg,
Vision.
After these major battles, Hawkeye was starting to become uncomfortably aware that he was
hopelessly outmatched in battles against literal gods and monsters.
In the days leading up to the final assault against Ultron, Clint promised his wife that
he would retire from active duty if he managed to make it through the next battle intact.
Once Ultron was gone, Clint made good on his promise and made it back home in time for
the birth of his third child, Nathaniel Pietro Barton, who was named after Natasha and Pietro.
Despite trying to enjoy retirement, Clint didn't find regular activities much fun.
"Clearly retirement doesn't suit you.
Got tired of shooting golf?"
"Well, I played 18, shot 18.
Just can't seem to miss."
Clint then learned about the creation of the Sokovia Accords, and how the question of signing
the accords had led to infighting between the Avengers during the events of 2016's "Captain
America: Civil War."
Feeling compelled to help his friends, Clint came out of retirement to fight at Captain
America's side.
This eventually led to Clint becoming a fugitive from the law, and being taken into custody
by the military along with Cap's other allies.
Even though Captain America broke Clint and the others out of prison soon after the events
of "Civil War," they were still wanted fugitives.
Clint decided to turn himself in to the FBI and agree to the Sokovia Accords in return
for being placed under house arrest on his own farm instead of being imprisoned.
Clint spent his house arrest bonding with his children and teaching archery to his daughter
Lila, who showed talent with the bow and arrow herself.
While Clint was enjoying his downtime with his family in 2018, his life was turned upside
down yet again when his wife and children mysteriously disappeared in his very presence.
He would later come to learn of Thanos' mission to eradicate half of all life in the universe,
and how the Mad Titan's victory had resulted in the death of untold trillions at the end
of "Avengers: Infinity War."
Having lost his family, Clint grew increasingly unstable.
He took the fact that so many criminals survived the snap that killed his family and many other
innocents as a personal insult.
Clint decided to get back into active duty, this time as the vigilante known as "Ronin."
Now armed with a sword, Clint waged a brutal war against the criminal underworld of New
York.
Having killed every villain he could find in the city, Ronin turned his attention to
the Mexican cartel.
In 2019's "Avengers: Endgame," James Rhodes — a.k.a.
War Machine — described Clint's actions in Mexico to Natasha in chilling terms.
"The federales found a room full of bodies, looks like a bunch of cartel guys.
Never even got a chance to get their guns off."
Still thirsting for vengeance, Clint then made his way to Japan to take down the Yakuza
crime syndicate.
After eliminating the mafia group, Clint realized Natasha had found him, and after a somber
conversation, Clint allowed Nat to take him back to the Avengers headquarters to figure
out a plan to bring everyone back from the snap.
Clint agreed to help the Avengers with their plan to go back in time to collect the six
Infinity Stones before Thanos and make their own Infinity Gauntlet.
He was the first to volunteer to test the new time-traveling technology, using Ant-Man's
Pym Particles to successfully travel back in time to his farm — with his family inside.
Now convinced the plan could work, Clint helped the other Avengers decide on a plan of action
to retrieve the infinity stones.
Clint and Natasha were tasked with getting the Soul Stone on the planet Vormir.
Arriving at the location, they discovered that one needed to sacrifice the other in
order to find the stone.
Clint insisted he be the one to sacrifice himself, but Natasha managed to beat him to
the punch.
Devastated over the loss of his best friend, Clint returned to the Avengers headquarters
with the Soul Stone as the other teams brought each of the other five stones.
Banner was able to use them to snap everyone who had disappeared five years ago back into
existence, including Clint's family — but Natasha was gone for good.
Before the Avengers could celebrate their victory, the Thanos from the past arrived
in the present, bombing the Avengers headquarters in an attempt to get the Infinity Stones.
Clint regrouped with the other heroes as they prepared to make a final stand against Thanos.
Clint got to the gauntlet first, and he continued to protect it from Thanos' army while being
aided by the other heroes.
Thanos tried to get his hands on the gauntlet, but Iron Man managed to retrieve the Infinity
Stones and used them to snap the Mad Titan and his army away.
Despite their victory, Clint spent the next few days mourning the loss of Black Widow
and attending the funeral of Tony Stark.
Clint also reconnected with his old friend Wanda Maximoff, and comforted her over the
loss of Vision.
At long last, Barton was able to return to his family on their farm.
After the events of "Avengers: Infinity War," Clint distanced himself from the Avengers
once again and tried to put his past as a crimefighter behind him.
He was living with his family on their farm when he was invited to attend a musical based
on the Chitauri Invasion, which he and the Avengers thwarted years earlier.
Clint took his kids to the show, but he was unable to enjoy it due to the many inaccuracies
and being reminded of Natasha's demise.
"Why is everyone singing and dancing about everything?"
(laughs) "I don't know."
Clint was frequently accosted by Hawkeye fans whenever he went out in public, and he felt
uncomfortable with all the attention.
All he wanted to do was enjoy the holiday festivities with his children in New York
before returning home, but his plans changed after he saw a troubling news report — someone
was using his old Ronin assassin uniform to terrorize the city.
Still haunted by his time as Ronin, Clint decided to set off on a quick secret mission
to nab his doppelganger and get his old suit back before things got out of hand.
Clint discovered that the mysterious person who had taken over his Ronin identity was
Kate Bishop, a young vigilante fighting a tense battle against a crime syndicate called
the Tracksuit Mafia.
Wanting to know more, Clint intervened on Kate's behalf and helped her get away.
When Clint began to interrogate Kate about her use of the Ronin suit, he discovered that
Kate had been inspired by the events of the Chitauri invasion, when she witnessed Hawkeye
fighting alongside the other Avengers on an even footing.
This convinced Kate that you don't need superpowers to be a hero, and she devoted her life to
becoming a master archer like her idol.
Clint made it clear that the Ronin persona was no joke, and Kate revealed to him that
she found the Ronin costume during a black market auction held by a mysterious and powerful
criminal.
Clint then warned Kate that Ronin had made a lot of dangerous enemies over the years
— and that they would all be coming after her.
Kate and Clint's private moment was interrupted by the Tracksuit Mafia's assault on their
hiding place.
The duo managed to escape, but Clint felt hampered by the lack of his usual arsenal,
along with his worry for Kate and his desire to get back to his family.
Meanwhile, the Ronin suit had once again disappeared, but Clint discovered that it was in the possession
of a group of live-action role-players.
He also found out that Kate came from a powerful family with a sketchy background.
Despite her wanting to work alongside him, Clint opted to complete the rest of his mission
on his own and sent Kate back to her family.
After assuring his wife that he would be home soon, Clint set out to hunt down the Ronin
costume alone.
Unfortunately, Clint was still being followed by the Tracksuit Mafia, who were initially
recruited to get their hands on a special Rolex watch that belonged to his wife.
He would come to learn that the villains were acting on behalf of a woman named Maya Lopez,
a.k.a.
Echo, who held a personal grudge against Clint for killing her father during his time as
Ronin.
Clint set about uncovering the true nature of the Tracksuit Mafia's attack on him and
Kate, and determined that the Mafia was actually being run by the powerful Wilson Fisk, a.k.a.
Kingpin.
Fisk didn't want to get involved in a fight with an Avenger, but Maya's personal vendetta
was all that mattered to her.
Clint also found himself bonding with Kate and warming up to her enthusiastic views on
Hawkeye, from wanting Clint to improve his brand to coming up with new trick arrows.
Kate even took Clint home to meet her family, but her mother Eleanor became concerned that
her daughter was getting mixed up in dangerous circles.
"I mean she's pretty good at all this but—"
"Natasha Romanoff was pretty damn good at it, wasn't she?"
While trying to get the drop on the Tracksuit Mafia, Clint was ambushed by an assassin who
turned out to be Yelena Belova, who held Clint responsible for the death of her sister Natasha.
By trying to end things with the Tracksuit Mafia and investigating the true nature of
the company run by Kate's parents, Yelena proved to be another major obstacle that forced
Clint to rely on Kate's help once again.
With his enemies closing in around him, Clint revealed to Maya that Wilson Fisk had orchestrated
events so that Ronin would kill her father, because Fisk saw Maya's dad as a threat.
The savvy villain had used Ronin to get rid of his competition, manipulating the situation
to his benefit.
Clint also finally had it out with Yelena, telling her the truth about Natasha's death,
and spoke of how devastated he still was over the loss of his best friend.
At long last, Yelena believed Clint's story, and the two grieved over the death of Natasha
together.
Meanwhile, Kate discovered that her mother Eleanor was secretly working with Kingpin
to pay off an old debt.
After a narrow escape, Kate was able to take down Fisk and regretfully handed her mother
over to the authorities.
With the whole affair finally put to rest, Clint asked Kate to spend Christmas at the
farm with his family.
He returned the Rolex to his wife and suggested to his new protégé that they should share
the name Hawkeye going forward.
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