Marvel Phase 4 Leaks: 'Hawkeye' Casting Teases Big Plans for Kate Bishop

A new hero is going to take the bow of Hawkeye, and it might be Hailee Steinfeld. The Oscar-nominated actress who appeared in last year’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Bumblebee is reported to be in the running to star in the Disney+ series Hawkeye as Clint Barton’s successor, Kate Bishop, signaling big plans for the character in Marvel’s Phase Four and beyond.

On Monday, Variety reported that Steinfeld is currently “eyed” for the role of Kate Bishop, meaning she has a helluva chance of getting it. (Reactions on social media to rumored casting also tends to function as leverage in negotiations, so consider Steinfeld a done deal even if it’s not confirmed.)

More than the Marvel/Netflix projects, the Marvel shows on Disney+ will bear stronger ties to the Marvel films. At Comic-Con in San Diego, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed that new characters from the Disney+ shows (such as Kamala Khan in Ms. Marvel) will appear in the films. It is for that reason that Disney could be looking at a big star in Hailee Steinfeld for Kate Bishop, as the character could potentially join a Young Avengers movie after their characters appear on Disney+.

While details on the series are still scarce, promotional materials for the show, including its nifty title design unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con, hint that the series will take inspiration from Matt Fraction and David Aja’s celebrated 2012 series Hawkeye, which ran for 22 incredible issues. In that series, Clint starred as a street-level Avenger fighting crime throughout New York while putting up with his not-sidekick, Kate Bishop.

Introduced in the 2005 series Young Avengers, Kate Bishop was an ordinary girl who simply gets too close to the action of the Marvel Universe. Traumatized by a dangerous world, Kate takes up self-defense training, which sets her on a serpentine path that leads to stealing Hawkeye’s equipment and joining the teen superhero team, the Young Avengers.

Kate eventually surrenders the identity of Hawkeye back to Clint, but she hangs out with him for a time (while also taking up being a private investigator in Hollywood for a wild whirl) before taking back the mantle for herself in the 2016 Kelly Thompson series Hawkeye.

In the lead-up to Avengers: Endgame, fans were convinced that Hawkeye’s daughter, Lila (played by Emma Fuhrmann) would supplant the role of Kate Barton, but that obviously did not pan out. At Comic-Con, Marvel officially unveiled Hawkeye for Disney+, which stylistically bore a strong semblance to the Matt Fraction/Aja comics, with a nod towards the Kelly Thompson series as the title sequence revealed Kate Bishop. But the actor for Kate wasn’t revealed at Comic-Con, and probably for good reason: They were still looking for her.

Hawkeye premieres in fall 2021 on Disney+.