All the Easter Eggs You Missed in Hawkeye Season 1

Beginning in 2012, writer Matt Fraction and artist David Aja completely revitalised the character of Hawkeye in their run of Hawkeye comics. Those same comics are also the inspiration for the Disney+ series, so it only makes sense the gorgeous credits that roll at the end of each episode are a tribute to Aja’s unique style of art.

Throughout Clint’s time in the Marvel comics, Hawkeye has dealt with some degree of hearing loss. On the show, his need for a hearing aid is attributed to being in too many loud battles (which makes sense), but in the comics his hearing loss comes with a more tragic twist. In Fraction and Aja’s story, Hawkeye reveals his hearing loss is due to his abusive father. After a run-in with a character known as The Clown, he loses his hearing completely.

The big musical number in Rogers: The Musical also happens to be a line Captain America has said at least twice in the MCU. The song, entitled “I Could Do This All Day,” is a reference to Cap saying that very thing in both Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers. Now, would the general public know this is a thing Captain America said in the middle of the Battle of New York? That seems unlikely, but the song is so catchy, we’ll let it slide.

Hawkeye gripes to his daughter that Ant-Man wasn’t even at the Battle of New York while they’re watching the musical, and he’s right. Ant-Man wasn’t there – at least not originally. But in Avengers: Endgame, Ant-Man joins Iron Man, Captain America, and the Hulk on the time heist to retrieve the Infinity Stones from the past. As a result, Scott Lang does get to witness the Battle of New York firsthand, he just happens to do so from an alternate timeline.

Way back in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Natasha teased Clint and his wife Laura about naming their new baby after her. At the time, the baby wasn’t born yet, so she called it little Natasha. When Laura did give birth, she and Clint had another boy, but they still honored Natasha by naming him Nathaniel. In the aftermath of Black Widow’s death, little Nathaniel’s name is even more meaningful than it was before.

It remains unclear just how dangerous Jack Duquesne will turn out to be, but he does share his name with a rather important figure from Hawkeye’s past. In the comics, Jack is a character known as the Swordsman, who takes Hawkeye under his wing during their time performing in circuses and carnivals. Just like on the show, the character is a master swordsman, but he also has a gambling addiction which leads to him becoming a master thief. While there doesn’t appear to be any connection between Clint and Jack on the show, Jack’s redemption arc in the comics suggests he might not be quite as evil as Kate thinks on the show, even if he does bend the law.

Pizza Dog may very well be the best character on Hawkeye just by virtue of him being such a very good boy, but even he has roots in the Marvel comics. While Kate is the one who saves the adorable pup and forms an instant bond with him on the show, Hawkeye saves Pizza Dog after members of the Tracksuit Mafia throw him into traffic in the comics. He ends up naming the pup Lucky, and he and Kate have been sharing custody of him in the world of the comics ever since.

In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the Flag-Smashers were unhappy with the state of the world after everyone who was snapped by Thanos returned. This led to major headaches for Sam and Bucky, but it seems the Flag-Smashers aren’t the only ones who are on team Thanos. In the first episode of Hawkeye, Clint notices someone scrawled “Thanos was right” on a urinal, and later on he drinks from Kate’s aunt’s mug, which says the same thing. It certainly feels like the pro-Thanos sentiment is rising in New York and beyond.

Speaking of Kate’s aunt, she’s not just some random person whose apartment Kate and Clint are hunkering down in. Aunt Moira is actually Moira Brandon, a famous actress in the world of the Marvel comics (and the MCU if those movie posters on her walls are any indication). In addition to being one of the go-to famous people in the comics, Moira is also known for selling her lavish mansion to the west coast avengers to use as their headquarters.

There have been so many nods to Daredevil in Season 1 of Hawkeye, but none of them are quite as prominent as Maya, who was first introduced in a 1999 issue of Daredevil. Like Matt Murdock, she has her share of run-ins with Kingpin, who raised her after he murdered her father. Her presence on the show – and her upcoming spinoff – suggest Daredevil will be entering the MCU sooner rather than later.

Remember that random phone call Kate received from a detective back in the show’s second episode? Well, Detective Caudle isn’t just some throwaway character. In the comics, Kate has a habit of meddling in his police investigations, which annoys him at first. However, he eventually grows to appreciate her help and the two become begrudging allies of sorts.

It doesn’t appear to be an accident that the clocktower Kate destroys at college is called Stane Tower. Way back in the first Iron Man movie, viewers were introduced to the very wealthy Obadiah Stane, who was Tony Stark’s mentor and ultimately the movie’s villain. Although it’s not confirmed, the tower’s unusual name feels like a nod to Obadiah and his place within the MCU as the cinematic universe’s first proper villain.

It’s always fun when the Disney+ shows include direct nods to the movies, and seeing little Kate watch Hawkeye jump through the air while shooting his bow and arrow in Avengers is incredible. Not only is it a reminder of just how interconnected the shows and movies are, but it also reveals why Kate adores Clint so much.

The scene where Maya is boxing with a man in episode three is almost an exact recreation of her first appearance in the Marvel comics. In Daredevil #9, she takes on a boxer in a scene that is reminiscent of the one depicted in the montage of Maya’s early life. The boxing scene is yet another example of the writers’ attention to detail.

Kate is all about trick arrows on the show, but in the comics? Not so much. She thinks Clint’s bag of tricks is ridiculous, while Clint is the one left defending his arrows. The role reversal worked perfectly in the context of the show, given how eager Kate is to become a hero, too.

Kate is determined to do something about Hawkeye’s branding, which is an Easter Egg in and of itself given how often Hawkeye is left out of the Avengers conversation by fans. However, Hawkeye takes things a step farther by having Kate sketch Hawkeye’s original costume from the comics, and suggest he have one made in purple, much to his dismay.

Officer Wendy is one of the LARPers, who are proving to be a big help to Kate and Clint, but in the comics, Wendy Conrad is actually a villain known as Bombshell. While we don’t expect the show version of Wendy to reveal herself to be evil, her comic book alter ego does explain why she was so protective of the “Bombshell” bag her wife bought her.

From her spy costume, which looks like the one she dons in the comics, to her striking Natasha’s pose, which she previously mocked, Yelena’s appearance in episode four felt like one big homage to Black Widow. Additionally, Kate’s decision not to shoot her, felt reminiscent of Hawkeye telling her that his best shot was the one he never took.

If Kingpin doesn’t show up at this point, Marvel fans will probably lose their minds. There have been plenty of hints that Maya’s uncle is the notorious supervillain, but seeing that her father was killed at Fat Man Auto Repair, which sounds an awful lot like a cover for Kingpin, is the biggest indicator yet that the crime lord is running the Tracksuit Mafia behind the scenes.

That abandoned toy store that Clint and Kate are held hostage in has real-world roots. KB Toys was a real store found in malls across America until it closed in 2009. There were plans for it to reopen under new ownership in 2019, but those plans sadly fell through. At least Clint and Kate got to enjoy the coin-operated horses, though.