WhileVincent D’Onofriomade a major splash with his return as Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. the Kingpin, inHawkeye’s season finale last week, directorRhys Thomashas revealed toVarietythat he had a different plan for the series' pivotal villain.It seems like Kingpin wasn’t the only Marvel villain who would have had interest in the pair of archers, according to Thomas, and that others had been on the table as the series was being scripted.
While Thomas has not revealed who he originally had in mind forHawkeye’s major antagonist (some speculate that it might have beenFra Fee’sKazi, second in command to Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) who turned out to be an informant for the Avengers), he revealed to Variety that Fisk was not initially in the plans for the series, nor was there any indication of a crossover with other heroes:
“The Kingpin of it all was not on the cusp when I started the show, but I feel like his presence was never far. Like, we were always circling this other “big bad guy,” but there was a moment when a Marvel executive came over and said, “You know, this is what we’re gonna do about that.” As far as a larger plan and a crossover with “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” I did not know that they would do that. They do a wonderful job at Marvel of keeping everybody quite siloed, and I think they do this for your own security. People seem to sort of assume that there is this room where everything is all mapped out, but, no, they keep you kind of focused on your own show and only give you the information that they feel they need to give.”
RELATED:‘Hawkeye’ Director Rhys Thomas on the Finale, the Rockefeller Plaza Fight, Hiding Big Secrets, and What He’s Heard About Season 2Of course, Kingpin was not the only surprise to come out of theHawkeyefinale. Eleanor Bishop (Vera Farmiga), was revealed to be working with Kingpin the whole time, hiring Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) to kill Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) as he and Kate (Hailee Steinfeld) investigated. Thomas also commented on the Bishop family twist to Variety, discussing how he slipped clues in throughout the series:
“It’s always a difficult job when you’re trying to bury the lead and when you don’t want audiences to get ahead of you because that will spoil things, but you also don’t want it to be like a soap opera where the bad guy just kind of steps out from the shadows and there was nothing to suggest it. Part of what we tried to do was, rather than seeking any clues necessarily, we really thought about defining her character in a way that it wasn’t a total surprise — from the ways that she spoke to Kate, to the argument that she has with Armand Duquesne in the first episode, which Kate misunderstands because her presumption is that her mother couldn’t possibly do anything wrong.”
