MCU Star Missing for 4 Years Prompts Avengers: Doomsday Return Talk

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Clint Barton’s Hawkeye is another founding Avenger who hasn’t been announced to be returning to the MCU, but Jeremy Renner has now taken to X to share the new teaser for Avengers: Doomsday. His sharing of the teaser for Doomsday has led some to speculate about whether this means Hawkeye will be returning in December 2026, even though nothing of the sort has yet been confirmed. Four years since his last appearance in the Hawkeye series on Disney+, we are excited about the possibility of seeing Clint Barton back in the MCU.

Very cool 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 https://t.co/NDzItKXVxV

— Jeremy Renner (@JeremyRenner) December 24, 2025

Where is Hawkeye & How Can He Return to the MCU?

Chris Hemsworth has already been confirmed to be retuning as Thor in Avengers: Doomsday, while Robert Downey Jr. was announced to be the movie’s primary antagonist, Doctor Doom, in 2024. Avengers: Doomsday’s teaser revealed that Chris Evans will also be returning as Steve Rogers, but there are still founding Avengers yet to be announced. It seems unlikely Scarlett Johansson will be back in action as Black Widow, while Mark Ruffalo’s role as the Hulk in Spider-Man: Brand New Day could set up his Doomsday return. Clint Barton is still around in the MCU, so we’d love to see him return.

We last saw Jeremy Renner in the MCU in Hawkeye, where he teamed up with his new protégé, Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), to take on the Tracksuit Mafia and Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio). In Hawkeye’s finale, “So This Is Christmas?,” Clint Barton seemed to pass the Hawkeye mantle to Bishop, but there has been speculation about the original Hawkeye’s return in the years since—even after Renner’s near-fatal snowplow accident in 2023. Renner’s new social media activity seems to imply he is indeed involved with Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, making his return much more likely.

At the moment, it seems as though Clint Barton has retired to his family farm in Iowa, but it surely wouldn’t take much to get him back in action. He has been one of the MCU’s central heroes since his debut in Thor in 2011, and there are still many mysteries surrounding him that Doomsday and Secret Wars could answer. How does he have his sharp-shooting abilities? What is the true identity of his wife, Laura Barton (Linda Cardellini)? Will his children follow in his superhero footsteps? It would be great to see Hawkeye reunite with his Avengers teammates in Doomsday, and his new comments might be teasing just that.

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