Hawkeye tells a more grounded story during the holidays, with characters like Clint Barton / Hawkeye and Kate Bishop facing low-level threats. Meanwhile, Spider-Man: No Way Home centers on the multiverse and the return of many otherworldly villains like Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock and Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin.

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Directing duo Bert & Bertie spoke on the D23 Inside Disney podcast, where they recalled seeing an early screening of Black Widow in order to get a better understanding of Yelena Belova before her character appeared in Hawkeye during the show’s fourth episode. With this, Bert & Bertie believe they influenced No Way Home in some aspects similar to how Black Widow had an influence on Hawkeye. “We got to see Widow, Black Widow, ahead of its release because of the Yelena storyline. I feel like that kind of influenced us more…I feel like I might be speaking out of turn, but I feel like we influenced Spider-Man. You know what I mean? Spider-Man was watching us, we were watching Widow,” the duo shared on the podcast.

They would go on to add, ““I think it was prior to us, because you know, we did hear about things along the way that was going on with the Statue of Liberty, and we didn’t know about the Charlie Cox of it all until later. We didn’t actually see No Way Home, I haven’t seen it yet. It was kind of like a need-to-know basis, so when we needed to know something, someone would be like ‘Oh, by the way, you know, the Statue of Liberty gets a makeover in No Way Home.’ And we’re like ‘Ok, cool! On it!’” Of course, the Cox comment references the actor’s brief appearance as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home. In fact, Marvel Studios is rumored to have big plans for Cox’s Daredevil in future MCU projects.

It would make sense, though, that No Way Home maybe found out about Hawkeye debuting iconic street-level characters like Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin into the MCU, kind of propelling them to include Cox’s Daredevil in their film as a way to hint at what the future of the MCU will look and how characters from past Netflix series could make their way into the cinematic universe. But going off of Bert & Bertie’s comments and realizing how much planning ahead a film the size of No Way Home would involve, it’s likely that the script for the third Spidey film was already set.

Both Hawkeye and Spider-Man: No Way Home were met with positive reviews from critics and fans, as they have current scores of a 92% and a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively. As the MCU continues expanding in exciting directions with its phase four, it will be interesting to see how many of these new characters collide and what influences they will have on each other’s stories.

Hawkeye is now streaming on Disney Plus while Spider-Man: No Way Home is playing in theaters.

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Source: D23 Inside Disney