10 Awesome Ideas That Were Cut From The MCU

Despite being one of the six core Avengers, Hawkeye wasn't used particularly well in the early years of the MCU. He had a cameo in Thor, and was then used as Loki's puppet for most of his screen time in the first Avengers movie.

It wasn't until Avengers: Age of Ultron that he started to get his due, but at one point in time, that due almost arrived a full year earlier, with the skilled sharpshooter almost being part of an intense sequence in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

As explained by the film's directors the Russo Brothers, there was almost a subplot where Hawkeye was enlisted to hunt down Cap, resulting in an "awesome" confrontation between the two heroes where arrow met vibranium shield:

"There was an awesome sequence where they confronted each other in a ravine on the outskirts of D.C., and Hawkeye was shooting a series of arrows closing in on Cap, Cap closing in on him. And then Cap took him down and he realized for the first time that Hawkeye was trying to trick SHIELD, where he whispered something into Cap’s ear that Cap had a tracker on his suit and to punch Hawkeye to make it look real, because there was a Quinjet hovering above, where they were watching the feedback back at SHIELD."

The intent with this subplot was to complicate the relationship between Cap and his SHIELD allies, and bringing in Clint to serve that purpose would've added a bit more texture to a character who, at that point in the franchise, sorely needed it.