5 Weird Moments In Captain America: The Winter Soldier

5. Where's Hawkeye?

Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, features so heavily in this film that it makes her role in Iron Man 2 look like a throwaway cameo. Much of her role in The Avengers was in relation to Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye, with whom she had an implied romance. Given how often the characters have been associated, it's pretty odd that he doesn't show up in this film, nor is he ever mentioned. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that they'd been given different assignments, one that put Hawkeye undercover so neither Black Widow or Captain America could call on him for help. It would have just taken a single line to explain his otherwise conspicuous absence. Even if we assume he never breaks cover to ask why his boss is dead and two of his friends are now considered fugitives, when SHIELD becomes defunct at the end of the film you'd think that any ongoing missions become somewhat moot. Moreover, given the events of The Avengers, keeping Jeremy Renner in the picture would have been a great opportunity to develop his fairly one-note character. In Thor: The Dark World, we saw that Loki's influence over Selvig had a profound effect on him, albeit one that was used almost entirely for comic relief. It would have been interesting to see how Barton, a trained SHIELD agent, deals with having been so easily manipulated and coerced into mass-murder. There were hints of this in The Avengers after Loki's mind control spell is undone, but this was never followed up on. Having said that, the film makes good use of every single character, so stuffing in an extra Avenger may have weighed it down. Particularly since - a point to be expanded on later - the film has problems keeping focus on the titular character. Maybe this will be addressed in a spin-off Hawkeye and/or Black Widow movie, or even in Agents of... hey, wait a minute...