Marvel’s Disney + series Hawkeye showed Jeremy Renner reprising his role as the Avenger. Years of combat left Renner’s titular character needing to wear hearing aids. But way before the television series was a thing, Renner wasn’t sure a partially deaf Hawkeye would work.

Jeremy Renner felt time might have past for Hawkeye to wear hearing aids

Renner was already accustomed to playing Hawkeye in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Portraying the character for so long, Renner would uncover different layers of his MCU counterpart. Apart from being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Renner discovered his character was a family man with children of his own. He also briefly brought to life Hawkeye’s more dangerous comic book alter-ego Ronin in Avengers Endgame.

With the Hawkeyes series, Renner’s superhero borrowed another element from the comics. In Marvel lore, the archer wore hearing aids after years on the battlefield. Renner would finally do the same for the streaming show. But back in 2016, Renner wasn’t sure that would work for his character.

“It isn’t really kind of played out at this point, and not unless we say he’s got an amazing hearing aid or something,” Renner once said according to Trippin’ with Tira.

Renner acknowledged there were some talks back then about introducing his character’s hearing problems.

“We were focused much more on the alternate sort version of not the big purple mask sort of guy. He’s much more of the utility sort of guy. So yeah, they talked about that, but I don’t think it’s going to play out anytime soon, it may be a little late,” he said.

His Civil War co-star Elizabeth Olsen also wasn’t sure that hearing aids would suit Renner’s Hawkeye.

“That’d be too funny. We would laugh too much at it. No one would take it seriously,” she said.

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Renner praised Marvel for how they brought Hawkeye’s hearing problems to live action. Doing so might have also brought the actor closer to his own character. According to The Illuminerdi, Renner was beginning to experience some hearing loss himself in his older years. Although not nearly as severe as the Marvel hero.

“I grew up…a lot of that’s in my life. I’m only hard of hearing, so I’m not deaf. I thought it was just a really wonderful thing, cause it is, it’s always been a part of Clint’s character in the comics, and we found a way to make it a truthful entry point for his life and how it affects it life,” Renner said.

Another benefit to Hawkeye’s hearing issues was that it allowed him to connect to other Marvel characters like Echo.

“And now, there is a wonderful vulnerability that comes in. There’s a lot of ties into other characters because of it, in a fun way, in a negative way, in a positive way, it’s really really interesting there. I found it to be quite a dynamic, interesting….sometimes an obstacle, sometimes an asset not being able to hear,” Renner said.

How Jeremy Renner reacted to having his own spin-off show

Renner seemed a bit surprised when he was offered his own spin-off series. At the same time, he was thrilled with the idea. A television show gave Renner more room to explore his Hawkeye character perhaps even more than a movie would.

“We had talked about that. I talked about it with Kevin [Feige] at Marvel, and I was really excited. He said, ‘What do you think about doing a limited series on Hawkeye?’ I was like, ‘I think that’s exactly where he needs to live.’ He’s a character that we’ve now spent a lot of time with, but we don’t know a lot about,” Renner once told Collider. “We can spend a little bit longer in the longer form storytelling of at all, to have a greater understanding of Clint Barton, and why is what he is and who he is and where he comes from, and that type of thing. I was very excited to explore Clint Barton in a six-episode thing.”