This story contains minor spoilers for the premier of Marvel’s Hawkeye, streaming now on Disney+.
In Hawkeye, the new Marvel Disney+ show that premieres today, Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton wears a hearing aid. It’s a nod to the comics, particularly the Matt Fraction and David Aja comics from which the show draws much of its inspiration, but the show’s producers also note that it’s an important aspect in showing that Hawkeye is not super human.
Talking to IGN, Hawkeye’s Executive Producer Trinh Tran said “There were certain details we really wanted to bring forth [from the comics], one of which is Clint’s hard of hearing.
“It's the realistic nature of having him being a human being with no super powers. He does get injured,” she said. “It's that human element that we wanted to bring forth. That they can get hurt, it can be life and death in some of the experiences that they get themselves involved in. He does put ice packs on him at the end of the mission. We wanted to show that 'behind the scenes', a part of which is the hearing loss that he has.”
In the TV series, Clint has his hearing aid from the very start of the show, and it is later shown that he has started using them to compensate for the toll many explosions have taken on his ears over his Avengers career (he was pretty much in the firing line of one of Endgame’s biggest booms, after all). It’s more of an ‘wear-and-tear’ damage approach compared to the comics, which first saw Hawkeye rendered deaf in 1983 when he burst his own eardrum with a sonic arrow in order to counter Crossfire’s sonic weaponry. Hawkeye’s ears were eventually healed, but the Fraction and Aja comics re-introduced his hearing aids, and later made him completely deaf by having him stabbed in the ears by the Clown. Stretches of the following issues are written in sign language, which we also see Clint and his son use in the show.
For more on Hawkeye, check out our premiere review, and why the idea for a Clint Barton solo movie was turned into a TV show.
Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.