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Hawkeye’s Pym Particle arrows made for memorable weapons in the Disney+ series, but in the comics, he takes them to the next level.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Episode 6 of Hawkeye, “So This Is Christmas?” now streaming on Disney+.
Part of what made the new Hawkeye series so great was its full-hearted embracing of the character’s comic book basis, integrating the often insane and fantastical elements of the source material into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That was perhaps best illustrated by Hawkeye’s trick arrows, one of those classic comic book silly-but-cool concepts that help even the playing field between the human marksman and his often superhuman opponents.
Perhaps the most amazing of Hawkeye’s new arrows were his Pym Particle arrows, used twice throughout the series, and each time making for a memorable action sequence where the hero grew or shrank his targets with a single shot. But the comics take Hawkeye’s relationship with Pym Particles one step further. In fact, for a time, the archer put his bow aside to just use the particles directly as a superpower.
Hawkeye’s classic comic book relationship with changing sizes was first referenced in the MCU during Civil War where the archer and Scott Lang recreated a moment from the comics that involved firing an arrow ridden by the ant-sized hero. But in both the comics and the TV series, Hawkeye integrates the Pym particles that trigger such size changes into his arrows for a variety of effects. His first Pym arrow struck a regular arrow mid-air to turn it into a colossal barrier against the Tracksuit Mafia, while his last one had the opposite effect, shrinking the Tracksuit’s van to a size so small it was like a toy car.
Such tricks are what allow Hawkeye to hold his own on a super team where his teammates hurl lightning bolts and tear apart tanks with their bare hands, but sometimes, Hawkeye’s tricks are not enough. During a critical moment in Avengers #63, Hawkeye’s bowstring snapped before he could fire an arrow and proved to him that he simply was not carrying his weight on the super team. Granted a growth serum of Pym Particles, which expanded his mass to a gargantuan size, he took on the name Goliath and set his bow aside for a new career as a giant hand-to-hand brawler.
The change in alias lasted for a short while and Hawkeye infrequently adopted the guise again. He has even been known to use his Pym Particle arrows for a short-term return to his Goliath persona whenever pointy sticks simply aren’t enough power to take care of the task ahead of him. With the MCU’s willingness to reference such moments from the comics on screen, it could be in the archer’s future to have a major size-changing moment of his own.
However, there are some places where adapting the comics should probably draw the line and this may be one of them. As a human armed with an idiosyncratic but real-world weapon, much of Hawkeye’s charm comes in being the relatable everyman who needs training, grit and raw luck to survive the cosmic battles of fate that take place around him. That is part of what gives the character his charm, and it’s highlighted even further by his adaptation in the MCU where the character’s more ludicrous aspects are so often downplayed. While his stint as Goliath is certainly memorable, there is a reason it only proved temporary in the comics.
As Goliath, Clint does not really stand out from his teammates. Whether it’s Wasp, Ant-Man, Giant-Man or Yellowjacket, there were always other size-changing Avengers not far away. And with heavy-hitters like Thor and Hercules available, there is not even much use for Goliath’s strength, and the truth is just that Clint becomes redundant and less interesting while in the persona.
Using a Pym arrow for a brief action sequence as Goliath could be a fun way to integrate the persona into the character’s MCU history, but anything more than that just wouldn’t feel right. As the unpowered everyman, Hawkeye works best on the Avengers when he’s fighting for the little guy. And a little guy is exactly how he should remain.
To see Clint’s relationship with Pym Particles in the MCU, Hawkeye is streaming now on Disney+.
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