The biggest surprise of the MCU series Hawkeye is the return of Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin. A lot of fans were happy when he made his comeback as it establishes that, along with the appearance of Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Daredevil characters are now officially part of the MCU canon although it remains to be seen if they are same variants from the Netflix shows.
There are some who are wondering about how they decided to bring Kingpin to the series and how they made it happen. Now, we finally know the story thanks to the latest installment of Marvel Studios' Assembled on Disney+ (via Heroic Hollywood) which gave us an in-depth at the behind-the-scenes of Hawkeye.
In the recent Assembled episode, Hawkeye executive producer Trinh Tran revealed that it was actually Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige's idea to bring D'Onforio's Kingpin into the series. "Kevin threw out the idea that ‘What if this could be Kingpin?’," she said. "And I think all of our jaws just kind of dropping our Zoom meetings, and we’re kinda like, ‘Wait, you’re joking, right? This can’t be serious. Are you serious? This is… You really think that there’s a chance that we can actually get Vincent D’Onofrio, who plays Kingpin in Daredevil in the series, as a cameo for a couple of scenes? Like, he is our big boss?’ And Kevin made a call to Vincent."
Executive producer Michael Winderbaum also discussed why Kingpin is the great big bad for the series: "We were all on a call, me and Kevin and Trinh, and we were talking about the Tracksuit Mafia and the criminal organization behind this story. We needed a really big threat, like something that, you know, would make Eleanor Bishop shake in her boots and Hawkeye, you know, get a little bit afraid. It had to be someone powerful."
D'Onforio also shared his side in which he said that he quickly agreed to it as soon as it was offered to him. "He said ‘I want to bring you into the MCU’," he recalled. "And I’m not gonna say no to that. That’s pretty awesome."
It is cool to know that it was Feige himself who had the idea to bring back D'Onofrio's Kingpin in the series as it just shows that he is open to using the characters from the Netflix shows in the MCU and for sure he has plans for them which is why he decided to introduce them now. While Kingpin didn't appear much in the series and his fate ended in a cliffhanger, fans were still delighted that they were able to see the character again and they can't wait to see what's next in store for him, especially with the Echo series that is now in development in which it is rumored that he will be making an appearance along with Daredevil.
Also Read: Hawkeye Star Vincent D'onofrio Wants Kingpin in Spider-Man 4
All episodes of Hawkeye and its installment of Assembled are currently streaming on Disney+.
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