Jeremy Renner knows exactly what happens when Hawkeye fans see a carefully arranged stack of comics. On Wednesday, October 14, the actor posted an Instagram Story showing several classic West Coast Avengers issues next to a Hawkeye comic. No caption. No explanation. No wink emoji. Just the comics, sitting there like a ransom note. The Direct and Fiction Horizon both documented it, and the internet did what the internet does.
Now look at the calendar. October 14 is also the day VisionQuest premiered on Disney+, and in the comics, the West Coast Avengers exist because of the Vision. Coincidence? Maybe. But if you wanted to plant a flag without saying a word, you could do a lot worse.
Two days later, X user James Mack (@JamesMackwl) went further. Replying to a fan who asked whether the team would turn up in VisionQuest, he wrote: "West Coast Avengers will be adapted for Secret Wars." SuperHeroHype embedded and dated the post. That proves Mack said it. It doesn't prove he's right. Marvel Studios hasn't announced a West Coast Avengers project, hasn't put the team in Avengers: Secret Wars and hasn't said Renner is coming back as Clint Barton. He isn't in Avengers: Doomsday, and he's said so repeatedly.
So before anybody starts fan-casting Tigra, let's be honest about what we've got. An actor's Instagram Story is not a press release. An unverified scoop is not a second source. Two clues pointing in the same tempting direction are still two clues, not a confirmation, and fandom has a long history of adding one plus one and getting Secret Wars.
That said, the comic-book logic is almost suspiciously tidy. Marvel's own history of the Avengers says Vision took charge of the members left on Earth after the original Secret Wars hauled most of the team off to Battleworld, and that "one of Vision's most lasting legacies as team leader was the creation of the West Coast Avengers." Hawkeye got his own team to run out of Los Angeles, with Mockingbird, Wonder Man, Tigra and James Rhodes as Iron Man. Marvel's Epic Collection listing tells the same story: Vision forms a second squad, and Clint heads west to lead it. Hawkeye, Vision, West Coast Avengers, Secret Wars. Same family tree.
Nobody expects the MCU to redo the 1984 setup panel for panel. But if Marvel wants a smaller, character-driven unit running alongside a universe-ending event, Clint is the obvious hinge. He's the original Avenger whose value was never cosmic power. It's leadership, stubbornness and the knack for keeping a team aimed at the right target. Renner has wanted this for years. Back in 2021 he told BBC Radio's Ali Plumb he'd "love to see him be in that sort of Captain America leader role." The guy with the bow and arrow running a roster of heavy hitters? That's the West Coast Avengers in one sentence.
The MCU pieces are lying around, too. Kate Bishop is Clint's protégé after Hawkeye, and in the comics she led her own West Coast Avengers in 2018. Vision is front and center right now, and the comic arc his new show borrows its name from is a West Coast Avengers story: Marvel's own explainer places Vision's disappearance, disassembly and reprogramming in issues #42–45. And Tommy Maximoff, first glimpsed as a kid in WandaVision, is back as a grown-up, played by Ruaridh Mollica in VisionQuest. That's connective tissue, not a call sheet. But it's a lot of tissue.
Then there's Wonder Man, who is either the strongest argument for this rumor or the funniest argument against it. Simon Williams is a founding West Coast Avenger in the comics, and the MCU actually gave him a show. Wonder Man premiered on Disney+ in January, got renewed for a second season and then got canceled in July. So Marvel has the character, the actor and a cancellation notice. Nothing says "we're building toward a West Coast team" like canceling the charter member's own series.
Renner's relationship with Marvel isn't exactly frictionless either. According to The Direct, he publicly turned down a second season of Hawkeye last year over a salary dispute. So the man posting the comics is also the man who said no the last time Marvel came calling. Maybe the caption is still in negotiations.
Could Hawkeye actually be the guy who saves Secret Wars? It sounds absurd. It isn't. The biggest Avengers movies work when somebody human-sized gives the cosmic machinery an emotional reference point, and Clint has done that job in Age of Ultron, Endgame and Hawkeye. A reconstituted West Coast team with its own mission and its own point of view, not just another row of heroes waiting for their portal shot, could give a dangerously crowded movie some architecture. Marvel needs that a lot more than it needs another surprise face.
Of course, the other explanation is much simpler: Renner likes comics, likes his fans and posted some books that remind him of a character he's played for fifteen years. Until Marvel says otherwise, that's every bit as plausible as a team announcement.
So here's where it stands. Renner really did post the West Coast Avengers comics on October 14. James Mack really did claim the team is coming to Secret Wars on October 16. Neither fact confirms a project, a Clint Barton return or a roster. Secret Wars hits theaters December 17, 2027, which leaves Marvel plenty of time to make this real, or to cancel it before it airs. It's a clue, not a green light. But it's a very good clue, and Marvel should take the hint.