Hawkeye TV series may include Pizza Dog

The Hawkeye TV series may include Pizza Dog.

The Hawkeye TV series may include Pizza Dog.

One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Four Disney Plus miniseries, the Hawkeye TV series recently began filming due to production delays caused by the pandemic, and additions to the cast beyond star Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye are beginning to be known.

For example, as our sister site Bam Smack Pow reported yesterday, Florence Pugh (Fighting with My Family) will reprise her role of Yelena Belova/Black Widow II from the movie Black Widow, and Hailee Steinfeld (Ender’s Game) will play Kate Bishop, the second Hawkeye of the comics.

But according to a Twitter post from Renner (which we learned about here at Dog O’Day through Screen Rant), that might not be all the (more or less) famous deep cuts from the comics to be part of the show.

“Hey, look what I found…not sure if it’s a dog biscuit….what do you think?” Renner captioned the photo, which continues the Marvel set tradition of cookies with character logos on them.

He also used the hashtag #treats on his post, which could certainly mean dog treats. These look more like human sugar cookies to us, but that could mean he’s teasing the arrival of Pizza Dog.

So….who is Pizza Dog, and where does the Hawkeye TV series fit into the MCU timeline? Well, we aren’t sure on the second part, though the Black Widow movie takes place immediately after Captain America: Civil War, so roughly 2016/17. And since Kate Bishop is included, it seems likely that Barton is using his Ronin identity, so possibly it takes place between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, or somewhere between 2018 and 2023.

According to Screen Rant, Pizza Dog is how the one-eyed Golden Retriever Clint and Kate share refers to himself, after making his debut in Marvel Comics in 2012 in Hawkeye Vol. 4, issue 11. At one point he even got to narrate an issue of their adventures, which honestly we want to read RIGHT NOW.

Though Clint is an Avenger and led the West Coast Avengers for some time, and Kate is a member of the Young Avengers team, Pizza Dog is not part of the Pet Avengers, which is kind of a shame.

How much of a role Lucky the Pizza Dog will play in the Hawkeye TV series remains in the air, though it’s possible that he could have a recurring role as a grounding comforter like Thunderbird’s Border Collie Zingo did on The Gifted.

At any rate, it’s nice that Marvel now has a counterpart to Krypto the Superdog from the DC Extended Universe’s Titans, and as fans of both dogs and superheroes, there should always be room for them. (And besides Krypto and Zingo, there was also Lockjaw the giant teleporting Bulldog from Inhumans, but he doesn’t count because of what an utter disaster that show was.)

When, exactly, the Hawkeye TV series will debut on Disney Plus is unknown at the moment, but its sister series WandaVision will debut on January 15, 2021, the first MCU TV series to launch on the streaming service.