Thunderbolts* Deleted Scene Addressed Hawkeye & We’re Not Sure Why Marvel Cut It

Yelena Belova still has some red in her ledger. After Avenger Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) sacrificed her life to help bring back the victims of Thanos’ snap in Avengers: Endgame — including her blipped adoptive sister, Yelena (Florence Pugh) — CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) aimed Yelena at Natasha’s friend and former partner, Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). “Maybe you’d like a shot at the man responsible for your sister’s death,” Val told Yelena in the post-credits scene of the Black Widow movie, setting up her return in the Hawkeye Disney+ series.

Yelena tracked Barton to New York and encountered his protégé, archer Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), who learned that Yelena was there to avenge her sister. “If there is someone out there that is telling you Clint is a bad guy,” Kate told the assassin, “then maybe you should ask yourself what kind of person hired you.”

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It turned out that Kate’s mother, Bishop Security CEO Eleanor Bishop (Vera Farmiga), was the mystery benefactor who hired Yelena to kill Barton amid her business dealings with the Kingpin, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). When Yelena confronted Barton about Natasha’s death and the years he spent as the masked vigilante Ronin, Barton revealed he knew the sisters’ secret whistle. He then convinced Yelena that he didn’t kill Natasha — she made a choice to sacrifice herself on Vormir, and he couldn’t stop her.

“Nothing was gonna stop her, Yelena. You know Natasha,” he told the grieving Yelena. “She made her choice. We’re gonna have to find a way to live with that.” Having made peace with Barton, Yelena abandoned the mission.

But by the time we next see her in Thunderbolts*, Yelena is still working on assignment and cleaning up messes for Val, who unintentionally assembles the New Avengers when she tries to have her “loose ends” eliminate each other: Yelena/Black Widow, John Walker/U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), and Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen).

As it turns out, what fans thought was a discrepancy in Yelena’s MCU arc was originally explained away early on in Thunderbolts*. Eric Pearson, who receives a “story by” credit and shares a screenplay-writing credit with Joanna Calo, reveals an early draft included a scene addressing Val’s manipulations that led to the events of Hawkeye.

“Early drafts began with Yelena confronting Valentina about ordering the Clint Barton hit, which was one of my favorite scenes that eventually became not entirely relevant to the Thunderbolts* story,” Pearson explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “I loved it because it emphasized Valentina’s manipulation. Yelena entered the scene on fire, furious, accusing Valentina of setting her up to take out her sister’s killer, when, in reality, he was her best friend. Then Valentina completely flipped the script on Yelena.”

“I believe the line was: ‘Set you up? You mean paid you to do a job that, by the way, you didn’t even do? So I heard some bad gossip, pardon me for trying to motivate you. But this is your job, and asking questions isn’t a part of it,’” Pearson said. “And then that led into the conversation about how Yelena is unhappy with her job/life and wants to make a change towards something more constructive.”

Instead, Thunderbolts* begins with a depressed Yelena confiding in a tied-up guard as she took an assignment from Val to destroy evidence of Project Sentry at O.X.E. Group in the film’s opening sequence.

“There’s something wrong with me. A void,” Yelena says. “I thought it started when my sister died. But now it seems like something bigger. Just a… void. Or maybe I’m just bored. They send me a job, I clock in, get in, get out, you know? I’m in the cleaning business.”

With jobs in Malaysia and Mexico, she says, “I thought throwing myself into work was the answer. But I’m not focused and I’m not happy, and I have no purpose.” She later admits, “You think I like taking orders, going from one job to another, doing the same thing all the time?” By the film’s end, Yelena has a new, public-facing purpose: as co-leader of the Val-backed New Avengers with Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan).

Thunderbolts* / *The New Avengers is now playing only in theaters.