WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Hawkeye, now streaming on Disney+.
After spending so many years alone during the Blip, Clint Barton undergoes a character arc in Hawkeye where he relearns how to accept others into his life. While just wanting to spend Christmas with his family, Clint is forced to confront his relationships past and future with his partners-in-fighting-crime. Along the way, the audience learns about his relationships with three of his most important allies in the comics: Black Widow, Kate Bishop and even Mockingbird.
But there is still one iconic Hawkeye partner the Marvel Cinematic Universe has yet to pair the archer up with: the Winter Soldier. Clint Barton and Bucky Barnes go together like peas and carrots (or bows and arrows), yet the MCU barely features the two together at all. So why is the Winter Soldier left out in the cold?
In the MCU, one of the oldest and most important partnerships in Clint's life is the one he had with Natasha Romanoff, known as the Black Widow. The relationship was established for viewers early on in Avengers, and when Natasha later sacrificed herself in Endgame for the Soul Stone, the loss left Clint reeling. In Hawkeye, the archer is more than happy to spend his time reunited with his family for the holidays, but new threats pull him into a world of intrigue where he needs help from a new partner, Kate Bishop, as well as some help from his life partner, Laura Barton, to pull through.
Hawkeye even featured the reveal that Laura was herself a former agent who shared an identification code with the comics' Mockingbird, reintegrating one of Clint's major relationships from the comics into the MCU. Yet Hawkeye's relationship with Bucky Barnes continues to be ignored and could be a lot harder to introduce to the MCU. Whereas the comics perpetually unite the two over their shared relationship with Natasha, with both vying for her romantic affections at different points, the MCU barely establishes any connection between Bucky and Natasha and never hints at a romantic involvement with either figure.
While there are some loose connections between the Winter Soldier program and the Red Room training that Natasha underwent in the MCU, after their shared screen time in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Bucky and Natasha rarely ever interact again. Interplay between Bucky and Clint is even rarer, and without the mutual friend through Natasha, the connection between them is a blank slate open to interpretation. At the same time, that blank slate is exactly what offers the most possibility for further exploration. The two might just make the perfect pairing for a future Disney+ series.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye both featured their heroes teaming up to unite their talents, and mixing and matching those rosters to pair up Clint and Bucky would be a great way to expand on both series simultaneously. While the two characters share little screen time thus far, they actually have remarkably a lot in common when it comes to personality and background. Both have a professional and almost curt demeanor, often playing the comparably average straight-man to the whackier elements of the superhero universe around them. Both pine for normality and escape despite a sense of obligation and duty inevitably dragging them back into conflict. In a lot of ways, they might just be a match made in heaven.
The connection between the Russian programs that produced both the Winter Soldier and the Black Widows deserves to be explored further in the MCU, and with Natasha dead, the best person to partner with Bucky Barnes to investigate the matter would be Hawkeye himself. While the current emphasis in the MCU seems to be toward setting up new legacy heroes to inherit their mentors' mantles, finding occasions to pair up members of the old guard could be a refreshing avenue to explore in future projects.
To learn about Hawkeye's partnership with everyone BUT Bucky, check out Season 1 of Hawkeye. available to stream on Disney+.