On this week’s finale of Hawkeye, Vicent D’Onofrio (Daredevil) made his official debut as Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin. D’Onoforio spoke to Collider about his return, where Kingpin fits in the larger MCU story, and his character’s fate at the end of the series.
“I think it’s definitely a continuation, like there’s no difference to me,” D’Onoforio told Collider when asked about whether his character was a different iteration than his appearance in Netflix’s Daredevil. “The fact that he can take more violent abuse, physical abuse is different, but it’s very clear with the writers and the producers and the directors that I’m continuing the same man that was in the series a few years ago, in Daredevil.”
When talking about where Kingpin fits in the events of the Blip in Avengers: Endgame, he told Collider, “[…] I definitely knew that this was after the Blip and that he’s had less power than he did and he wanted his city back for Hawkeye. And that’s the way I approached it. I think in my mind — I don’t know how they think about it at Marvel overall, but in my mind, I think that they connect as many dots as they can in the canon stuff and with the canon state of mind, and some dots aren’t possible to connect but most are easy to connect. And I think that’s what they try and do.”
In some of the last moments of the finale, Kingpin was seen surviving his fight against Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) before being confronted by Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) with a gun to his head. The camera panned to the skyline as shots fired, leaving Kingpin’s fate up in the air.
“I mean in my mind, she definitely shot him,” he told Collider. “And, I walked away from Daredevil, at first I thought, “Maybe he’ll come back somehow.” And then very quickly after that, I thought I was walking away for good. So I had always hoped because of the fans wanting him back and everybody, I’d hope that I would come back. So I feel the same way now.”
D’Onoforio did express interest in returning as Kingpin in the upcoming spinoff, Echo, which will focus on Maya Lopez after the events of Hawkeye. Echo was Kingpin’s adoptive daughter in the comics which D’Onoforio considered as one of his favorite aspects of the comics and said he would like to potentially explore that in the MCU.
Hawkeye is available to stream on Disney+.