Jeremy Renner and Hawkeye director break down that hilarious LARP scene

This article contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Hawkeye.

Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) just wants to spend Christmas at home with his family. But from the opening minutes of the new Disney+ series Hawkeye, Clint is hit with one obstacle after another on his quest to make it home for the holidays.

It's bad enough when he sees Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) running around in his old Ronin costume, attracting the attention of dangerous enemies better left in the shadows. But when the Ronin suit ends up in the hands of a LARP (live-action role play) group, Clint finds himself forced to enter their game.

Though Clint is displeased at having to role-play, Renner was more than happy to channel some of his own experiences as a Marvel superstar into the scene.

"It was pitched to me, and I was like, we gotta have that in there!" Renner tells EW. "Based on my personal experience at comic cons and these kinds of environments, it's just me sort of saying 'hey man, I love the fans.' If Clint Barton was going around play-fighting with a bunch of people at Comic-Con, I figure they'd get a big kick out of that. I thought it was a cool way to show a sense of humility and bring a different kind of humor to the show."

Rhys Thomas, an executive producer on Hawkeye who directed the first two episodes, loved the juxtaposition between Clint's big-time battle experiences and this spectacle.

"Clint's a guy that fought Thanos, so watching him now in this fantasy sequence with these live-action role role-players enacting their version of battle felt amusing," Thomas says. "Jeremy has obviously lived a life with fans of the MCU for a long time, and so he kind of enjoyed that world and wanted to do something that acknowledged it."

Thomas admits, "I had some hesitation because I was worried it might get too broad — like, how do we walk the line without making fun of it? That was sort of the challenge going in, but then you wrap your head around it and you have that image of Clint having to don this armor and swing this sword and people dying in slow motion all around him. Clint's confusion in slow motion as these people are falling around him was joyous."

The first two episodes of Hawkeye are streaming now on Disney+.

Related content:

• Hawkeye team on staging Rogers: The Musical and introducing Kate Bishop's story
• Hawkeye series premiere recap: When Kate Bishop met Clint Barton
• Hailee Steinfeld hits her mark: The Dickinson star prepares to enter the MCU with Hawkeye