‘Hawkeye’ crew member reveals the levels of secrecy surrounding Kingpin

Even though we’d been hearing for months that Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin was going to make his long-awaited return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Disney Plus series Hawkeye, with the fifth episode being singled out as the destination long before the first two episodes dropped, the creative team did their best to try and keep it a secret.

Of course, a big meaty hand patting the face of a young Maya Lopez during a flashback sequences pretty much guaranteed that Wilson Fisk would show up before the end of the show’s run, but fans had to wait until the finale to see D’Onofrio back in full swing.

Unsurprisingly, it was a military operation sneaking him on and off the set to shoot his scenes so as not to ruin the surprise, even though a lot of people were fully expecting Kingpin to show up. Costume designer Michael Crow revealed to Insider that even though he was notified months in advance of D’Onofrio’s participation, he didn’t meet the man himself until his first day in front of cameras.

“I didn’t know until about maybe halfway through filming. I think in the original script it was scripted as another character. Like something from the Fraction comic books, but not Kingpin. I started asking questions about what we wanted to do, how do we wanna approach it? And I got an immediate phone call back from Trinh Tran. And she just said: ‘We’ll talk about that a little bit later.

We’re not ready to talk about that yet, but it’s not gonna be that. It’s a big secret.’ Once I was told that Vincent was coming back, we had about two months to create costumes for Kingpin. We did a lot of long-distance fittings because [D’Onofrio} was working on another show in New York at the time. I didn’t see him until the very last minute and I mean, he is truly a lovely gentleman. A pleasure to work with.”

Director Rhys Thomas admitted he was worried that D’Onofrio would end up giving the game away after playing it a little too close to the bone on Twitter with his teases, but in the end Hawkeye just about got away with maintaining the air of mystery.