Toe-tapping ‘Hawkeye’ credits scene was a late addition to the finale

Hawkeye‘s final episode landed on Wednesday and wrapped up Clint and Kate’s first adventure together in style.

Along the way, leading up to the close of the six-episode season, we got a bunch of very fun bow-based combat, a lot of Kingpin, and some crucial character development for Clint, Kate, Maya, and Yelena. But the show had one last surprise up its sleeve during the credits.

Introduced with a “Happy Holidays from Marvel Studios” and a festive removal of wrapping paper, we were treated to the unedited five-minute performance of Adam Pascal’s ‘Save the City’ from the debut episode’s Rogers: The Musical.

This musical number was an early standout moment for the show, though the first episode’s take on it had a melancholy vibe. The Battle of New York was clearly a traumatic experience for Clint and seeing an actor playing Natasha brought back unhappy memories. Clint promptly switched off his hearing aid to block it out, which made sense for him but left fans demanding the full song.

Soon after the first episode aired Marvel Studios released the full audio on YouTube, but it appears now that making it the show’s credit scene was decided quite late. Director Rhys Thomas laid it all out in an interview with Collider, saying:

“I was not aware. It wasn’t planned that that was going to be the way that the show was going to close. I was actually a little in the dark too. I was curious, like, ‘Is this slot going to be reserved for teeing something else up?’ In the tradition that Marvel’s known for. I was waiting for what that was going to be. Yeah, they made the decision to put the musical at the end there, which honestly, I was slightly conflicted about because like a fan, I’m like, ‘The people, they want to see something, they want to know what’s coming next. Is this going to disappoint?’

In all fairness again, to the team, it’s like, no, no, no, it’s Christmas, it’s light. We’ve got so much blood in this episode, it’s just fun. It’s a fun release at the end, and it’s a nice way to send people off. That’s how that came about and in terms of what it was, that was part of… Obviously, when we shot it for Episode 1, we shot the entire thing, but obviously in Episode 1, the focus was Jeremy and less of the performance. It was [an] evolution of that.”

While it’s likely the scene will get an official release on YouTube sooner or later, perhaps the Rogers: The Musical story won’t end there. Disney is hungry for Marvel attractions at their parks, so why not take the hard work put into this song and expand it out into a full MCU musical?

A revue giving an overview of the story from Tony Stark’s debut as Iron Man to Thanos’ defeat could make for a lot of awesome songs, so let’s hope the continued interest in this scene bears fruit.

Hawkeye is now airing on Disney Plus.