Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes S01E16 Review: To Kill A Mockingbird

Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 1, Episode 16: Widow's Sting

Oh shit, things went down in this episode. One of the bigger shakeups that EMH does to someone coming off of a movie background (other than all the new characters running around) is that Black Widow is evil and part of Hydra. As someone who's a bit more familiar with the source material -- albeit not by much -- it's far more likely that Black Widow's a double-agent, something that's definitely far more likable to occur considering how Disney-Marvel probably would definitely want one of the more recognizable heroes to, well, remain a hero. 

The episode opens with Hawkeye still on his hunt for Widow and Hydra, and we get a cool bit where Hawkeye busts apart a meeting between Hydra and AIM, and it's neat to see villain organizations that treat each other as more of business agents. We get hints of MODOK and Grim Reaper talking about a certain weapon called the Cosmic Cube, which presumably will be the subject of a future episode. Hawkeye and Iron Man are summoned by SHIELD, who's pissed off that Hawkeye interfered in what's apparently a SHIELD operation (although we don't get any explanation as to what SHIELD thought to achieve from letting that meeting play on as it did). 

Hawkeye ends up working with Captain America and Black Panther, neither of whom are really as  bothered as Iron Man about Fury's admonishment, and ends up meeting Bobbi "Mockingbird" Morse (a.k.a. Hawkeye's comic-book wife), another one of Hawkeye's old partners, and there's some neat chemistry between the two that make their slap-slap-kiss deal a lot less irritating compared to Hank and Janet in the previous episode. The fact that they let the dialogue for their flirting happen naturally as opposed to shoehorning it into action scenes help a lot, too. 

There's a neat bit where Hawkeye, Panther and Cap quickly surmise that Mockingbird is sent to distract Hawkeye from actual Hydra operation, which is definitely a nice bit of detail to show how neatly duplicitous SHIELD can be. Mockingbird herself, who is quite a capable agent assigned on what's essentially being a distraction, ends up being recruited into their mission to track the Grim Reaper back to Baron von Strucker. 

There's an awkward bit of pacing where Hawkeye and Mockingbird allowed themselves to be captured while Hydra is changing transport for... some reason? It's to get Hawkeye and Mockingbird deep into the Hydra base without backup, sure, but the way it was phrased made the Avengers look a bit silly. There's a bit of a confrontation between Widow and Hawkeye while the latter is in a cell, and whatever Widow wanted to tell Hawkeye is drowned by a whole lot of Barton's rage. Hawkeye and Mockingbird break free, and do battle with an entire fortress's worth of Hydra goons... that apparently have worse accuracy than Star Wars Stormtroopers. I can buy that these guys are near-superhuman martial artists and archers, but that scene was a bit pushing it. 

We get a fun battle that involves four of Hydra's head honchos -- Baron Strucker, Black Widow, Grim Reaper and Viper (a.k.a. Madame Hydra, a character that's appeared in Agents of SHIELD and The Wolverine), and it's pretty cool with some really great shows that track Hawkeye's arrows and Viper's tongue-grenade thing. Hawkeye's bow is apparently really durable, too. Perhaps my favourite part in this action scene is Grim Reaper trying to slash Black Panther, who neatly slices his big-ass scythe into ribbons like a Looney Tunes cartoon. While we do get a Captain America/Baron Strucker rematch, the big focus character here is definitely Hawkeye, who is forced to choose between shooting Black Widow, the target of his vengeance, or to save Mockingbird from Viper. He still gets to fight Widow, though, eventually culminating in a hand-to-hand where Black Widow gains the upper hand.

But then, as Strucker decides to kill Hawkeye off... Black Widow zaps Strucker, and carries him away, showing that, yeah, she's pretty much confirmed to be a SHIELD double agent in super-deep cover. It is the end of Hydra Island, though, which blows up while our heroes exit. It's definitely a great Hawkeye spotlight episode, with his story being definitely well-realized and well-executed. There's a fun bit where Fury and Iron Man gets super-pisse d at the Avengers, but in addition to the Black Widow twist, there are a couple of interesting developments that happen in the background. MODOK discovers that the Cosmic Cube apparently does work, and meets Strucker to uncharacteristically return the money with the insistence that the Cube doesn't work... possibly hinting at some conflict between the remnants of Hydra and MODOK? 

Meanwhile, far more interestingly, Fury and Bobbi inspect the dead (!) body of Viper who is apparently... a shape-shifting Skrull! I know there's an arc in the comics, Secret Invasion or something, that involves Skrulls having infiltrated Earth and replacing some characters, so maybe somewhere down this series we'll get an adaptation of that? With the Skrulls already hinted in episode 15, there's actually a very neat buildup that feels far more insidious and sinister compared to the earlier "Zemo and Enchantress recruitment drive" stingers. Good episode.

And I know I don't tend to do easter egg segments for this cartoon, but I do have to take note at just how much villains the different Hydra officers have been talking to offscreen. I don't recognize some of the names, but the ones I do? The Maggia, the Yashida clan, the Kingpin (well, "the fat man", at least), Count Nefaria? Plus the sly nod to Fenris? There's a lot of X-Men continuity nods in this series, aren't there. Oh, the time when Marvel cartoons aren't obligated to exile the Sony/Fox-live-action-rights characters.