Hawkeye S01E06 Review: The Kingpin of Crime

Hawkeye, Season 1, Episode 6: So This Is Christmas

And so Hawkeye ends its six-episode run, and... it's a fun enough finale! Not everything is wrapped up, and the show does struggle a bit in juggling its many, many characters. It also suffers a bit from not knowing what it wants to do with some of them (Maya, for example, is obviously being saved for her own TV series) but all and all, it's a pretty fun end that fits the show. I do agree that Hawkeye could have very much used an extra episode or made this one slightly longer. It wasn't quite as bad as Kang's introduction at the end of Loki, but Kingpin and his dynamics with Maya and Eleanor does feel kind of rushed. Especially if the audience members in question haven't actually seen Daredevil -- a distinct possibility considering how oddly the MCU has been handling their Netflix IP's. 

There's a conclusion and all the characters involved do get a bit of a shine, but ripping off the band-aid first... a lot of the emotional thoroughlines don't really work quite as well. Clint and Yelena's scene are... it isn't weak by any means. Renner and Pugh deliver pretty great performances and it's not like the scripting is weak, but I really did feel like they simultaneously drag that scene a bit too long and also resolve it without too much satisfaction. Likewise, while we're lost in all the action scenes, I guess last episode of 'deal with it' is the show's answer to Clint and his Ronin persona. Sure, he burns the suit at the end, but we never really got any kind of discussion on Clint's stint as a mass-murdering vigilante. 

Another one that didn't really work as well is Kingpin and Maya. We are told that Kingpin's relationship with Maya is like an adoptive father, and as always, Vincent D'Onofrio brings his A-game when he interacts with Maya and shows the tenderness of a father early in the episode, but it really does feel too little, too late. Again, it's not as bad as Loki or Falcon and the Winter Soldier's respective messy final episodes, but I really did feel like introducing Kingpin to us an episode earlier to establish the Kingpin/Maya/Kazi dynamic would've worked so much better. 

Eleanor Bishop is also... she's kind of stifled, easily the least interesting character next to the antagonists that are Kingpin, Yelena and Maya. The only reason we really care about her is just her relationship to Kate, and while we do get a confrontation, I felt like it wasn't quite as dramatic as it could've been. Again, none of these complains are enough to ruin what's otherwise a pretty solid action-packed finale, but all together it's kind of noticeable that this probably could've done with either an extra episode or a bit more polish.

Oh, and Jack Duquesne really is just a dork with sword skills, and there's absolutely nothing to do with his comic-book Swordsman alter-ego. Kind of annoying considering how long they dragged Jack as a red herring, but okay. 

But! But but but! With those out of the way, the rest of the episode is genuinely fun. Kingpin's entrance to the story is absolutely threatening and amazing. We do admittedly just throw the entire thing about the mystery story out the window in favour of an action-packed episode -- Kingpin's behind everything; Eleanor's been working as Kingpin's minion because her husband owed Kingpin money*, Jack was framed, and Eleanor now wants out, causing Kingpin to, predictably, get super-duper angry. At least he didn't bash her skull in with a car door. 

(*Her dad being a criminal is an angst-source for Kate that really didn't get touched upon)

And that ends up being the setup for the final fight in a party. Yelena wants to come in to murder Clint. Kingpin's men wants to murder Eleanor. Clint and Kate have to stop them both, and tossed into all of this is Maya and her realization that Kingpin was the one who set her dad up to die. Actually, let's talk about Maya first -- introduced as a sympathetic antagonist who seems to be there to hold Clint accountable for his actions as Ronin, all of that just sort of petered out and that's kind of felt like we got a rushed version of what would be the first arc in her TV show here. It doesn't help that her screentime with Kingpin, while powerful, was also very short -- while her relationship with Kazi is so on the sidelines that it barely registered. 

And as much as I adored the return of one of my favourite live-action supervillains ever, Kingpin is... well, his performances are as amazing as ever, but he really doesn't quite have the same amount of personal enmity towards the Hawkeyes as Maya, Yelena or Kazi had. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely enjoyed him taking his way through Kate's trick arrows, and we're definitely working by comic-book rules and there's no way Kingpin is dead, but the audience members who haven't watched Daredevil are probably confused at who this random big guy is that's stealing the show in the final episode; while those that watched Daredevil probably wouldn't have any sort of satisfaction seeing the character apparently-killed by Maya. 

Still... the action scenes are amazing and fun in this episode. Let's be honest and I'll just state flat-out that I really didn't give two shits about the LARPers and the episode would've worked so much better without them, but there's so many good stuff here. My fanboy soul definitely got excited about Kingpin and Yelena being involved so heavily! Hell, Kate-vs-Yelena's friendly superhero fighting more than fills in the quota for comedy for me -- and they are actually fun! From Kate pressing all the buttons on the elevator, to their oner fight through the office rooms, to Kate trying to follow Yelena's rappel down... it's pretty great! Other standouts also include Kate's fight against Kingpin in the toy store; Clint actually making good on his boast of splitting an arrow with a second arrow; and the two Hawkeyes standing back to back and unleashing holy hell with their trick arrows. 

The episode ends with a couple of questions -- Maya/Kingpin will undoubtedly be the focus of the 'Echo' TV show coming soon. Kazi's dead, Yelena's forgiven Clint and Eleanor's arrested. Oh, and that weird watch that was the focus of the earlier episodes belonged to Laura Barton, apparently... because the episode closes off with, well, the happy ending that Clint manages to get home in time for Christmas -- bringing along two 'strays' as Kate Bishop and Lucky the Pizza Dog to their family. And... and the review might show that I'm complaining a lot, but I really am not -- this has been a really, really fun finale. The show as a whole isn't perfect, but with the more flippant and fun-loving tone that it has, I feel like it does strike a great enough balance. It most certainly delivered at introducing Kate Bishop and making her likable, but most of all, I can't get enough of tired-old-dad Clint Barton. 

Good stuff! Hopefully sometime in the upcoming year I'll have the energy to slowly review the Phase 3 MCU movies (I've watched all the Phase 4 movies to date, but I kind of want to release them in chronological order), but you guys can expect me back with episodic Disney+ reviews. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• In addition to receiving his comic-book counterpart's iconic diamond-capped cane, Kingpin later dons the red-and-white hawaiian shirt taken from Spider-Man: Family Business.
  
• Kingpin and Maya having a conversation about seeing 'eye to eye' before she shoots him is also taken from the comics, although there (and I suspect here), Kingpin is merely shot in the eyes and blinded. 
• Hawkeye's new costume is based on how his modern counterpart is often portrayed, most notably in the Ultimate comics. 
• The cufflinks that Kate steals to use to activate her trick arrows are specifically the ones from Daredevil's first season, which are the ones that Fisk took from his abusive father. 
• Another Pym arrow shows up, this one the shrinking one instead of the enlarging one. Clint name-drops Scott (Ant-Man) when wondering what to do with the shrunken van.
• It slipped my mind a couple episodes ago, but Hawkeye using Pym tech is probably a reference to how Clint used to be Giant-Man/Goliath for a while in the comics...
• Laura's SHIELD watch has the number '19' inscribed on it, referring to Agent 19, the codename of Hawkeye's comic-book wife Mockingbird/Bobbi Morse. While Mockingbird's already adapted into the MCU in Agents of SHIELD, I guess the 'wife of Hawkeye' part goes to the MCU-original Laura Barton.
• Clint knows the secret bird-whistle between Natasha and Yelena from Black Widow, and briefly recaps their childhood escape from Ohio in the beginning of the movie. 

Hawkeye S01E05 Review: The Fat Man

Hawkeye, Season 1, Episode 5: Ronin

Spoilers for the final shot of the episode, although considering I'm around a month late to this show (I binged the show around the time this episode dropped), I don't think I am the one who needs to be spoiled. But... Kingpin baby! It doesn't just really mean the fact that one of my favourite supervillains is back, but it's the specific incarnation with the history so lovingly explored in Daredevil, which also meant that the character's history and portrayal by Vincent D'Onofrio -- and the canonicity of the MCU's unfavourite child in the Netflix Defenders shows -- are open. And that alone is the biggest Christmas present that Hawkeye can really give me. The actual buildup to the Kingpin isn't too much of a surprise, considering we've been hinting at Maya's mysterious 'boss' or 'uncle' that even Clint Barton fears for the past couple of episodes, but there was a huge, huge chance going in that Kingpin was just going to be a wink-wink-nod cameo while Echo, Yelena and Swordsman are going to be the co-antagonists of the show. 

Well, scratch one Swordsman off the list, with Jack Duquesne just kind of shipped off to prison after Eleanor goes off to investigate and finds out that the Hawkeyes' little clues actually do sync up... except, of course, turns out that Eleanor herself turns out to be pretty dang shady herself. But let's put her aside for a while... we did spend a fair bit of time with Jack, but it seems like we're either saving him for a second season of the show, or he's a genuine red herring just to set up Eleanor. I'm not really sure how the Swordsman fans out there will take it, but I for one am glad from a story-writing perspective that we're starting to clear the board. 

A good chunk of the episode splits up Clint and Kate after the huge cliffhanger of the previous episode, and while the jury is out on whether that cliffhange is warranted or necessary, it does lead to Kate meeting up with Black Widow II, Yelena Belova. While we didn't get a recap of the post-credits scene of Black Widow, we did get a showcase of what she's up to immediately prior to -- and immediately after -- she was snapped. Which, of course, makes Yelena's hurt and confusion about Natasha all feel so much more raw to her.

(I've always headcanon'd Black Widow's extremely work-focused mentality in Endgame and how she's devoting 100% of her life to being an Avenger to be partially because her family from Black Widow all got snapped)

Of course, Yelena doesn't quite go full Ronin the way Clint did in Endgame, which I am grateful for. The showmakers clearly know just why Yelena ended up being so popular in Black Widow, being a snarky young-but-competent little Black Widow, alternating between delivering some genuine pain whenever Natasha is brought up, effortlessly handwaving how easily she could've murdered Kate Bishop... and then delivering the most adorable "HIIII!" and making box mac-and-cheeses and making jokes about being a tourist in New York. It really does speak to the strength of acting for both superheroes that a good chunk of the episode is just Kate and Yelena sitting eating macaroni and bonding, and the episode doesn't really ever get quite boring. 

A really great part is that this episode does start to pad some of the problems that I did have with how they handled Black Widow as a character. What a confused way to tell her story, releasing her solo movie as an interquel after her death -- and neither Endagme nor Black Widow really acknowledged Natasha's death in the same way that Tony Stark's was throughout Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home or Steve Rogers was in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It's not much, and it feels like it's mostly Clint and Yelena, but the way that Natasha's easily the most imporant person in the world for the two of them, we really feel the impact of the Black Widow's death here. 

The argument does end up causing Kate to defend Clint to Yelena, and basically get Kate to -- after a breakdown in front of her mother before the meeting -- question why she trusts Clint so much. Slightly off-screen, Kate also unintentionally causes Yelena to question why she's hunting Clint and who would put the crosshairs on good ol' Hawkeye.

Clint does end up having his own sub-plot, of course, although it's pretty simple. Not that it's bad, though -- Jeremy Renner really does sell the 'tired older superhero that needs to do this shit'. There's none of the roiling, barely-restrained Punisher anger or desire for vengeance. Between his call to his wife (Laura Barton doesn't really get to develop a personality, but what a champ of a wife) and the tired way that he dons the Ronin suit, Clint Barton is intense and takes everything he's doing seriously, and it's clear that he's carrying a lot of pain, but there's never any malice behind the beatdown of Echo's gang. 

Now I'm not spoiled about what happens in the final episode at the time of writing this, so I did find the events of the Ronin-vs-Tracksuit-Mafia sequence cool but somewhat puzzling. Clint as Ronin dismantles Kazi, all the background Tracksuits, before going one-on-one against Maya in a very well-choreographed sequence. He also reveals his identity, confirming that Clint Barton is Ronin... delivers the warning to stay away from his family, but... but then just drops the bombshell that Maya was betrayed by someone inside, heavily implied to be Kazi and Kingpin?

The action sequences are so cool that it did take me away from thinking too much about it at the time, but while Maya does have her own spinoff show coming in the future -- and it would be a decent enough exit after Clint 'takes down' her -- it does raise some questions since we barely even skirt over the whole 'pay up for the killings you've done' thing. It's a bit odd that we get the Ronin/Echo confrontation without actually getting a proper resolution to Clint's guilt? 

Kate does show up to bail Clint out, and while Maya seems to go exit-stage-left, Yelena has been doing some personal detective work on the person who hired her. Turns out that it's not (just) Contessa Valentina that's behind Yelena, but she went to track down who the real one who put the hit out on Clint... and it's Eleanor Bishop. Who's also hanging out with the Kingpin, who the show has been alluding to throughout its season. 

Don't get me wrong, the Eleanor twist and the Kingpin reveal is pretty great. And it's painfully obvious that Yelena was going to be an ally sooner or later. But I do wonder that with so many plot threads dangling (what about the watch?), which one the final episode would focus on? How many of the plot threads will be picked up in spinoffs, which are getting increasingly harder to track if you don't open a Wikipedia page? Will this episode be able to handle all the plot threads it has set up satisfactorily? Still, the show has been so enjoyable throughout its run, and I'm willing to give the writers the benefit of the doubt for suer. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The cold open/flashback for this scene shows Yelena being snapped, which obviously takes place concurrent to Avengers: Infinity War. The sequence is framed similarly to Monica Rambeau in WandaVision, where we get to see a supporting character previously introduced in the movies get snapped and return. 
• We last saw Kingpin in the Netflix Defenders TV series-es, namely in the events of Daredevil's final season. 
• Yelena makes several references to Black Widow, namely a nod to a 'daddy' (Red Guardian), giving Kate points for saving a dog (Yelena likes dogs in that movie) and liking macaroni and cheese (which a young Yelena wanted in the opening scenes of the movie).
• The ex-Black-Widow that adopted a child is another rebuttal against the much-maligned scene of Natasha declaring herself a monster for being sterile in Age of Ultron. 
• The Statue of Liberty is being mentioned as being improved, which will be relevant in the concurrently-released but chronologically-later Spider-Man: No Way Home. 

Hawkeye S01E04 Review: Guest-Starring...

Hawkeye, Season 1, Episode 4: Partners, Am I Right?

A bit less action-packed compared to its preceding episode, and one that feels to be mostly setup. In a vacuum, the episode could be handwaved as 'it's the one where the two partners get into a fight, setting up the big emotional reunion in the pre-finale episode'. Which is exactly what this is -- unless episodes 5-6 really try and pull some Loki-level plot twist. Of course, Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld's chemistry and their mentor/mentee dynamic works so well that I'm actually genuinely invested in their pseudo-surrogate-parent relationship. 

The huge cliffhanger from the previous episode with Swordsman fighting against the Hawkeyes surprisingly doesn't pan out too much and ends in a civil discussion... which initially led me to believe that they might just be saving Jack Duquesne for the next season. And I kind of want them to, since we have two very active antagonists by the end of this episode. But while Clint bows out of the Bishop family drama, he gets his wife Laura to look into Jack Duquesne, and she finds out that Kate's actually right, and he is actually shady. Just to rub this point in a bit more, we even have a scene where Kate, Eleanor and Jack actually do begin to bond over them making fun of Jack's inability to say idioms properly. 

The middle part of the episode is admittedly a bit bland, with the comedy bits not all landing quite as well -- though I really, really did enjoy Kate deciding to spend her Christmas trying to get Clint to have fun a little. She sets up a movie marathon and gets them a pair of ugly sweaters because Clint's missing the same activities with his own children... and, hey, Kate's basically, like I said, his pseudo-child at this point. It's adorable as all hell, and Clint even begins to be a bit vulnerable, confiding to Kate how he first met Black Widow; as well as teaching her how to do a little coin flip trick thing. I do like the more serious moment, too, where Kate just asks Clint about whether he is Ronin, which Clint confirms. Again, I can totally see a version of this show where this scene just plain doesn't work. 

The LARP-er scene... eh. I did like the one-off joke in the second episode, and while it's funny to see Kate interact with them in a much more positive manner than Clint did, it's also rather obvious distraction to pad things out before the third act of this episode. I tend to not mind such subplots in these superhero shows, but this one felt particularly egregious considering how tightly-plotted these Disney+ shows have been. 

And then we get the huge action scene. Between Clint and Kate bickering about exit and entrance strategies, they find out that Echo has been researching Clint and making a hit list about his family. We also learn that the watch from the first episode is actually important, Clint and Laura know about it, and Echo has it in her apartment. It's... it's a bit off, admittedly, why the Hawkeyes treat this as a huge revelation, but then we have the huge fight. Kate Bishop fights Echo, while Clint Barton fights against a mysterious assailant with glowing goggles... and it's Yelena Belova!

(The revelation might take people who haven't watched Black Widow off-guards, but as someone who blogs about these things, I really don't care too much about people complaining that a comic-book show has comic-book-style guest stars -- regardless, I'm confident that the show will recap who Yelena is as needed.)

The fight scene is admittedly nowhere as impressive or flashy as any of the fight scenes in episode 3 -- though part of it might be because Maya, Clint and Yelena are all dressed in black on the rooftop. I do really like the flashier tricks that Yelena pulls in the fight, and while the discussion about Natasha earlier in the episode does kind of make her appearance here a bit predictable, it's still a pretty cool sequence. 

The whole Black Widow thing also ends up having Clint flashback to Natasha's death in Vormir, which the show very unsubtly delivers a flashback when Clint has to hold Kate in the same way he did Natasha. And it's a better reason than most to have the whole 'grizzled hero tells plucky young partner to fuck off' storyline to occur. It's definitely well-done, and I really like Clint basically shutting down any notion that he's a hero -- he's a 'weapon aimed by people who aimed [him] at the bad guys'. Again, a pretty cool episode all around -- Hawkeye's more grounded and relatively standalone story does feel like a breath of fresh air I didn't know I need. Definitely looking forward to see how the show concludes it. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The 'boomerang arrow' discussion is taken from Hawkeye #3 from the 2012 run, the same one that inspired the previous episode, albeit with the roles reversed.. That argument is one of the trick arrow arguments in the car chase in that issue; with the boomerang arrow being the useless arrow that saved the day there. 
• Kate also wears a Laika shirt in the first issue of Hawkeye 2012. 
• Wendy Conrad is the supervillain Bombshell in the comics -- here, she's just a LARP-er, and 'Bombshell' is instead a nickname from her wife. 
• Yelena Belova, a.k.a. Black Widow II, returns hunting Clint Barton after the events of Black Widow's post-credits scene. MCU Black Widow and Hawkeye's first meeting were explored in The Avengers and Black Widow. 
• Yelena's night goggles is a reference to her modern-day costume seen in Thunderbolts, which features five of them.
• Another 'Thanos was right' meme-acknowledgement takes place with a mug.

Hawkeye S01E03 Review: Trick Arrows

Hawkeye, Season 1, Episode 3: Echoes

A very interesting episode, this one. Of course, knowing now that the first two episodes were released together in the same day does make a bit more sense due to the amount of stuff that they set up in those two episodes -- and now that Kate and Clint's relationship are a bit more well-defined, we can go off to do build up the story surrounding them. We've gotten bits and pieces with the creepy Jack Duquesne doing suspicious stuff in the background with Kate's mother; or the Tracksuit Mafia doing whatever the hell they do (bro) but ultimately they're just distractions to the real stars of the show. 

And now that the dynamic between Kate and Clint are well established, this episode finally allows us to do build up the rest of the cast. Or, rather, one of them -- Maya Lopez, otherwise known to the comic-book audience as the superhero Echo. I'm completely unfamiliar with this character other than her connection to a maybe-cameo by Kingpin in this episode, so it'll be fun to see what she'll do in the series. 

The final shot of episode two is a reveal that lacked a bite since we know absolutely nothing about Echo, but the brief prologue we get this episode is a huge exposition dump that... that works really, really well. We get to see deaf little Maya grow up and, sure, her dad is a criminal, but he's also her dad, and a very good one at that. We see her struggle and eventually dominate despite her physical disabilities... and then she has to arrive in the moment of carnage as Clint, in his Ronin alter-ego, murders his way through William Lopez's little organization. It's a very poignant theme to explore in any of these shows where the heroes are murder-happy, and unlike the questionable writing decisions made in Black Widow (which I'll review eventually when I finish doing the rest of phase 3... at some point), there's no way that Maya's dad was hidden away in the background actually alive so that all our characters can go home guilt-free. 

And then after Maya's gruelling backstory, we get to see the present-day Maya, the badass leader of the Tracksuit Mafia. And, sure, the Tracksuits are mostly lovable goobers, bro, that say bro all the time, bro, with their funny accents... but while I'm waiting for her to do more in the back-end of the season, Maya does feel pretty interesting in this first episode. She gets to show that she's perhaps a bit too obsessed with murdering the Ronin, or looking for someone to blame for her father's death -- even when Clint tells her the metaphorically true answer that, hey, Ronin got killed by the Black Widow. She got so pissed off and invested in drawing some blood that her second-in-command and interpreter Kazi had to pull her back. 

This, of course, leads to the badass fight in the abandoned K-B toy store, which features some absolutely fun moments amidst pretty badass action sequences -- chief among them Clint swimming through a goddamn ball pool. Throughout this fight, Maya, who's had some discussion with Clint regarding his hearing aid, seems to zero in on that and smash it to bits. This whole sequence does actually salve my fears from the first two episodes that there won't be too much excitement as far as action sequences go in this show.  

This leads to what's probably going to be the signature scene of this show -- a deafened Clint driving a car while Kate randomly picks and yells and tries to communicate with her mentor while she shoots Clint's insane assortment of trick arrows at the pursuing Tracksuit guys. Oh, while Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "A Mad Russian Christmas" plays in the background, because we're going all-in on the Christmas theme. It's absolutely amazing, and it's the exact thing that I love about the MCU team in general -- they don't just respect the adaptation of some of the sillier parts of the source material*, they make stupid shit like suction-cup arrows and goop arrows look fucking cool. Eat your heart out, Arrow!

*Although typing this paragraph, I realize that they clearly draw the line at a comic-book accurate Silver Age Hawkeye costume. Can't be perfect.

Eventually, we get a pretty cool superhero goofiness moment as Hawkeye uses a Pym particle arrow to enlarge a regular-ass arrow and causes destroys the Tracksuits' pickup track. This ends the hostilities of the episode, but oh boy, what a fun episode that was. 

There's a continuing theme of communication between Clint and Kate throughout not just the fight, but the aftermath. It of course leads to some pretty great comedic moments ("deleted, blocked"; them independently talking about taking the dog out to walk) but it also gives us some genuinely well-done bonding moments between Clint and Kate, particularly in that scene in the apartment when Clint is unable to communicate with little Nathaniel over the phone, and Kate needs to help.

There's also that great scene in the restaurant where Kate shows all the excitement about the whole 'branding' thing and, yes, even grouchy old Clint has to admit that Kate Bishop's one of the world's greatest archers. But then in-between the dorky energy of Kate showing Clint her spin on Hawkeye's classic uniform, we get that pretty amazingly-delivered speech about how Clint talks about how this superhero business eats you, and puts your families at risk. On the other hand, though, Kate Bishop refuses to downplay the fact that Clint Barton donning the superhero spandex and running around as Hawkeye most certainly has inspired some people, chief among them her. Which, of course, tosses in the fact that Kate doesn't actually realize that Clint was Ronin into a brand-new light and a plot thread to follow up on later down the line. 

There's also some stuff with the Tracksuits moving out of their base in the background, but other than that, the episode does end off in a very telegraphed cliffhanger as the Hawkeyes try and look into the Bishop penthouse and end up being intercepted by Jack Duquesne with Ronin's sword. Pretty organic cliffhanger, and I'm assuming next episode we'll be getting a bit more from this antagonist instead. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The main action sequence of this episode of the two Hawkeyes bickering about trick arrows in the middle of a car chase is taken from issue #3 of the 2012 Hawkeye run, except Clint and Kate swap places, and in the comic run, they actually ride a 70's red Dodge Challenger. 
• Maya's dad tells her that 'dragons live in another world' off-handedly. The events of Iron Fist and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings proves that in the MCU, he is right, whether he knows it or not. 
• The auto-repair shop where Echo sees William get killed by Ronin is called 'Fat Man', a common descriptor of the Kingpin in the comics. It's also very heavily implied that Maya's 'uncle' is Kingpin himself.
• The USB arrow, of course, is the infamous trick arrow that Hawkeye uses in Avengers.
• Hawkeye uses a Pym particle arrow to enlarge a regular arrow, which, of course, is a nod to Ant-Man. 
• During the flashback, William leaves a bloody handprint on her face, which is a nod to her comic-book counterpart Echo's similar faceprint. 
• Kate's doodle is Hawkeye's notoriously non-live-action-friendly comic book costume, with Kate pointing out the H on the forehead and the 'hawk horns'.

Hawkeye S01E02 Review: Hawkeye's LARP Adventure

Hawkeye, Season 1, Episodes 2: Hide and Seek

Another pretty slow episode, although the first two episodes of Hawkeye were admittedly released back-to-back in November. The first episode focuses a lot on introducing Kate Bishop and her periphery cast, while this one sets up the dynamic between Clint and Kate now that they've met each other. It's basically the thing that's going to make or break the series, and I'm pleased to say that they play off each other very well. Clint's not a trope that we haven't seen before -- an old semi-retired hero who has the responsibility and desire to do what's right, but he's just so tired about it. Meanwhile, Kate is equal parts bubbly in fangirling over her favourite superhero while also trying to prove that she's competent.

And... and it's pretty fun to see the two play off of each other. Clint's character being the tired, serious everyman is kind of drowned out when he's on-screen with five to twenty-two other co-stars, but when it's just him and another co-star, it works well. Things also go relatively more or less how you expect it to with Clint treating the opening battle scene with the Tracksuit Mafia as a huge annoyance, but something he wants to get over with.

It did admittedly end with Kate's apartment burned up by the bro-mafia's Molotov cocktails, but it more or less ended out well. Kate's safe and alive, and she's clearly connected to the big Bishop Security company... but everything's nice. Kate even got some neat little mentoring from Clint despite his eye-rolling attitude. That moment where Clint shows Kate how to properly clean and bandage wounds isn't particularly groundbreaking as far as a superhero mentor/mentee relationship goes, but between that moment and the fun banter between the two it's still pretty sweet. The bit about Hawkeye's branding, them shopping for ibuprofen, Kate asking Clint to sign her bow... lots of fun moments between the two. Clint definitely sees a lot of his own daughter Lila in Kate, and I feel like the show manages to get that across without being too obvious about it.

All that's left for Clint, of course, is to recover the suit. Which leads to the admittedly slightly too-long sequence where Clint has to infiltrate the LARP community, and... I do appreciate just how much Clint is just "I'm trying to be nice, but I just want to get everything done with". The poor, poor man. 

While Hawkeye is off literally doing his subplot, Kate is dealing with more investigation stuff. While she might've given the Tracksuit Mafia the shake, every vibe that Jack (instead of Jacques in this show, I guess) Duquesne radiates strikes Kate the wrong way. She all but states that she suspects that Jack is behind Armand's killing, but Kate can't really tell her mother how or why she knows about the suspicious aspects of her fiance. The barb-trading between Kate and Jack is particularly fun to watch. Tony Dalton plays Jack as such an ass! This ultimately leads to Kate's attempt to stab Jack in the face, forcing him to reveal that he's actually a badass swordsman... which really proves nothing to Mama Eleanor other than that Jack lied about his sword skills and is taking it easy on a teenage girl, and Kate ends up sounding pissy and histrionic instead of revealing something suspicious about Jack. Ultimately Kate finds a clue (admittedly a flimsy one) in the butterscotch candy wrapping that Jack is eating and heads off to inform Clint. 

Clint, meanwhile, is trying to figure out the whole Tracksuit Mafia thing and plans to re-enact Black Widow's "catch and release" plan. And he has to do so to get home before Christmas, otherwise he'll disappoint Lila! Which... which doesn't work as well because the members of the Tracksuit Mafia are complete goobers. And then it's compounded by Kate Bishop being a goober herself, falling down from the ceiling and honestly being kind of lucky that she didn't break her legs with that maneuver. The episode ends with them captured by the Tracksuit Mafia and we zoom in to their deaf/mute leader Echo. It's pretty fun, honestly, with Clint, Kate and Ivan all getting pretty good lines throughout this sequence.

I've thought that the release schedule was more because of them pushing Hawkeye a week earlier because of The Book of Boba Fett, but this is definitely a show that works beset if you watch these two slower opening episodes back-to-back. The slowness is definitely in the show's favour and it fits the whole 'smaller-scale conflict' vibe. The show in general is pretty mellow and slow, but the Clint/Kate dynamic is easily its strongest asset and it does make for a fun opening act. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Hawkeye plans to do a 'catch and release', which Clint and Laura recognize as a Natasha thing to do -- this is a reference to how Black Widow is introduced in The Avengers, where she is captured by a group of criminals when she could've gotten out anytime. The shot of Clint's head-bag being removed is even framed almost identically to Black Widow's equivalent scene in Avengers.
• Tony Stark is mentioned to have sold Avengers Tower. While not explicitly 'sold', the plot of Spider-Man: Homecoming does involve clearing out a bunch of Avengers-related objects out of Stark/Avengers Tower. 
• Clint and Kate go off to buy some ibuprofen, which is kind of a hilarious roundabout joke to Yelena and Natasha's joke in Black Widow about Avengers that need an ibuprofen after a fight. 
• Among the names in Kate's aunt's apartment is 'Moira Brandon', a supporting character for the West Coast Avengers.
• Grills, the LARPer that found the Ronin suit, is Clint's neighbour from the 2012 Hawkeye comic run.
• The montage of the explosions Clint has been in are all taken from previous MCU movies -- Avengers; Age of Ultron; Civil War and Endgame. It's also perfectly synched to "Little Drummer Boy", which is hilarious. 

Hawkeye S01E01 Review: Kate Bishop!

Hawkeye, Season 1, Episode 1: Never Meet Your Heroes

I suppose we'll mix things up a little and do some series in an episodic format? I feel like while the entire-series review format is a lot less demanding for me writing-wise, it also puts more pressure on me catching up and watching entire chunks of television at a time. So for Hawkeye, I'll do it episode by episode. I've always held a little torch for good ol' Hawkeye, and I always did think that Black Widow and Hawkeye would make for a kickass TV series. We're getting just the Hawkeye part of that equation, but I'm still pretty excited! Anyway, I'm already kinda late to the party anyway, so...

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And... this episode is mostly introductions. It's a lot more slower-paced compared to Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki's respective first episodes, and it most certainly didn't have the mind-fuckery of Wandavision's pilot episode. Perhaps even more so than Falcon, this one feels the most down-to-earth of the Disney+ MCU shows, and the first episode just deals with reintroducing how Clint Barton has been coping to a post-Endgame world, while the bulk of the episode does the job of introducing Kate Bishop (Bumblebee's Hailee Steinfeld) as her own character. Unless I'm missing someone, Kate is the first main character in a Disney+ show that didn't originate in a pre-existing movie, which means that a good first impression of her is necessary.

And Kate's fun! A good two-thirds of the episode is devoted on her, and both the casting and the writing for the character is pretty top-notch. These sort of 'legacy' characters can be a bit of a make-it-or-break-it facet of a show, but I do really like that Kate Bishop is not just 'Hawkeye, but younger', but feels like her own character trying to make it in this insane world of superheroics. It helps that Kate is also a fun deadpan snarker that fits the mould of the MCU protagonist without being a carbon copy of anyone. 

And since this show's unique appeal is having Kate Bishop come into her own as a younger protege of an older, established hero, we do spend a bit of time showing the reasons why she can be a superhero -- she's got the classic 'parent gets killed due to a supervillain' thing, even if it's just collateral damage during the Chitauri war. She's got an inspiration, having seen Hawkeye be her hero that saved her from suffering the same fate as her dad. She's got the typical superhero 'athletic prodigy' background that explains why she can bush out some karate moves during the fight with the Tracksuit Mafia. She's clearly enough of a maverick to run around getting into trouble with her archery, and quick-thinking enough to bullshit her way when sneaking into that ominous underground auction. 

...and yet, we also get to see that despite all this, Kate's still woefully inexperienced. The biggest threat in this game is just a bunch of sock-headed gang members called the Tracksuit Mafia, and while Kate doesn't actually get beaten too bad, her attempt to do the Black Widow thigh-neck-snap thing fails hilariosuly because she falls off the rusty pipe she's hanging on. When the Tracksuit Mafia corners her in the streets, she only manages to beat the first goon before Clint shows up.

In addition to just establishing Kate's character, the first episode does introduce Kate's super-rich mom Eleanor, and what initially seems to just be a rich people hobnob-party ends up becoming something else as Kate sneaks around to follow her mother's rich fiancé Jacques Duquesne and his uncle Armand the Third (who Kate eavesdropped basically threatening her mother) into an underground auction. Some fun comedic moments with Kate pretending to be a waiter, but the items being sold in the auction include Ronin's equipment, lost since Endgame and somehow recovered by these shady rich people. 

Jacques and his uncle Armand the Third are involved in the auction and the episode does most certainly try and build them up to be kinda shady... until the auction gets attacked by a gang of balaclava-wearing goons called the Tracksuit Mafia. Seeing bad guys attacking these people, Kate ends up stealing and donning the Ronin getup and gets to fighting. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, she's not the most experienced burgeoning superhero, and while she does beat up some of the gang members, they are still a whole mafia against one girl with athletic capabilities. 

Throwing a wrench into things are a bunch of smaller events that I'm sure will be explored later on in the series --- Jacques steals the Ronin sword; someone among the Tracksuit Mafia steals a mysterious watch that is identified to be from the Avengers compound; and, most importantly, Armand III is found murdered. Extremely importantly, Kate also saves a dog! And gives him a pizza! Welcome to the MCU, Lucky the Pizza Dog, clearly you're the most important cast member of this show.

Again, a good chunk of this episode doesn't really delve too much into these mysteries just yet, because we're just setting Kate up as this younger hero that's both impressive enough compared to us 'normals', while still clearly fallible and a bit over her head. It's most certainly not an easy balance to do, and I look forward to see whether they can manage to keep this balance until Kate comes into her own as Hawkeye at the end of the show.

The stakes is also immediately much lower compared to... honestly, every single other MCU project so far? Hell, Clint's involvement in this show so far extends to him bringing his three kids to watch a musical in New York for Christmas times (and this is a Christmas-heavy episode) and essentially living life as a celebrity. His daughter Lila is quick enoguh on the update to realize that Clint is still hurting over his best friend Black Widow's death in Endgame, and while the people who walk up to Clint to thank him for being a superhero are nowhere as obnoxious as that one 'Blip reparations' dude from Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but it's still clear that Clint is still kind of bothered by it. 

(A little bit of an understatement, but they went all-out for the Broadway parody. It's glorious!)

I do really love the little character moments showing how... how overwhelmed Clint is with everything, but he's not really the kind of man to lash out and freak out. And anytime his children come into the scene you can just see the switch go on in Clint's personality where he's back to the 'jokey happy dad' mode. It's pretty well-done acting by Jeremy Renner that I really don't think would be possible in the cinematic format. 

But then Clint takes mostly the backseat, hanging out with his family until news of the Ronin shows up in the news. It's a bit slower, but honestly, considering how much the MCU version of Hawkeye is shown to be a family man almost above all else, it's appropriate that he basically did manage to get his best reward, which is being a dad to his growing children. He has been essentially growing too old for this shit, and after getting into a terrible headspace in Endgame when he dons the Ronin identity, you can totally see how Clint is just done with the world and just wants to be a dad. Which, of course, leads to the ending of the episode, where, in an attempt to stop the return of Ronin from causing any escalation of hostilities, he ends up hunting down his 'impersonator', which, of course, ends up being Kate. 

The episode itself also runs on heavy Christmas holiday-season vibes, with even the background instruments playing parts of famous Christmas songs. Which, I suppose, fits a lot with how both Clint and Kate's story seem to be geared to be wrapped around their families. Ultimately this is a bit of a slower-paced first episode, but still equally fun and the right one for this show, I feel. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Just like the other Disney+/MCU shows, I'm not going to do any 'in the comics' origin stories, because the show's going to explore Kate Bishop's origin story and stuff.
• Past Movies Continuity:
• Obviously, the prologue with Kate and her parents takes place during the events of The Avengers. The Chitauri-ship-dissolving arrow was actually seen as a close-up among one of Hawkeye's many trick arrows during that movie.
• Clint's tenure as Ronin happened in Avengers: Endgame, and we actually got some shots taken verbatim from that movie. 
• Hawkeye is shown to have a hearing aid -- the comic book version of Hawkeye is deaf, and this is the first acknowledgement that the MCU version also shares this trait. 
• The belltower that Kate accidentally demolishes is on 'Stane Tower', a reference to Obadiah Stane/Iron Monger, the main villain of Iron Man.
• The urinal that Hawkeye pisses in has "Thanos was right" grafitti on it, which is a bit of a meme among the MCU fandom. 
• Rogers: the Musical in-universe dramatizes the events of The Avengers, although it adds Ant-Man into the cast of the 2012-era Avengers. It's a bit of a meta-joke because Ant-Man was one of the founding members of the Avengers in the comics, and various versions of the planning for phase 1 of the MCU included Ant-Man as a member of the Avengers.
• The lyrics of Rogers: The Musical adds in a bunch of little winks to some MCU running jokes, like Captain America's "I can do this all day" catchphrase, or Hulk being "Incredible", and the Shawarma scene from Avengers.
• The font and opening credits of the show takes heavy inspirations from the excellent 2012 Hawkeye series by Matt Fraction and David Aja.