WARNING: Spoilers for Hawkeye Episodes 1 and 2
Hawkeye is back on our screens and is finally the star as he heads his own TV show, although he is sharing the limelight with protégé Kate Bishop.
The series opens with scenes set in 2012 as we see a young Kate living with her parents in a penthouse suite in New York. Suddenly the Battle of New York is raging outside and Kate watches helplessly as Chitauri ravage the city. One spots her and heads to kill her but it brought down by an exploding arrow. Suddenly we realise this is a moment we've seen before, Hawkeye being badass in The Avengers. I thought it was really clever to turn an iconic moment for the character into a really important character for another, without it lessening the original moment.
Much of the focus of the first episode is on Kate Bishop as we see her learn with horror that her mother is engaged to Jack Duquesne. There's a mystery surrounding Jack- who exactly is he and why does he want to marry Eleanor? We see him bid for Ronin's sword and even steal it when the black market auction is attacked and in the fencing scenes we see he certainly knows his way round a sword. It's unclear at this point if he is implicated in the murder of Armand III, his uncle, but he seems to have a sweet from the scene of the crime. My early theory is that actually he's a decent guy with a heroic background- if he was involved with killing Armand it's because Armand was a terrible person. Just a theory though.
Clint has a pretty passive role in the first episode, just spending time in New York with his kids ahead of Christmas before getting wrapped up in his past when he sees Kate running round wearing the Ronin costume. He's something of a broken man by this point which is hardly surprising given that he was just a bloke who was good at archery who has faced absurd situations. He's still deeply mourning the loss of his best friend Natasha and we learn he's partially deaf after years of being caught up in explosions and loud superhero conflicts. He's very reluctant to be involved with the superhero stuff and just wants to enjoy spending time with his family.
It's also fascinating to see how he distances himself from his fame. Phase 4 of the MCU has already begun to examine the fame of the Avengers from the opening of Far From Home to scenes in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. This show takes things a step further and we see that Clint Barton is an A-list celebrity that everyone recognises. He seems to reject the fame with the implication being that he doesn't feel deserving of it. At the same time though there's a suggestion that he feels a bit overlooked, from complaining about Ant-Man being depicted as participating in the Battle of New York to Kate discussing the issue with his brand.
One interesting line was Clint saying that Tony Stark had sold Avengers Tower. This isn't really news as we saw the building being re-developed in Far From Home. There was a lot of speculation at the time that the building would have an important role to play later in the MCU and the fact that this line appeared here, in a show that Kevin Feige is particularly heavily involved with, further adds credence to the idea that we'll see the building again in a new form. Could the new owners be Oscorp, or maybe it will become the Baxter Building, home to the Fantastic Four?
Episode 2 ended with a glimpse at the moment in charge of the Tracksuit Mafia, Maya Lopez. We're more familiar with her under the guise Echo and we know an Echo TV show is coming in the future. It's perhaps surprising then that a known superhero is running a criminal organisation. In the comic books Lopez was closely tied to Kingpin and with rumours that Vincent D'Onofrio will be reprising the character in this show it seems likely that the origin will be similar and that this is an Echo before she turned 'good'. Alternatively, maybe the Tracksuit Mafia are just a means to an end and she is using them for a more noble purpose than it first appears.
I thought the first two episodes were a really strong start to the series. Kate Bishop is very quickly made a likeable character by Hailee Steinfeld and it's great to see Jeremy Renner get to explore Clint Barton much more. We've yet to see the pair in action together so I really hoped we get to see more of that in the next episode and it'll be great to be introduced to Echo properly too.
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