WARNING: Spoilers for Hawkeye Episode 3 (and previous episodes)
This episode was the Maya Lopez origin story with a superb opening sequence showing a young Lopez coping in school and in martial arts class despite being deaf, and having a close bond with her father. We also see a flashback to the blip which explains Lopez's motivation in this show- Ronin killed her father when he attacked the Tracksuit Mafia.
There's also some really tantalising teases as we hear mention of an uncle and see a figure who looks a lot like Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin. It's long been rumoured that Vincent D'Onofrio will be reprised the role from Daredevil and this episodes heavily implies that the rumours are true. Later dialogue in the episode tells us that Maya Lopez is not the head of the organisation, her uncle is.
Lopez is pretty enigmatic in the episode but we see that she is an incredibly tough fighter, easily able to hold her own against Hawkeye and perhaps even better him if he hadn't got hold of his bow. At this point it's still not clear how she is going to go from her senior role in the Tracksuit Mafia to the lead superhero of her own show. It's suggested that she shouldn't be focused on Ronin and that her uncle wouldn't approve which perhaps suggests she is going to come up against Kingpin herself in a later episode. It's also unclear at this point how the uncle is related to her- presumably he is her mother's brother though we haven't seen or heard anything about her mother yet.
It was really great to see Clint and Kate working together in this episode. The action sequences here were great, exciting and well-made but also really funny. Kate gets to rummage through Clint's quiver and play with his trick arrows. We've really only see Clint use a few non-traditional arrows in the MCU so far and it's cool to see some of the others he has at his disposal. An interesting addition is an arrow with Pym particles. The existence of this arrow suggests that either Clint has had direct contact with Scott Lang and Hank Pym since Endgame or this has come through the Avengers with both Clint and Scott still working with them- and suggested that the Avengers still exists as an entity after Endgame.
An interesting theme through the episode was deafness from the opening sequence told without sound to sequences from Clint's point of view after Lopez crushes his hearing aid. Lopez tells Clint that he is too reliant on technology and would be better off without it. This theme reminded me of Sound of Metal which similarly focuses in on the deaf community and sees characters question whether loss of hearing can/should be 'cured'. There's no right answer and opinions vary but Lopez is living proof that people can be successful despite being deaf. Clint's hearing aid is fixed towards the end of the episode but it will be interesting to see if he stops using it later in the series.
I thought this was a really strong episode and actually one of the best of the MCU shows so far. I don't think there was much of a buzz about Hawkeye and perhaps it doesn't feel as new or as different as some of the other shows but in terms of quality, after three episodes it's right up there with the best.
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