The Short Take:
Disney+’s Hawkeye takes a minute to warm up, but by the end of the second episode, Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop and the underworld mystery were enough to keep me on the hook.
The Long Take:
If you had asked me a few months ago to name Avengers who should have their own series, Hawkeye would be at the bottom of the list. I was never disdainful towards him or Jeremy Renner, but it’s hard to get excited for the guy with the just a bow and arrow when the literal god of thunder stands next to him. After watching the trailers for Hawkeye, I realized that a dedicated series for the character might solve this problem. A more focused story, with lower stakes, in a context better-suited to the type of hero Hawkeye is, could finally push him past the runt of the litter status he has had for so long.
Based on the first two episodes that dropped on Disney+ this week, I’d say yes, this show endeared me to Clint Barton more than an MCU film ever would have. He has a gruff “I don’t really want to help because this is ruining my Christmas but I will anyway because it’s the right thing” attitude that makes him relatively more charming than any reference to Budapest with Natasha Romanoff ever did. And seeing Clint with his family didn’t feel forced or obligatory as it does in the films. A visit to the the Barton family farm in Age of Ultron mostly reflected the writers’ need for a quiet place where the Avengers could regroup (and gratuitously chop wood), making Barton’s family ornamental.
Here, we actually get to know them a little, and that helps us understand Clint’s state of mind; they serve a purpose in the story. I was especially surprised by how much I appreciated the conversations Clint has with his wife, Laura. They gave a sense of depth to their relationship — like she really knew both Clint and Hawkeye, and was much more in the loop on his Avengers activities than any of the films indicate.
This show only works, however, because Hailee Steinfeld is also there. Steinfeld plays Kate Bishop, a college fencing and archery champion who works for her mother’s security company when she’s not in school. Kate stumbles across Hawkeye’s old Ronin “ninja suit” and attracts unwanted attention. Clint, seeing his old vigilante costume making the nightly news, tracks Kate down to do damage control. He has six days to “fix” the situation so he can be with his family for Christmas.
Image Credit: LA Times
Considering how compressed his timeline seems to be, the first episode feels a little slow to me. My biggest recommendation to those who have no yet seen the show is to make the time to watch both episodes back-to-back so that you can get a fuller opening story. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier had a similar problem, having to bounce back and forth between Sam and Bucky before they team up. Introducing us to a whole new character and plot while also reintroducing us to an old character we haven’t seen in a while (and didn’t care too much about to begin with) is a big ask, and I think it was wise of Disney+ to release two episodes as the premiere instead of one. If I had stopped after the first episode — and if I weren’t an MCU completionist — I may have taken my time going back for seconds.
Even though the show treats Kate Bishop and Clint Barton as co-leads, the former, at least so far, anchors the plot. Whatever mystery we’re about to unravel, whatever trouble these two find themselves in, the Bishop family appears to be at the center. (More on that later in the spoiler-ful section.) Again, I think this was the right move, because as much as Hawkeye improves upon Clint Barton, there’s still only so much that I would have been able to take without Steinfeld’s brazen and funny Kate Bishop to balance his super serious brooding. The show itself openly acknowledges the MCU’s Hawkeye problem through Kate, who hassles Clint about his “branding problem”; her monologue about what people do and do not want in their heroes these days might as well be Marvel talking to itself. Kate is the perfect foil for Clint Barton on both the literal and figurative level.
It doesn’t hurt that Hailee Steinfeld is a magnetic dynamo as Kate Bishop. Her performance is easily my favorite part of the show so far. (And that’s saying a lot considering there’s a Broadway musical number called “I Can Do This All Day”!) She’s confident yet green, goofy yet formidable. She is 100% convincing as a super spy because every time she gets into a jam she can instinctually con her way out of it, but, all the while, she has these “I don’t know what I’m doing” expressions on her face. She also seems like a great hang in a way that Clint just…does not. But again, that’s why they as a pairing make this show work. They can live in that odd couple buddy cop archetype very comfortably.
[SPOILER WARNING: I’m about to discuss specific plot points from the first two episodes. And right ahead I’ve got a Black Widow end-credits spoiler whizzing past your head. ]
Right now the show seems like a “two-hander” where Kate and Clint are both leads, but I think it’s likely that eventually Clint’s Hawkeye will bow (sorry, couldn’t help myself) out and Kate will fully step into the role of Hawkeye in the MCU. And, considering how much I just gushed about Hailee Steinfeld, that’s great news! I feel about Steinfeld the way I felt about Florence Pugh in Black Widow: delighted and excited for more. The end-credits scene in Black Widow implies that Pugh’s Yelena a.k.a. the new Black Widow will hunt down Clint Barton in order to avenge the death of her sister. Having now seen Steinfeld in action, I cannot wait for the hilarious fireworks that will ensue when they meet. I’d really love for them to fight each other and then become best friends. Imagine the conversations they could have about pockets.
After Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop, I can credit the aristocratic underworld intrigue with sustaining my interest in the show as a whole. The snippets of conversation we get between varying combinations of Kate’s mother, Eleanor Bishop, her fiancé, Jack Duquesne, and his uncle, Armand Duquesne, clearly indicate that something shady is going on, but I have no idea what it is and therefore am interested to follow Kate’s investigation. It sure looks like Jack killed Armand, but if the show adheres to murder mystery convention, it won’t be him. On the other hand, if we use The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s Power Broker plot as precedent, then maybe this is just a long walk to confirming the obvious.
[I’m about to discuss the Matt Fraction run of Hawkeye that the show appears to be using as a source text. I plan to speculate about where the show might be headed based on those comics, so if you’re planning to read them at some point (and you should — they’re great!), come back when you’ve finished. ]
Image Credit: CNET
Those who have read Hawkeye comics will recognize Jack Duquesne as The Swordsman, a sometimes mentor/sometimes antagonist character from Clint Barton’s circus past. In the Matt Fraction run, Jack Duquesne makes a brief appearance as Clint’s mentor. So there’s likely going to be some connection back to Clint that will be revealed later in the season. The show has already established that there are like 7 Armands in the Duquesne family, so it stands to reason there could be multiple generations of Jacks as well.
There was always going to be a lot the comics needed to change up in order to maintain continuity with the MCU, so I never had the expectation that the show would be a faithful adaptation of Matt Fraction’s story. Most notably, the Clint Barton in the comics is a bachelor dirtbag with a heart of gold who can’t get his act together. Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton has to be a family man hardened by the events of the Infinity Saga. Plot-wise, this forces the show’s writers to rework the Tracksuit Mafia plot so that Hawkeye no longer fights the “bro”-dropping thugs for an apartment building he lives in and neighbors he wants to protect. Kate’s apartment has already burned down, so maybe they’re just going to shift all the Tracksuit Mafia plot to the Ronin backstory.
Lucky or “pizza dog” was Clint’s pet in the comics and then Kate takes him with her to LA when they have a falling out. The fact that Kate is the one who saves Lucky in the show, to me, implies that they aren’t going to “split up” and reconcile. Rather, Clint may just retire, go back to his family, and maybe we follow Kate to LA for new adventures in Season 2. I fully acknowledge that this is extremely speculative, as we’re only two episodes in.
The other noticeable difference is that the show has swapped which parent has died and which parent has a new partner. It’s possible that they just gender-swapped to make The Swordsman Kate’s prospective step-dad, but it also made me wonder — especially since Vera Farmiga would make a great villain — if Eleanor Bishop may actually be Madame Masque, who is the primary antagonist for Kate in the Matt Fraction comics. But, by that logic, Kate wouldn’t need to trek to the West Coast to run into Madame Masque, as she does in the comics.
What’s fun about this is, despite my attempt to compare the show with its preceding comics, I still have nothing but wild theories about where the show might take us. Everyone wins!