Hawkeye (Initial Thoughts)

Phase Four has expanded the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in big ways, from the multiversal shenanigans of Loki and What If...? to the more recent events in cosmic epic Eternals. The cinematic juggernaut that is the MCU isn't slowing down anytime soon and as things continue to get bigger, sometimes it's nice to focus on the little guy. That's where our latest Disney+ series Hawkeye comes into play. Taking place sometime after Avengers: Endgame, our titular archer has to pick up his bow once again to face down figures from his dark past, picking up a new protégé along the way. Let's take a closer look.

INITIAL THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS (SPOILER ALERT)

The first 2 episodes of the series lay the foundation for our characters, reintroducing us to Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) and introducing us to Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), as well as set the stage for our story. After reuniting with his family 5 years post-Thanos' snap, Clint is making up for lost time, bringing his kids out to have fun in New York City and promising to be home for Christmas. Side note, the events of this series will largely take place over a 7-day window from 19-25 December 2024 so yes, this is very much a Christmas series. Effectively having hung up his bow, our hero is drawn back into the fray when he sees a news report on the reappearance of "the Ronin", his violent yakuza-killing vigilante alter ego seen in Endgame. 

Enter Kate Bishop, a 22-year-old college student with a wealthy background and a mischievous streak. She grows up idolising Hawkeye after seeing him in action during the events of The Avengers and after her father's death in the Battle of New York, Kate picks up archery and martial arts to protect her family, bagging many awards over the years. Fast forward to the present day and she's become quite the proficient archer. When she attends a charity auction gala with her mother Eleanor (Vera Farmiga), Kate stumbles upon a black market auction happening underneath the gala, where she spots Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), Eleanor's new fiancé, and his uncle Armand III (Simon Callow). The auction sells off both Clint's Ronin attire and retractable sword, but before anything can proceed, a Russian gang known as the Tracksuit Mafia crash the party in a bid to recover a watch from the items. 

While Duquesne pockets the sword and escapes, Kate dons Ronin's suit and takes down the Tracksuits before running off into the night, but not before she gets caught on camera. This leads us to the aforementioned news report and Clint decides to recover his suit before anyone else gets hurt. Still dressed as Ronin, Kate breaks into Armand's home to investigate, only to find him stabbed to death with a sword. After she runs from the crime scene, she is cornered by the Tracksuits, who want to take revenge on the Ronin who busted their operations many years ago. Thankfully, she's saved by Clint, much to Kate's absolute awe. When they try to recuperate at Kate's apartment, they're once again attacked by the Tracksuits, who've managed to track them down after wrongfully deducing that Kate is Ronin and burn down her apartment. 

In the process of escaping, the archers lose the Ronin suit and Clint goes about finding it to "set things right", likely by sealing off his time as Ronin for good. At the same time, Kate attempts to investigate Armand's death, heavily suspecting her soon-to-be stepfather Jack Duquesne. As the pair go about their respective tasks, things come to a head when Clint is able to recover his suit and actively surrenders himself to the Tracksuits in a bid to find their leader. At the same time, Kate finds overwhelming evidence that Jack was the killer and rushes off to find Clint, only to find out that he's been kidnapped by the Tracksuits. In an attempt to save him, Kate crashes into the gang's hideout and promptly gets captured along with her idol. As the Tracksuits' leader is informed of the archers' capture and we see that the leader is Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox). 

Now that you're up to speed, let's talk about the series proper. Firstly, I liked how they explained Clint's hearing loss and hearing aid use although it was never shown in previous films. It's a pretty big part of his character from the comics and I like how they rationalised it in the MCU as him having progressive hearing loss over the years because of loud noises in battle (scenes shown include The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Endgame). I also really liked seeing Clint's characterisation as the exasperated father who just wants to get things over and done with so he can go home to his family. At the same time, although Clint is portrayed as being fine on the surface, complete with his sarcastic humour and whatnot, it's clear to see that he's still haunted by the shadows of his past, whether it's his time as Ronin or seeing Natasha Romanoff die right in front of his face. I think it'll be quite interesting to see how he interacts with Kate Bishop and trains her to potentially take over the Hawkeye mantle from him.

Speaking of Kate, I'm liking her character thus far. A lot of recent complaints for the MCU state that they have new "strong female" characters who are so much better than their male counterparts but Kate is certainly not one of them. Yes, she's fairly proficient in archery and martial arts but it's quite obvious that she's totally new to the crimefighting scene. Though she does beat some of the Tracksuits initially, she's dominated by them the second time around when she doesn't have the element of surprise, needing to be rescued by Clint. At the end of the second episode, she attempts to rescue Clint but soon realises she's out of her depth and gets captured just like him. This is just a clear indication that she really doesn't know what she's doing as a superhero. She still makes mistakes and over time, she'll get the superhero-ing jig down pat with Clint's guidance.

The interactions between Clint and Kate are quite fun to watch, and their actors' chemistry is palpable. Clint treats Kate as just some greenhorn in way over her head and like another one of his kids, so he tries to protect her as much as he can. He knows he's not entirely the hero she thinks he is and he tries to temper her expectations. On the other hand, Kate is still extremely star-struck about being able to actually talk to her idol and it all gets to her head. That said, I do think that as the series progresses, we'll probably see Kate look past Clint's superhero persona and get to know the man behind the figurative mask so to speak. Really looking forward to seeing more of the pair in the rest of the episodes. 

Now, the series does introduce us to a few characters tied into Hawkeye's story in the comics and one of them is of course, Jack Duquesne. who in the comics is the supervillain Swordsman (and his real name is Jacques). I'll dive a bit more into his origins in my eventual series retrospect but an important thing to note is that in the comics, Duquesne was a circus performer who met a young Clint Barton at one of his shows and trained him in the use of blades. As far as the series go, we know that Duquesne is indeed a skilled swordsman (although he hides his proficiency from Kate and Eleanor), and he's likely going to be portrayed as a villain, having killed his uncle. I don't know if they'll go the route of him having trained Clint before but we shall see. 

Another character we briefly saw is Maya Lopez aka Echo, a deaf superhero with photographic reflexes. In the comics, she's heavily involved with Daredevil and Kingpin, and has also been an Avenger at one point. Maya is also the first person to don the Ronin mantle but of course, that's likely not the case in the MCU. Traditionally, she's not a full-on villain so I'm interested to see what they do with her in this series, especially because she'll be getting her own solo outing in the future. Interestingly, this will be actress Alaqua Cox's debut role and I'm excited to see how she portrays the role. In the comics, Maya is able to speak but Cox uses sign language in interviews so I highly doubt we'll see her speak in live-action. 

So far, I'm liking the tone of this series. With everything going so grand so quickly, it's nice to be down-to-earth once in a while. The series will likely be a lot more action-packed and I'm very curious to see how they weave all their plotlines together. Clint cleaning up the Ronin mess, Kate possibly taking the Hawkeye name, Jack Duquesne, Maya Lopez and let's not forget, we still haven't seen Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) come for revenge after the events of Black Widow (check out my review for that if you're interested). There's a lot to come with this series and with only 4 episodes left, things are bound to be very fast-paced. Phase Four's releases have ranged from mediocre to slightly above average so here's to hoping that Hawkeye will elevate the MCU back to its once great status.