TV Review - Hawkeye (2021)

This is the 5th series on Disney + that's apart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or MCU. It follows the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019). Like with most of those series, this one is reckoning with the deaths or the losses that occurred in that 2019 blockbuster. In WandaVision (2021), Wanda dealt with the death of Vision. In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), both the Falcon and the Winter Soldier dealt with the loss of Captain America. In Loki, Loki dealt with the death of Loki. Yes, he dealt with his own death. I don't think those shows did a good job of dealing with those deaths or losses. In fact, in each of those three series, instead of having the characters reckon with the relationships they had with the dead or lost person, the series is more about building up successors or replacements for the dead or lost person.

Those shows could have been about deepening or providing further insight into the relationships that were no more. We don't get any insight into the relationship between Wanda and Vision but merely an artifice of what it could have been in an unreal fantasy. We don't get any insight into the relationship between Captain America and his friends, particularly that of the Winter Soldier. We don't get any real reckoning of Loki and what he did, which led to his death. Most of the time, the shows were trying to setup these successor characters, while building up this multiverse idea that is and will be playing out in future MCU films.

Hailee Steinfeld (Bumblebee and True Grit) stars as Kate Bishop, one of those aforementioned successor characters. She's basically being setup or groomed to be the next Hawkeye. As a little girl in 2012, she witnesses Hawkeye help fight the alien invasion in New York City. This inspires her to want to be like him. I'm sure Hawkeye inspired a lot of people, but she's the only one with wealthy connections, as well as familial connections to mobsters or crime lords, which will later prompt her to become a vigilante hero like Hawkeye.

There's also a point of contention that of all the super-heroes who are apart of the Avengers, Hawkeye is the only normal one. He's the only one who doesn't have super-powers. He's just a regular man, making him more of an aspiration because if someone worked and trained hard, they could become like him. The only quirk to him is that his weapon of choice is a bow-and-arrow, so learning that craft is also necessary for anyone aspiring to be him.

Jeremy Renner (Wind River and The Hurt Locker) reprises his role of Clint Barton aka Hawkeye, the master archer who was recruited to be apart of the Avengers. He fought aliens and helped save the world. Yet, in Avengers: Endgame, it's revealed that after Thanos disappeared half the population, which included all of Clint's family, Clint became a secret assassin named Ronin. He killed bad guys for years, but he was a killer. This series addresses the fallout of his killings where he has to confront the daughter of one of his victims. This is akin to what the Winter Soldier had to address in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. This series does a better job in that regard though.

However, the true death that needed to be addressed in a more thorough way was the death of Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow. Clint tried to stop Black Widow who sacrificed herself in order to stop Thanos or reverse what he did, which meant returning all the people who disappeared like Clint's family and Natasha's sister who was introduced in the film Black Widow (2021) this summer. Yet, the interpretation that Natasha's sister gets is that Clint murdered Natasha.

Florence Pugh (Little Women and Midsommar) plays Yelena Belova, the sister to Natasha Romanoff. Yelena is a Black Widow too. She's a Russian trained assassin. She's convinced that Clint killed her sister, so she's out for revenge. Unfortunately, Yelena isn't introduced until the penultimate episode of this series, so the show can't really reckon with her interpretation of why and how her sister died. Then, as quickly as she appears, Yelena disappears from the series.

This series does accomplish something that I wanted for these shows on Disney +, and that's lowering the stakes from world-ending consequences to more down-to-Earth problems. It's less about alien invasions and more about mobsters and their turf wars. Yet, tone-wise, this series was more of a comedy in terms of how it rendered those mobsters, as such that it was difficult to take them seriously. One of the members of the mob was a deaf woman and having that kind of representation was pretty cool.

Rated TV-14-LV.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 6 eps.

Available on Disney Plus.