Hawkeye is a six episode show focusing on the more “normal” Avenger, Hawkeye. It is set after Avengers: Endgame and follows not only Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye), but also introduces Kate Bishop. The beginning on the season focuses mostly on Kate, with Clint only having a few scenes. Kate is a rich young girl but after seeing Hawkeye in action during the Battle of New York from the first Avengers movie, it had inspired her to take on martial arts and archery. She excels at both. Skipping back to the present day, Kate accidentally involves herself in the underground black market, coming across Ronin’s outfit.
Meanwhile, Clint is spending time in New York with his kids when the actions of Kate, wearing Ronin’s outfit, appears on the news. Given that Ronin is the dark past of Clint that he is trying to move on from, he has to tie up this loose end. Clint tracks down Kate and attempts to get back the Ronin outfit but of course, things are never that simple. Kate’s caught the attention of Ronin’s past enemies, who comes out in force to try and take “Ronin” down.
The plot quickly spirals out of control and becomes bigger than just Clint’s attempt to push Ronin away from everyone’s attention. The pacing is decent although it feels like the progress towards finding out the background of the situation, and the one behind it all, is slow. It kind of keeps looping back into a routine where Clint and Kate will face some bad guys, retreat and regroup, and then go at it again when they’ve got something a little bit extra.
Despite being the tagalong sidekick, Kate never feels like an annoying character. It helps that she’s not clueless considering she is from high society. The show spends time on her current family situation, where her mum is remarrying but there is something suspicious about her fiancé, and all these events seem to tie together. Given Kate is so much younger in age, she has a lot of quips. It naturally feels lighthearted as a result.
The show fleshes out Hawkeye, who had always seemed like an overlooked background character in the movies. In comparison with the other members of Avengers, Hawkeye has no special powers and he’s never had a solo movie, he’s just… there. This show portrays him in a very likeable manner and the chemistry before him and Kate helps push the show along. The various flashbacks though are okay at best. They’re required to give some context to the newly introduced characters but feels disjointed to the rest of the show.
Carrying on with the theme of the Phase Four TV shows, we seen some more mundane moments of what it’s like to be an Avenger. Clint is easily recognised by everyone, who mostly views him as a hero. He’s asked for photos at every opportunity and isn’t just another guy on the street. The show also has the usual high production values with heaps of explosions, combat scenes, car chases, the whole lot. There are flashy effects but sometimes the CGI is obvious and fake, making it distracting. There are a lot of scenes where it takes place at night or in dark areas, which isn’t ideal at times given it masks what’s happening onscreen.
Given the consistent pacing, it doesn’t build up to a huge finale, but it was still good. There is a huge battle but since the season was already well paced in terms of action sequences already, it’s not out of the ordinary. It aligns its Christmas theme with the final episode’s release date so that can be corny. Anyway, there are some neat references to other Marvel shows. It effectively resolves all of its plot arcs but not all are completed in a satisfying way. Some of them are underwhelming given all the focus it had, while others have the opposite problem where there wasn’t enough focus so it loses the impact.
Overall, Hawkeye is still a strong TV show. It still requires some knowledge of the MCU but works well enough as a standalone. The chemistry between Clint and Kate is one of the highlights. Exploring Hawkeye’s past was much more interesting that you would expect. The season is well paced, with plenty of good action and humor. It also helps that the show can feel more grounded compared to other MCU shows, where the CGI is not as in your face.
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