What's up with Laura Barton and that fancy "S.H.I.E.L.D" Rolex? Why didn't we get more
Pizza Dog?! "Hawkeye" was a hoot, but it left fans with some burning questions.
Oddly enough, in a show that includes several unrepentant criminals and killers, Eleanor
Bishop might be the most raging sociopath of them all. Kate's impressively manipulative
mother reacts to her arrest for first-degree murder as if it was a particularly mean-spirited
personal attack. It seems she's hardly overflowing with remorse for the slaying of Armand Duquesne,
and who knows how many other crimes she committed on Kingpin's behalf.
"How could you do this? All these years?"
Now that Kate's partly responsible for her mom presumably serving a lengthy prison sentence,
she may no longer have access to the Bishop family cash. However, if she gets a side gig
waiting tables, how will this facilitate her inevitable first meetings with the rest of
the Young Avengers? That's where this is all heading, right?
Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is presumably putting together a Thunderbolts team composed
of copycat Avengers, which includes U.S. Agent and Yelena Belova as the new Black Widow.
And they'll take on a Young Avengers team led by Kate, right?
Well, that's just a guess. What we know for sure is "Hawkeye" ends with Kate enjoying
Christmas with the Bartons. Will she chill at the farm for a while? Head back to New
York? Blast into space for an adventure with the Guardians of the Galaxy? The possibilities
are limitless.
Yelena Belova doesn't appear until the closing minutes of Episode 4, but Florence Pugh nevertheless
walks away with this whole series. Oddly enough, she does not walk away with "Black Widow,"
the 2021 feature-length in which she premieres as Natasha Romanoff's adopted sister. It could
be that the lighter tone and premise of "Hawkeye" lends itself to a funnier Yelena than the
more serious "Black Widow" could get away with.
As "Hawkeye" comes to a close, Yelena's mission to execute Clint Barton is a total wash, but
she gets some degree of emotional closure for the death of her sister. At the moment,
there doesn't seem to be more stuff for Yelena to do except possibly to seek out and mentally
liberate any remaining brainwashed Black Widows and await instructions from Valentina Allegra
de Fontaine.
Pugh and Hailee Steinfeld also demonstrate impressive onscreen chemistry within relatively
short periods of time, so while it's well and good to root for a "Hawkeye and Black
Widow" show starring the two somewhere down the line, let's remember that they can be
bitter enemies and still banter. Will Clint ever get his comeuppance?
Starting with "Avengers: Age of Ultron" from all the way back in 2015, the MCU hammers
on the idea that its version of Clint Barton would much rather be out on his farm with
his wife and kids than doing superhero stuff. Being an Avenger is essentially a very dangerous
chore for this man.
"Hawkeye" triples down on Clint's frustration with his apparent inability to ever stay in
dad mode for as long as he'd like — he frequently voices his desire to wrap up this ordeal so
he can get back to the Barton farm for Christmas. Indeed, the show tells us family is the most
important thing in the world to Hawkeye. Despite that, he casually destroyed Maya Lopez's family
at one point and evidently did this because Wilson Fisk wanted him to.
It's one thing if Echo loses interest in Clint as a target and, upon learning that her father's
death was pretty much Kingpin's idea, refocuses her wrath elsewhere. It's another thing if
the MCU keeps hand-waving away Clint's post-snap, pre-blip years as the blood-thirsty slaughter
machine, Ronin.
After all, Frank Castle's tra-la-la attitude about taking the lives of other human beings
frequently puts him at odds with his fellow superheroes. Why does everyone seem so eager
to let Hawkeye off the hook?
After the defeat of Thanos at the conclusion of 2019's "Avengers: Endgame," the MCU has
lacked a looming threat with the final boss energy of Josh Brolin's purple space fascist.
Could Kingpin become the MCU's new final boss? Okay, sure, Echo appears to put a bullet in
him at the end of "Hawkeye." But frankly, unless we see a corpse, we've got to assume
Wilson Fisk still lives and shall resume menacing denizens of New York City sooner or later.
Wilson Fisk reemerged into live-action Marvel at the conclusion of Episode 5 in the role
of secret evil mastermind alongside the shocking revelation that Eleanor Bishop was involved
in his schemes. As far as the Kingpin goes, there's lots of stuff "Hawkeye" doesn't tell
us.
How did Fisk get out of prison, where he absolutely appeared to be headed for an indefinite duration
at the conclusion of "Daredevil" Season 3? Why does he apparently wear a Hawaiian shirt
and a fedora now? Where's Vanessa? Does he have a long-term plan to fix his city by destroying
it and building it back up, or is he simply hoarding as much wealth and power as possible?
Is Bullseye still lurking somewhere out on the fringes?
Clint spends a decent amount of "Hawkeye" chasing down a MacGuffin in the form of a
Rolex watch recovered from Avengers Tower that could be used to reveal the identity
of a retired former coworker. Some folks figured this ex-colleague of Hawkeye's might be Nick
Fury, which would make sense, as he factors heavily into the upcoming "Secret Invasion"
series. A few of us also wondered if the Rolex might connect us to Agent Phil Coulson, seeing
as how the MCU has been tossing its fair share of old toys back in the sandbox as of late.
But the most prescient among us correctly guessed that the Rolex contained the identity
and location of Laura Barton, which explains why Clint was especially concerned about it
falling into the wrong hands.
"We have 90 seconds to find the watch. Everything else is secondary."
But if Laura Barton used to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, what did she do? We don't know, but
since she appears knowledgeable about and indifferent towards Clint's highly homicidal
activities as Ronin, we can safely guess her job got a little gnarlier than transcribing
emails and fetching coffee.
When Clint takes a bathroom break from "Rogers: The Musical" during Episode 1, he notices
someone has scribbled "Thanos Was Right" in Sharpie marker on a sink. In rapid succession,
Clint is confronted with one side of the culture that turns the horrors he experienced during
the Battle of New York into sugary pop entertainment, while the other side consists of clueless
edgelords who performatively idolize the cosmic demon that temporarily killed Clint's family
and permanently killed a few of his teammates. It's a poignant moment that's totally undermined
by that "Thanos Was Right" coffee mug a few episodes later.
Let's set the whole genocidal snap aside for a moment for the sake of making a point. If
a bad guy was directly responsible for a situation that caused your best friend to fall off a
cliff to her death, how comfortable would you be drinking hot cocoa out of that bad
guy's unofficial fan merchandise?
"Have you ever heard of LARPing?"
"LARPing? Is that some sort of leisure activity?"
Why does "Hawkeye," the show, think LARPing is so funny? Once "Grills" the LARPer lifts
Clint's old Ronin uniform from the smoldering ashes of Kate's apartment, Clint tracks him
down at an outdoor Live Action Role Playing event. Afterward, Grills' LARPing organization
inexplicably remains involved in various goings-on throughout the rest of "Hawkeye."
The show appears to assume we will all find the notion of adults engaged in sword and
sorcery-themed fantasy combat scenarios insanely quirky and charming. LARPing-related references
and humor felt fresh in 2009, when lifestyle sections of newspapers published articles
that winkingly declare "nerds" are counter-intuitively "cool" here in the eerily soothing early phase
of Obama's America.
LARPing is still a thing, of course, but it hasn't been the subject of frequent media
attention for some time. The LARPing stuff in "Hawkeye" just feels awkward, dated, and
a little like the show is poking fun at geeks with unusual hobbies, which is an awfully
strange decision for a Marvel show.
A better version of "Hawkeye" might've been seven, eight, or maybe even 10 episodes. There's
a lot going on, and "Hawkeye" sometimes falters in its effort to keep way too many plates
spinning at once.
Inevitably, some characters feel underserved, and that's especially the case for Jack Duquesne
— aka the "Swordsman" — until Episode 6. At the beginning of "Hawkeye," Jack seems
poised as the series' central Big Bad; by the end of Episode 5, he's the fifth-tier
threat underneath Kingpin, Echo, Eleanor Bishop, and Yelena Belova. By Episode 6, it's clear
that he's not really a villain at all.
Hopefully, there's life after "Hawkeye" for the Swordsman. Tony Dalton's blend of cavalier
swashbuckler and oblivious comedy relief certainly has potential as a foil for other second-string
Avengers on a different series.
When Disney+ announced a Hawkeye show that would feature Clint Barton and Kate Bishop,
some fans of Matt Fraction and David Aja's indispensable 2012 series envisioned a live-action
version of this standard-setting sequential art saga.
We always knew the show couldn't be a direct adaptation of the comic. The MCU's Clint is
a stoic family man, whereas the Clint of Marvel Comics at the time is a cynical, damaged bachelor;
only some of Fraction's "Hawkeye" takes place during Christmas, as opposed to the whole
story; Iron Man appears in the comic, but Tony Stark is obviously unavailable to do
anything in the MCU at this juncture.
To its credit, the Disney+ "Hawkeye" manages to combine street-level combat with espionage
and intrigue that have global implications and definitely stays true to some aspects
of Fraction's "Hawkeye." Sadly, one element that should've been easy to transfer to Disney+
is one of the show's bigger letdowns.
With all due respect to talented canine actor Jolt, Lucky the Pizza Dog has nothing to do
on TV's "Hawkeye." He shows up in the first episode, Kate rescues him, and then he spends
the rest of the series waiting around for someone to take him for a walk. Lucky is a
crucial component in the comics, but the show essentially reduces him to living iconography.
Seriously, Disney has tons of practice with stories about animals who save the day. How
did they drop the ball on this one?
We realize a television program's relative resemblance to a comic book from 10 years
ago isn't really a meaningful criterion of quality. Most viewers don't care that Clint,
not Kate, is supposed to rescue Lucky from the Tracksuits or that Clint is supposed to
explain the effectiveness of boomerang arrows to Kate — not the other way around.
But if Disney+ wants to make it up to the many, many comics nerds it has disappointed
by deviating from the source material it never actually promised it would follow, then it
should send Kate Bishop and Lucky to Los Angeles for the presently assumed Season 2 and follow
the events collected in Vol. 3 of the "Hawkeye" trade paperbacks. Kate gets tired of Clint's
B.S. and moves to L.A., where the events of "Hawkeye" #16 lead her to help an obvious
Brian Wilson proxy out of a terminal funk.
Disney+ adapting this story would attract and merge their demographics of MCU diehards
and boomer pop obsessives, plus it would be a lot of fun to see Kate and Lucky out on
the West Coast.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Looper videos about the MCU
are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss
a single one.