So the Hawkeye show came out a year ago today. I just got done rewatching it and one thing stood
out to me, a mysterious question I couldn t shake. What s, what s the deal with the
Rogers musical? What s going on with it? Why is it here? What s the significance?
This thing takes up a good few minutes of Hawkeye s first episode, it s the sole post-credits scene,
it s where we meet the show s titular character. That s a fairly prominent role
for something considered by most to just be a bit of fun. So I did some thinking,
and then a good deal more thinking, and then I came to a realisation. The Rogers musical has a
purpose here arguably a very important one. It s the lynchpin for one of Hawkeye s major themes,
for the way this theme is explored and developed across these six episodes. And if you give me,
what, like 11 minutes? I ll explain to you what I m talking about here. I ll analyse Rogers:
The Musical, the role it plays within the show. And you ll never look at it the same way again.
In case you ve not seen Hawkeye, or you ve forgotten, Rogers the Musical is a (fictional)
stage show within the MCU, seemingly dramatizing the life of Steve Rogers,
the first Captain America. The segment of it we see depicts the Battle of New York,
the alien invasion from Avengers 1 as a song.
It s disorienting for Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye, who was, y know, actually there,
and it s disorienting for the viewer in a similar way a gaudy, feverish, inaccurate reflection of
something big he experienced, that we experienced too. And it is inaccurate it has Ant-Man taking
part in the battle, presumably due to Scott Lang s newfound fame. But that didn t happen. This isn t
how it was. And for Clint, for us? It s a little uncomfortable that no one else seems to realise,
or care. We see the show advertised throughout the city in the background
of subsequent scenes and episodes it s popular. These people love it while for us, for Clint,
it s hard to watch. That s Rogers: the Musical, in a nutshell. That s the experience through which
we re introduced to one of our protagonists. But, hang on. Hawkeye s got two protagonists.
There s also Kate Bishop, trust-fund archer extraordinaire, wannabe-sidekick. Maybe it s
also worth thinking about the way she s introduced because it kind of mirrors the way we meet Clint.
Hawkeye opens in 2012 during the real Battle of New York. This time though,
we re seeing it through Kate s eyes, and she s a kid at this point. No singing,
no dancing, just lasers explosions and dead parents. Kate s terrified,
she s in danger, but then she sees Clint, and seeing him inspires her, rallies her.
To Clint here, he s a spec-ops agent caught in the middle of a battle against gods and aliens,
he isn t super physically or morally and the viewer gets to see a lot of clints moral and
physical fallibility throughout the MCU. Kate doesn t. The only version of Clint Kate got
to see was her childhood self s saviour. This idealised image of Clint becomes central to Kate
s own identity in the following years, and this idea of perspective, the differences between the
image of Clint Kate s built up in her mind and the real Clint, these are essential to bear in
mind. Thematically, there s a fair bit going on with this show: there s the ideas of legacy and
family which I think most viewers caught on to, but Hawkeye s also very interested in identity,
and the differences between the public and private knowing of identity - the version
of yourself the world gets, the version you see in the mirror, everything in between,
everything else. We see this fixation in the show from the start the way Kate s fiction of Clint
propels her throughout life, and the difficulty it causes her when this fa ade meets reality.
Flipping back to the musical, we see the distress Clint faces upon seeing the
facsimile of Natasha Romanoff, his partner, in the Rogers musical; he s pained seeing a real person,
a person he really, privately, knew, become a distorted image for the world to know wrongly.
This idea, that there is right knowing and wrong knowing, that private knowing
differs from public image, that s something the Rogers scene wants to set up. Take this moment
or take the toilet scene. Selfie guy sees Clint simply as the guy onstage, as the public idea of
Hawkeye, rather than seeing Clint, the kinda bummed out dad standing next to him, trying
to take a leak. This wrong knowing is everywhere in Hawkeye, even away from the Avengers, and the
musicals look at the way Kate misunderstands utterly the roles, the characters, of Jack
and her mother look at the way Eleanor s deluded herself into thinking she s the good guy here!
This brings up an interesting problem, in fact, one I think it s worth dwelling on for a moment.
Eleanor s perception of herself matches the one we had to begin with, the one Kate had right up until
episode 5 the good guy, the good mum, trapped in a web of crime and mystery, manipulated by
shady dudes. By the end of episode 6, we along with Kate realise how untrue all of this is,
but Eleanor doesn t. She doesn t realise how misleading her own self-image is. She s still
devoted to it. But is it misleading, or is it accurate? If the characters aren t in agreement,
and they aren t, then who s to say? The viewer? Well, we were wrong before. All that s happened
since is that we ve gained new information, and the only reason we stop acquiring new information
after this point is that the show ends. Maybe if it hadn t, we d ve learned something exonerating
Eleanor. All of this is to say by ending the show with this disagreement still intact,
with Eleanor still ardently convinced in this self-perception, Hawkeye acknowledges how
slippery all of this is how there s no objective, concrete answers on whose perceptions are correct,
on whose knowing is right, and whose is wrong. At the end of the day, we ve got to trust that the
show gave us all the relevant information. For all intents and purposes, Eleanor s wrong, the heroes
are right but I think this beat finds the show acknowledging, ever so subtly, the unknowability
of reality, and the relativity of perception. The other thing Hawkeye seems to acknowledge is
there s power here. Perception, even self-perception, can seem so flawed,
so misguided, but that doesn t stop it from having an effect in this case,
blinding Eleanor to her role, her culpability in this messy mystery. The effects of image,
of knowing, even wrong knowing, are everywhere here. Much of this show s plot is driven by Kate
s misplaced suspicions about Jack and there s even a sort of mirror to this in the Echo storyline,
the way Maya s quest for revenge has utterly passed by the person perhaps most responsible
for her father s death. But it isn t all negative. Kate s encounter with the real Clint, after living
so long with her fiction of him, causes issues but we also see the way Clint s encounter with
this idealised image of himself drives him to become this larger-than-life hero by the show s
finale. There s a real sense of reciprocity here fictions drive reality just as much as reality
drives fiction branding, role models musicals. By the end of the show, then? Rogers:
the Musical looks different. We even see Natasha s appearance in a whole new light after the Yelena
storyline s played out. Back in episode 1, Clint s alone in a world which only seemed
to know Natasha wrongly, through this glitzy Broadway distortion. Natasha s gone, and it
feels like she s gone for good, because he s the only one that knew her, properly, privately, and
the rest of the world s celebrating this hollow, two-dimensional fiction. By the end, though, he
knows he isn t. He s finally met Yelena, and they ve shared this raw moment of remembrance together.
He s reminded that there are others out there who really knew her,
that her legacy lives on in others. It isn t just his life that Natasha saved. It s Yelena s,
it s his family s, it's the rest of the world. And that even if everyone in that theatre,
watching that musical, is knowing Natasha wrongly they at least know she s a hero. We
see that clearly. The knowing of Natasha is wider than just Clint, and the idea of Natasha, whether
that s grounded on a personal level, or in the public perception of her, can go further still,
can still impact the real, even through stories, even through fiction, even through images.
And after we ve seen Clint and Kate skating around, in-costume,
for a big showstopper sequence, a guild of Vikings for their allies, after we ve seen a shared,
remembered, Natasha, save the day once more, the line between theatre and reality Hawkeye drew
in its premiere blurs even more. After this point, looking back to Rogers: the Musical,
and the function it plays in this show? It s not to be understood as some hollow, gaudy, insult no,
it s to be understood as displaying the power of perception, of the fa ade. Seeing this, rejecting
this, is the start of the journey Clint goes on throughout Hawkeye into an eventual acceptance.
By the end of the show, Clint burns the Ronin suit, symbolically destroying his previous brand,
his previous fiction. He sees the power of this gesture now, in a way he probably wouldn t ve
done at the show s beginning. He s even helping Kate create her own super-persona as the credits
start to roll. The dichotomies between public and private knowing, between real and false
perceptions, these all come together by the end of Hawkeye. They re revealed to be different
but not separate. They touch, they interact, they bleed over into one another. Hawkeye ends
embracing the power of the fa ade, embracing the power of these half-truths. There are lines here,
maybe some things, some perceptions, are more real than others, but those lines aren t absolute,
and by episode six the show s having as much fun playing around with masks, costumes,
and the power they hold as we re having watching it. So when that post-credits scene rolls around,
and we get to see the full performance of that number, it isn t empty, insulting,
a bad joke. No, it s the perfect conclusion. it s the capstone of this journey Clint takes
toward accepting his own legend, embracing his own symbolic power, and his position as role model.
And, look, obviously I know that on a less abstract level, it s also bit of musical,
self-referential fun but this bookends the show. It s how the show introduces us to one
of its protagonists. That s an important plot of narrative real estate. Introductions matter,
endings matter. And in this case, they re used to set up and conclude a thematic subcurrent that
runs throughout Hawkeye. I think that s neat. And hopefully by now, you do too. That s it
for this video but there is more to come. See, if you ve been watching this channel a while,
you ll probably know that I tend to do wider, less abstract retrospectives on these shows on
their anniversaries. One of those is coming for Hawkeye, but it got too long, so I chopped a bit
out and turned it into this so I d have something to release on the show s actual anniversary.
Hopefully you enjoyed my little compromise, and I ll get right to work on part two, that
more general retrospective, just as soon as I get done making this month s Patreon community video,
which is, lemme check Well! Guess I m off to watch Speed Racer, then! Thanks for watching,
though, and shoutout as always to all my Patreon supporters onscreen now, especially
Ztrangefolk - you ve no idea how much it helps, I appreciate every single one of you. See ya!