Today Wednesday, December 22, marked the end of the Hawkeye show by Marvel Studios, as the 6th and last episode is now avaible on Disney+. So was Marvel’s last show of the year a good one and was it as good as the others ? Well, let’s see that !
A short summary of the show
Hawkeye takes place on Winter 2024, a year and a half after the events of Avengers Endgame. The show provides us a brand new character : Kate Bishop (interpred by Hailee Steinfeld), who’s probably Hawkeye / Clint Barton (still interpreted by Jeremy Renner) #1 fan since the day he saved her during the battle of New York in 2012. As she finally meet her hero after going through a fight against the “Tracksuit Mafia”, Kate Bishop will slowly become Barton’s partner. Together they’ll need to fight various enemies in order for Clint to finally turn the page on his past life as Ronin, but also to fully accept the death of Natasha Romanoff that has been hauting him for more than a year. The show also introduced us the character of “Echo” and MCU fans had the pleasure to rediscover Yelena Belova, (Natasha’s sister, introduced a few months ago in the Black Widow movie) but also, the largely appreciated Wilson Fisk (perfectly interpreted by Vincent d’Onofrio) from the Daredevil show.
So was it a good show ?
Yes it was. But I’m not gonna lie, I was disappointed by it. Not by its quality, but by the story and all the challenges around it, as they were clearly less important and spectacular than the one we’ve seen in WandaVision, Loki and the Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
The feeling I have about Hawkeye is that the show had too many side stories in once. Putting together, within only six 45 minutes episodes : the origin story of Kate Bishop, Hawkeye’s redemption towards Natasha’s death, Yelena’s quest to kill Barton and avenge her sister, Maya’s (Echo) mission to find the Ronin and kill him and two underground stories that included, Jack Duquenes, Kate’s mother (Eleanor Bishop) and the come back of Wilson Fisk were definitely too much. Because of that, the show is kind of a mess, and the closer you’re getting to the end, the messier it is, as the show is trying to make all stories coming to an end at the same moment and it creates a terrible inequality between every side stories. The only thing escaping this mess is Clint’s redemption towards Natasha’s death, as the show clearly takes the time to explain us that Clint is still traumatised by her death. Despite the fact that the last fight with Yelena was a little bit fast, the show surpringly finds a good conclusion for all the stories surrounding Natasha Romanoff. Unfortunately, it’s not the case for the rest of the show, and without diving too much into the details (I’ll let you make your own mind about it) it’s clear that everything is going too fast in the last episode, and that creates so much disappointment, especially towards Wilson Fisk, as I clearly wanted to see more of him, probably because his new role in the MCU is still to determine.
However and despite all those defaults, I spent a good moment watching the show. It’s visually good, not as impressive as Loki and WandaVision but still decent and the fight scenes are quite interesting, especially the car chase in episode 3. Still regarding the actions and fight scenes, all the “Hawkeye stuff” is really well used as we get to see dozens of different arrows with each special arrow giving each moments of every fights, original aspects. But what I liked the more about this show was the general atmosphere of it. The main characters are very well interpreted and we clearly feel an attachment for Clint Barton and Kate Bishop. It’s clear that both Renner and Steinfeld had fun playing their characters and we can feel it on the screen. We feel happy for them, we laugh with them and all the christmas atmosphere around make this feeling even better. Talking about christmas, I really liked (as said earlier) the atmosphere of the show. Despite the fact that the show is dealing with some dark, sad and dangerous events, that christmas atmosphere is always taking over as the general tone is clearly light and humoristic. Even threats like the tracksuit mafia are fun characters, almost like a caricature of a real mafia. The show starts with the Barton family doing basic christmas stuff and ends with Clint introducing Kate to his family on the day of christmas and that’s what I liked the most about this show : the relation between Kate and Clint, this relation between a harmed and tired Avenger who just wants to leave in peace and a young, overenthusiastic girl who just wants to be like her hero. Both learns to know each others and Kate turns out to be the light Clint needed since the death of Natasha. I told you it was a good christmas story !
In conclusion, what I can say is that, yes the show was disappoiting as it was clearly less impressive than the previous shows we had this year. Hawkeye was also show with way more defaults than the other ones and and the story is honestly, a mess. Everything is going either too fast, either too slow, the rythm of each episode is clealry inequal, and the final episode is quite disappointing. However, it’s a show that you need to watch without asking yourself too much questions and just enjoy the christmas atmosphere and the light tone of the show, and as the last episode dropped a few days before christmas, it looks like Marvel also knows how to make good christmas stories !
Is Hawkeye a good Marvel show ? Not really. Is it a good christmas show ? Definitely !
