Hawkeye has steadily maintained his place in the Avengers line-up since 2012’s first team-up movie, and has been dutifully played by the double Oscar-nominated Jeremy Renner over the last decade, but Clint Barton is still a supporting character that the MCU itself has regularly mocked as being surplus to requirements.
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Arguably, fewer MCU fans were as hyped for this series as they were for other supporting character Disney+ projects like Loki, but fans of Matt Fraction and David Aja’s spectacular 2012-2015 Hawkeye Marvel Comics run – which thankfully this series borrows from liberally – tentatively got their hopes up.
As one of them, I’m pleased to say the new show is a seasonal treat. The first two installments of Hawkeye balance a mix of set-up and character-building quite deftly thanks to Mad Men writer Jonathan Igla and Documentary Now! director Rhys Thomas.
In these opening episodes, set in the week leading up to Christmas, Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton is recognized in the street and theatre stalls by wide-eyed fans. Despite this, it’s clear he’s not the Avenger most people adore. As he walks past a group of superhero cosplayers in Times Square, the archer among them is actually Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, a great joke that really makes the story’s intent for him clear. This lack of popularity is because Hawkeye doesn’t have a good brand, Barton’s told. How could anyone care about him when he hides anything interesting about himself?
It’s a question posed by someone who has the most likable ‘brand’ of any Marvel character since Phase One: Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop. Pulled almost entirely from the pages of Fraction and Aja’s comics, she’s a delightfully energetic force who runs before she can walk. Her archery skills are matched only by her ability to arrive in the wrong place at the wrong time. This provides almost all of Hawkeye’s initial fun and intrigue; Kate’s a pint-sized detective, and her underbaked crime fighting instincts ensure she’s always getting herself into some kind of exciting trouble.
Together, Barton and Bishop make a classic double-act. He’s the grumpy surrogate father who’s just trying to live his life, and she’s the untamable wild card who may just bring out the best in her new mentor. It’s a cliché set up that stands a chance of becoming tired but, at least in these initial hours, the dynamic is strong. That’s largely thanks to Steinfeld; based on these two episodes, the Hawkeye the title refers to is almost certainly Kate. It’s unsurprising that she steals the show — Steinfeld has always been a magnetic joy — but her junior hero also fires significantly more arrows over the premiere, both physically and metaphorically. Again, this feels like a recognition that Hawkeye needs spicing up, and that heat was never going to come from Clint himself, at least not initially. By providing the lion’s share of the show to Kate, we’re able to invest in a much more fascinating character who will hopefully over time push Clint into a more interesting position.
While the duo makes for an energetic feel, there are elements at play that keep things human and weighty. Barton is trying his best to be a dad while suffering the side effects of being a superhero; he’s carrying the traumatic burden of a lost best friend, and a hearing aid makes up for the toll a dozen explosive missions have taken on his eardrums. The sudden appearance of Kate in his life pulls him back into a life of trouble he’s trying to put on the backburner for the Holidays, which amps up the excitement and amusement but, doesn’t lose sight of that humanity. A sequence set during a live-action role play game really delivers on this balance; it’s consistently funny while also demonstrating Barton’s reluctance to being pulled into a conflict when he’d rather be wrapping presents.
Barton’s home life is kept largely as a framing device, as is the norm for the ‘getting home in time for Christmas’ trope that Hawkeye enjoyably revels in. Each episode ticks down a day, which steadily builds the pressure. This format means there’s sadly minimal depth to his relationship with his children and wife Laura (Linda Cardellini) so far, though, with their roles being used as symbolism more than characters.
Where Clint’s family life is underdeveloped, Kate’s bumpy relationship with her mom (Vera Farmiga) and new suspicious step-dad figure (Tony Dalton) takes up much more time than it needs. There are moments when it successfully contributes to Kate’s character -- a scene with her mom in which she discusses the privileges of great wealth is worthwhile -- but so far this storyline feels like it’s stealing time away from the double act at the heart of the show, rather than adding anything valuable. It really dents Hawkeye’s zippy tone, and even makes little stretches of the premier close to boring. By dedicating so much time to this plot thread, it means more exciting areas have been denied the chance to develop, and as such Hawkeye fails to hit its full potential in this opening act.
Alongside the the show’s intriguing mysteries were a number of other highlights. Rogers: The Musical was inevitably one of them, but I’m not sure how I feel about these tributes to Captain America’s legacy becoming A Thing in the MCU. What with the Smithsonian’s notable collection in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and the Statue of Liberty holding Steve Rogers’ shield in No Way Home, it’s giving second-hand cringe every time I imagine how embarrassed Steve would be. I also loved Clint’s weary, slow-motion larping, and the call-back to Scott Lang’s selfie rejection from the kids in Avengers: Endgame who were more hyped to see the Hulk.
Overall, I really enjoyed these first couple of episodes. With the MCU introductions of Kate, Lucky the Pizza Dog (the adorable Jolt), Eleanor, Kazi, and Echo, Marvel Studios has created an appealing, Die Hard-esque world for Clint Barton here; full of jingle bells, bows, and bullets. It suits him down to the ground, though we do get the sense that this might be Renner’s swansong as Clint. I wasn’t really expecting to be sad about that, but here we are.
