Hawkeye

 I've just finished Hawkeye, the latest Marvel show on Disney Plus, and with it, the last of the original Avengers has gotten to headline a story.

That being said: there's an open question as to whether Clint Barton or Kate Bishop, his hero-worshipping new partner, is the main character of this series. The name of the series is Hawkeye, which I believe Kate takes as her title when Clint retires, so it works for both of them.

Despite going to the small screen, Marvel's Disney Plus shows have so far been big - either big in concept or broad in scope. I think in particular The Falcon and the Winter Soldier suffered from trying to do too many things (Bucky's story felt like it got short shrift). Hawkeye clearly takes a page out of Shane Black's playbook and sets things around Christmas (which of course coincides with the holiday fast approaching) and tells a story with more personal stakes than global.

The story is mostly a success, due primarily to the fact that Hailee Steinfeld and Jeremy Renner are both great in their roles and develop a fun chemistry. Steinfeld's Bishop, we learn in the opening flashback to 2012 (which was 9 years ago dear god - and actually longer given that the MCU is actually a couple years ahead thanks to Endgame's 5-year-jump,) was a kid during the Battle of New York, and when she looked out her window as destruction rained down, the hero she saw fighting the aliens was a guy with no superpowers except an unparalleled skill with the bow and arrow - and she spent her life from that point with Hawkeye as her role model.

In present day, Clint is taking his kids on a trip to New York before Christmas, and trying to make up for lost time after getting them back following Endgame - lost time that, of course, his family wasn't even conscious of. While Clint always had the enviable privilege to be "the normal Avenger," with an ordinary home life, we also know that he spent those five years during "The Blip" as the murderous vigilante, Ronin.

Ronin's activities become the unfinished business that drags him and Kate together, as she starts to uncover some odd things regarding her mother's new fiancé.

At the same time, Clint is in mourning - his best friend, Natasha, sacrificed herself to let the quest for the Infinity Stones succeed.

If there's one central issue with the show, it's that this latter emotional conflict is way more interesting, and it seems that the writers realized that about halfway through the season. I'll put more stuff after the spoiler cut talking about that.

While there are some beats that fall flat, and weird red herrings that seem way more important than they turn out to be, what the show excels with is charm - Steinfeld walks into the MCU like she was made for it, and the friendship that develops between her and the man she's idolized since she was a child is very fun. She also has amazing chemistry with a character whose appearance is a bit of a spoiler, so... see below.

Despite the fact that I'm pretty sure a bunch of gangster minions get killed - the MCU has never been one in which the superheroes don't kill - the tone is, for the most part, pretty light. The gang that the two of them spend most of the season fighting are called the Tracksuit Mafia, who wear their eponymous leisurewear as a kind of uniform, and mostly seem scuzzy but too small a threat to pose to an Avenger, or even that Avenger's un-asked-for protégé). The leader of the Tracksuits is one of two characters within it that we are asked to take seriously, and it's her rather devastating story that actually makes the morality of the show feel a bit confused.

Ok, let's take it into spoiler territory.

Hawkeye does resolve the post-credits tease from Black Widow - Yelena shows up in New York to kill Clint, both because she was hired to do so and also because she thinks Clint was responsible for Natasha's death. Florence Pugh has a ton of fun as someone who's very casual about coming to the city to kill someone she thinks responsible for her sister's death, and though she arrives in Kate's apartment as a bone-chilling threat, the two actually wind up developing something of a friendly rapport. Pugh and Steinfeld play off each other brilliantly in just a couple of shared scenes, and if this portends their induction into some kind of Young Avengers successor, it's a good start. (I'll also note that their bantering fight in the final episode seems almost tailor-made to get the online fan-shippers to start headcanoning a new couple).

I actually feel like there's some ambiguity over whether Yelena ever truly intends to kill Clint - their final confrontation on the ice rink at 30 Rock has them ultimately bond over their shared grief over Natasha.

The other, more momentous (though perhaps disappointing) surprise casting is Vincent D'Onofrio, reprising his role as Wilson "Kingpin" Fisk. Given that Clint spend five years slaughtering his way through the criminal underworld, and assuming Fisk was one of the 50% of people who did not get snapped by Thanos, it's no shock that Clint got on Fisk's radar. Unfortunately, Kingpin's appearance so late in the season leaves him little time to have much of an impact - it feels more like a cameo, when he's technically the primary antagonist.

Marvel is clearly starting to get more comfortable letting "noncanonical" elements bleed into the MCU proper - the trailers make it clear that the new Spider-Man movie (which I haven't seen yet - especially with Omicron showing up I'm avoiding movie theaters, so I haven't even seen Eternals yet) has brought in characters literally from the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield Spider-Man series, so acknowledging the existence of the Netflix Marvel shows is hardly that big a stretch.

But it does put us in an odd position - Kingpin seemingly dies (though it's just off-screen, which leaves them open,) which makes it a weirdly quick end to a character that plagued Matt Murdock throughout Daredevil, but also, if you hadn't watched Daredevil, you might be going "who the hell is this guy, and why is he so absurdly tough?"

In other words, this feels closer to, though not quite as frustrating, as casting Evan Peters in Wandavision. It's especially funny given that now, Marvel is bringing in extracanonical characters - if Alfred Molina's Doc Ock can show up in a Spider-Man movie staring Tom Holland, then why shouldn't Evan Peters' Quicksilver be able to co-exist with Elizabeth Olson's Scarlet Witch?

D'Onofrio's appearance in this, thus, feels a little more like cute stunt casting - I can't really tell if this is the same Kingpin from the Daredevil series or if it's just the MCU's version of him that happens to be played by the same actor. D'Onofrio doesn't do anything to really change up the performance - he has that same odd "I'm a very empathetic and respectful guy, though at any moment I'm going to fly into a murderous rage" vibe.

This show also feels like it could be Clint's retirement, though the show never really explicitly says that - he's got a successor in Kate, and the final line implies that he is passing the title of Hawkeye off to her, but I guess the real answer to that question is whether Jeremy Renner wants to keep playing the role and if Disney wants to keep him around.