This time I’m going to write about the points worth flagging in Episodes 1 and 2 of the MCU series Hawkeye, which landed on Wednesday 24 November, plus the analysis, the Easter eggs, and predictions for where all of this goes next. I’ll be writing about the Dark Avengers, Echo, the ties to Daredevil and Swordsman, and how Clint bows out especially!
In this post I’ll run quickly through the things that stood out on a first viewing and the Easter eggs, and then get into the analysis.
Spoilers ahead
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode reviews from back then — click the image below!
Loki episode reviews — check the image below!
What If episode reviews — check the image below!
Spider-Man predictions are over here!
I’ve started photographing all sorts of things for fun recently. Camera is a ZV-1, shooting RAW and editing in Lightroom.
This time I shot in Chichibu.
The Jack who turns up in this show was, in the comics, a character called Swordsman — sometimes a villain, sometimes a hero.
In the comics he handles every kind of sword going, and apparently he was Clint’s mentor at one point as well. This show looks like it’ll finally explain why Clint was using a sword instead of a bow back when he was Ronin. Maybe the two of them already know each other…
He just loves swords, full stop, which is why he was bidding for the Ronin sword at the auction.
Going by an interview with the director, this is Christmas 2024, which is to say two years after Endgame, apparently (source: https://twitter.com/frc_watashi_ame/status/1464463958035746817)
If that’s true, then even with something enormous happening in Spider-Man: No Way Home and the rest of it, the world doesn’t look like it changes all that much!
Two years on from Endgame, and two years on in shooting terms as well, so the kids being bigger didn’t feel off in the slightest.
Surely they didn’t set it two years later just for that…?
The mother, Eleanor, appears to be the CEO of a company called Bishop Security. Personally I have a slight suspicion that she’s the one behind everything lol
The app Kate was using in this show belongs to her mother’s company. Far too convenient
In the comics, Kazi is a villain called Clown who dresses up as a jester. Hard to imagine him going as far as being the main villain here, but he’s one to watch.
The crew the show refers to as the tracksuit gang are, in the comics, a group called the Tracksuit Mafia (also known as the Tracksuit Draculas). They feel a lot like the Flag Smashers who turned up in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Clint’s wife said “them again,” so it looks like Clint has history with them.
The woman who appears at the end of episode 2 must be Echo. Here’s the comics background.
Overview
The name “Echo” means exactly that, an echo (from the way it throws your own voice back at you). She paints a white handprint on her face, modelled on the bloodstain left when her dying father touched her with a blood-covered hand. Formerly Kingpin’s adopted daughter, and a member of teams including the New Avengers. Her father was a Native American warrior of the Cheyenne, her mother Latin American. From childhood, and despite being deaf, she excelled at things like playing music and dancing.
Abilities
Photographic reflexes: the ability to copy and reproduce perfectly any movement she has seen. She is especially good at things like playing the piano and dancing, and uses that as her public face.
Weakness
Deafness. In place of communicating through sound she uses lip-reading, sign language, methods used by Native Americans and so on.
So as all that lays out, Echo has the same copying ability as Taskmaster from Black Widow. Whether the show gives her the same power or takes a different approach — curious about that one.
In the show I think Echo won’t simply be a villain, and that her heroic side will get plenty of room too. Because a solo Echo series has already been announced!
And in the comics Echo’s adoptive father (who was deceiving her the whole time) is Kingpin, and her ex-boyfriend is Daredevil!
On top of that, as the person above points out, a lot of the Hawkeye promotional images call the Netflix Daredevil to mind, so maybe Kingpin turns up at the end of this show!
All those repeated battles have left Clint living with a hearing aid. In everyday life it doesn’t look like it gets in his way much. But now that this has been set up, there’s probably a turn coming where the hearing aid gets broken partway through the show and he loses his sight on top of it. But that would presumably set up a seriously cool scene where he shoots an arrow home relying on the vibrations in the air!
They mention the old Avengers HQ in this show, and that’ll be the place Endgame was set in. Because Stark Tower was sold off back in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Clint said he’d have this settled by Christmas for his daughter, so the ending landing on Christmas Day, 25 December, is surely a lock. And as Ronin, Clint put a huge number of people in the ground. I’ve been thinking about why he’s so fixated on the Ronin costume, and my take is that it’s so he can atone for those crimes by turning himself in. So the ending is probably the Barton family and the Bishops sitting around a lavish Christmas dinner, and then Clint being taken into custody. Or maybe he loses his sight as well and it turns into a complete retirement from being a hero. Or, since Yelena has proof that Clint is Ronin, maybe that’s what brings his life as a hero to an end?
And maybe Kate Bishop gets approached by Val about the Young Avengers? Then there’s Echo, Ronin’s past, whoever murdered Armand III, Yelena and how all of them tie in — honestly, no predicting any of it lol
It’s only a rumour, but people are saying the Hawkeye series might feature Trickshot, Clint’s older brother, a character who’s sometimes a villain and sometimes a hero.
His real name is Charles Bernard “Barney” Barton, and his run in the comics goes like this.
Hawkeye (Clint Barton)’s biological older brother. He grew up in the same orphanage as his younger brother and learned archery in the same circus. His brother reformed and became a hero, while he, forever being compared to a younger brother with talent to spare, went on committing crimes. He was believed to have gone straight and then died, but Egghead stole the body and put it in a healing chamber, and his life was saved.
https://w.atwiki.jp/nijiame/pages/213.html
From here it’s my own guess, but this show already has so many characters and so many grudges running through it that I think Jack Duquesne’s true identity is Trickshot. If he’s Clint’s former mentor and a man who uses both bow and sword, that would make sense of why Clint was using a sword as Ronin.
As a result of the ending of the crossover “Secret Invasion,” Tony Stark, otherwise known as Iron Man, lost the trust of the government and was dismissed from his position as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. The man who took the post instead was Norman Osborn, who had killed the Skrull queen. The Avengers of that time (the Mighty Avengers, formed only from heroes who had registered under the Superhuman Registration Act) were run on funding from S.H.I.E.L.D., so Osborn, who now held the real power over S.H.I.E.L.D., became their de facto boss. Osborn then renamed S.H.I.E.L.D. as H.A.M.M.E.R. and decided to rebuild the Avengers out of people loyal only to him. The team formed that way is the Dark Avengers. That said, “Dark” is purely the name used in the comic’s title, and Norman Osborn himself calls them the legitimate “Avengers.” The members were gathered to fill roles resembling those of the Avengers up to that point, with code names to match, but a great many of them are former villains.
https://w.atwiki.jp/studentx/pages/435.html
Marvel has a thing called the Dark Avengers, made up entirely of former villains. Its roster includes people already in the MCU, like U.S. Agent from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Taskmaster, and apparently Trickshot, the one I predicted a moment ago, was a member too. So going with that flow, Young Avengers vs Dark Avengers looks like a real possibility. A bit obvious, maybe lol
Yelena, the adoptive sister of Natasha, a.k.a. Black Widow, must be after Barton too, so how that gets woven in is another thing to watch! If this is set two years later, it does raise the question of what she’s been doing for those two years… or maybe the final scene of Black Widow was two years later to begin with?
Why the tracksuit gang (the Tracksuit Mafia) were after the Avengers watch is a mystery as well. Maybe there’s a vault somewhere with alien technology hidden in it?
The obvious answer is that Jack killed Armand Duquesne III, but it might just turn out to be Kate’s mother.
On July 24, 202…