Hawkeye (2021) TV Series Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. There's only three days until Christmas, two days until Christmas Eve, and I've got three more posts to go up for 2021. The first one is this review, where we're going to be talking about Hawkeye as a whole as well as the finale, episode 6, "So This Is Christmas?". I'll leave the last two as a surprise. The next one will be coming tomorrow, so keep your eye out for that. Right now though, let's get into it and talk about Hawkeye. Oh and there will be some spoilers for the finale because alot of what happened in this episode are things that many people on YouTube and on Twitter predicted would happen, especially regarding Eleanor and Kingpin. So just be aware of that if you haven't seen the finale yet. 

The thing about any of these Marvel Disney+ is that, unlike many of you, I wait to watch them, if I watch them, until the next morning rather than staying up until 2 in the morning to watch the new episode as soon as they drop. Which means I run the risk of spoilers because I turn on my computer and go on Twitter and YouTube before I have breakfast. For Hawkeye though nobody in my feed tweets spoilers and I actively avoid the reviews on YouTube until I've watched the episode so that my opinion isn't influenced by others. Especially when a show does something stupid and it's something stupid that I might like. While some people haven't enjoyed this show, I've enjoyed it all the way through. I do have issues with it, but I think they're reasonable issues with it  and I did an entire blog post on them last week after episode 5 dropped, so go check that out if you want to know more.

The first thing I want to talk about is Kingpin. I've never watched Daredevil. I've never been interested in any of the Marvel Netflix shows. However, despite this Kingpin being the same character from Daredevil, and played by the same actor, Vincent D'Onofrio, you don't need to have watched his previous series to know what Kingpin is about in this series. And despite him being a full character in this episode, he has been a presence looming over this entire series. I don't know if this happened at the end of Daredevil season 3, but I was surprised to see him in the classic comic book Kingpin white suit. Anytime I've seen pictures of D'Onofrio as Kingpin he's been in black suits only. Same when I saw the Michael Clarke Duncan version in the 2003 Daredevil movie. But here he's in the suit that I remember from seeing the character in Spider-Man: The Animated Series (1994-1998) when I was a kid. Which I thought was pretty cool.

Honestly, I was afraid that, despite his looming presence over the entire series, Kingpin was going to be shoehorned in as part of Maya's storyline and that's it. But he was pretty well integrated into Kate's storyline. I was a little bit disappointed that he and Clint didn't share a scene together given the last couple of episodes showed that Clint has some history with Wilson Fisk from Clint's time as Ronin (most likely).

Speaking of Maya, while I've had my problems with her storyline this entire show, it's been a good storyline. However, I feel like they wrapped it up a little too neatly considering she's getting her own series in the future. I mean it actually felt like there was no more room for more stories to be told with Echo. Which works since the show is still in very early development and Marvel Studios hasn't revealed a release date for the series yet. So we probably won't see anything of it until 2023 or 2024, after Phase Four is over or at the very tail end of Phase Four, depending on how long Marvel is planning Phase Four to be. Either way, it's going to be quite a while before we see Maya again.

Kate and Clint were the best part of this entire series. So was Yelena, which was another character that I was afraid would be shoehorned into the finale, which she wasn't. But Kate and Clint were great. Their fighting style was so in sync and perfect together. Especially with their trick arrows. I think I said this when I reviewed the first two episodes of the show almost a month ago, but Hawkeye is what Arrow should've been when it started back in 2012. Not in terms of the number of episodes that show has compared to this one, but in terms of how Oliver Queen/Green Arrow was portrayed in the show versus how Clint and Kate were portrayed here. Particularly since the character of Hawkeye had to have been influenced by Green Arrow since Green Arrow was the only other archer character in comics up to that point (there are plenty of others now of course). I suspect the next time I do a watch through of Arrow I'm going to be spending the entire time pointing out everything that Hawkeye did better as a series compared to Arrow.

So I do have some complaints about this show. The big one is how pointless Jack Duqesne was in this series. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the character, but he's supposed to be a criminal mastermind, with ties to Clint, since in the comics, he was Clint's mentor. Here he's just an arrogant rich person who happens to have some skills with a sword. He was literally just there to be the fall guy for everything Eleanor was doing for Kingpin. 

Speaking of which, Eleanor was a predictable character. Once we found out at the end of last week's episode that Eleanor was working for Fisk, that just became the most predictable ending for that character. She wasn't a bad character, just predictable.

My final weird nitpick about this show's finale is that it intentionally left both Kate and Clint's story open ended but wrapped up Maya's a little too nicely. Which begs the question, where will Kate and Clint show up again? They haven't announced any further involvement of Jeremy Renner in the MCU, and who knows when Hailee Steinfeld will show up again, because I want to see Kate Bishop again. Maybe in a spin-off of her own with Florence Pugh as Yelena. Because I would've loved to have seen more of them together on screen, besides their epic fight in the finale. 

Overall Hawkeye was a great show to end off 2021 with. Especially with Spider-Man: No Way Home coming out last week ending off Marvel's movie slate for the year. Despite my complaints about the show, I loved it. Besides The Falcon and the Winter Soldier earlier this year, Hawkeye was the only Marvel Disney+ show I was actually excited about. However, it's also my last foray into the MCU. At least for a while. I don't have any interest in Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, Secret Invasion, Ironheart, Armor Wars or whatever that Wakanda set series is supposed to be. I might come back for Echo whenever that drops, and I'm definitely interested in Spider-Man: Freshman Year but I have no interest in the MCU going forward. For TV shows anyway. I'm interested in seeing what the MCU is going to do with the X-Men and the Fantastic Four in the future. But otherwise I just don't care anymore. Come the New Year I'm going to write about why I don't have interest in the MCU going forward beyond Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four. 

That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow with a Christmasy comic book review, though you'll have to come back tomorrow to find out what comic I'll be reviewing. Then my final post for 2021 will be a big Christmas/birthday/general geeky haul post to show off all the cool movies and books and comics that I've gotten since November. I'll probably do that on Monday just because I don't know what day two of my friends are dropping off my Christmas presents from them yet. Otherwise I'd be doing it on Boxing Day or even Christmas Day after all of the very subdued craziness of my family's Christmas traditions is over and done with. So until then have a great afternoon and I will talk to you all later. Take care.