Hawkeye Review: Is Marvel’s Breezy Christmas Series Too Light-Weight?

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Hawkeye/ Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) has always been the quietest of the Avengers, along with his best friend Black Widow/ Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), who sacrificed herself in Avengers: Endgame so Clint could live. While Natasha’s family was made up of the Avengers themselves, Clint had a family of his own: wife Laura (Linda Cardellini) and three kids; Lila, Cooper, and Nathaniel (Ava Russo, Ben Sakamoto, and Cade Woodward, respectively). But after he lost all of them in the Snap — that’s what Thanos did in Avengers: Infinity War — for five years he took “his pain and rage and sadness out on every bad guy on the planet,” as Renner said in a production diary for the series. It’s barely addressed in Endgame, as the three-hour film had a lot on its mind, but this is now fertile ground for Hawkeye’s own TV series.

After all, most superheroes including Hawkeye operate with self-imposed rules. Not everyone is as extreme as Batman about it, but they generally try to prevent loss of life unless it’s the only route left to save themselves or someone else. But when Clint transformed into the sword-wielding death-dealing Ronin for five years, he went far beyond that. “Clint went full-on vigilante. Justified or not, it’s a giant weight on him because he knew he was going outside the moral code of what he is,” Renner added.

However, there isn’t much of Hawkeye confronting the ugly legacy of Ronin in the first two episodes of Hawkeye. It’s a lot more light-hearted, fitting its holiday (Christmas-y) spirit. The six-episode Marvel series — created by Jonathan Igla (Mad Men, Bridgerton) — begins Wednesday, November 24 on Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar. Disney provided critics access to one-third of the series, or what amounts to the first act of a movie, as with the Tom Hiddleston-led Loki, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier with Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan. This review cannot speak to the remaining four episodes, and how they handle the Ronin trauma side of things.

But Hawkeye isn’t Hawkeye at all in the first two episodes — though I imagine that will change sooner or later, given what we have seen in Hawkeye trailers and photos. He’s not an Avenger anymore, if “Avengers” are still a thing these days. After all, not only is Nat gone, but so are Tony Stark/ Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers/ Captain America (Chris Evans). That’s half the OG gang. He’s like a detective at times, who’s really just exhausted and all he wants is to spend time with his family. So when a rich white girl exhumes the corpse of his Ronin past, Hawkeye just wants to put an end to it as soon as possible, so he can get back to the one thing he truly cares about: family. (I’m saying “family” a lot, I know.)


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