This review contains spoilers for episode 5 of Marvel's Hawkeye, 'Ronin’, now available to view on Disney+. To remind yourself of where we left off, check out our review of Hawkeye episode 4.
If there’s an award for the most satisfying text message of the year, then it belongs to the one sent by Yelena to Kate Bishop at the end of Hawkeye episode 5. In just a few words and a photograph, the show is made complete. All the parts click together into a whole, paving the way for a (hopefully) thrilling finale and retroactively granting relevance to looser plot threads. The fact that this message was also the reveal of Vincent D'Onofrio’s Kingpin just makes the moment even sweeter.
Before that final scene, episode 5 was on to a good thing, but it did feel made up of two parts moving at different speeds. A huge chunk of this chapter is dedicated to Yelena’s visit to New York, and while it’s fun to see another Marvel character drop in, it felt as if she were detracting from the bigger picture. Having her directly tied to the mystery Clint and Kate have been trying to break open means all of Hawkeye’s elements are unified, proving that the focus has been arrow-sharp all the long.
Unsurprisingly, Florence Pugh is the standout this time around. Yelena is an incredibly fun presence, just as she was in Black Widow. Her buckets of confidence provide a different, more self-assured brand of wit compared to many of Marvel’s other quippy characters. The conversation between her and Kate over macaroni is full of zingers that prove the MCU’s Buffy-like banter doesn’t have to wear thin if written from a slightly different angle. This is off-set by her more sombre introduction, in which we discover that not only was she blipped out of existence by Thanos, but also had to return to a world where her sister was gone.
Not everything about Yelena’s visit quite works, though. The debate about Clint being a bad guy feels void, as Yelena’s arguments come entirely from a place of believing that he’s responsible for Natasha’s death. As an audience we know this is not true; we saw Clint try to sacrifice himself instead of Natasha during the events of Avengers: Endgame. While this does establish that Yelena is being manipulated, the scene does go on a little longer than needed for that. If her points had been augmented with more information, perhaps about Clint’s time as Ronin, it could have worked to add uncertainty to our understanding of Hawkeye. But while we do know there is a darkness in him, Yelena’s argument does little to explore that any deeper since it’s based on lies.
As for that darkness, we see a restrained version of it arrive as Clint reprises his role of Ronin to finally face off with Maya. Shot at night, the scene evokes the visuals and fight style of Daredevil, with bad guys being knocked out and dragged away by a fast and seemingly invisible predator. Intentional or not, this works as a great lead-in to the Kingpin reveal, and a nod to Maya’s origins within the Daredevil comics.
Clint, of course, allows Maya to go free, because despite that darkness he’s not a monster. Their parting conversation, performed in sign language, does dive headfirst into the tropey waters of “we’re the same, you and I”, but at least briefly touches on the pair’s grief. I’d have liked a fuller exploration of how Clint’s despair following the blip helped give birth to and fuel the Ronin, but even without that depth the idea still hits some of the right notes. His one-way conversation with Natasha at the Avengers’ monument also taps into a similar vein; Clint is clearly a person who struggles to deal with loss, and he’s lost both family and friends in quick succession. These scenes reinforce that Hawkeye is about the unseen emotions underpinning the least emotive Avenger, and this episode is the most effective examination of that in the series’ run.
Our rivals having a moment to share their grief brings the reveal that Kazi is implicated in Maya’s dad’s death, having been the informant who tipped off Ronin about the Tracksuits. Furthermore, he’s working for the Kingpin, which pivots the target of Maya’s rage from Clint to Wilson Fisk. This scene is instantly followed up by the revelation that Kate’s mom is also working with Fisk, creating a one-two punch of characters being betrayed by their closest associates. It’s a heck of a way to pull the story’s many threads together, and unites almost every character by providing them a common enemy: Clint, Kate, Maya, and Yelena have all been played by Fisk. This leaves the story hanging on a high note, regardless of if you have any love for Netflix’s Daredevil or not.
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