Haliee Steinfeld really cleaned up television last week! Aside from Marvel’s latest, Hawkeye, airing its season finale, her Apple+ series, Dickinson also aired its series finale. What fine shows these were, indeed!
In all honesty, Hawkeye is probably my least favorite of the Avengers. Am I supremely bummed that he lived while Natasha died? Absolutely! I think that you will find someone else in this series felt the exact same way, but more on that later. First, we are introduced to Kate as she destroys a clock tower with one of her arrows. That’s right, back in the day (2012’s first Avengers movie, more specifically), Kate lost her father but also got to see Clint in action and was thusly inspired. Now, she’s just sort of causing some trouble with her honed talents.
She’s immediately suspicious of her mother’s new fiancé, Jack, who she knew nothing about before the night of some party/black market auction. Sketch! At this black market auction Jack purchases a sword, Jack’s uncle winds up dead, and a gang wearing tracksuits breaks up the party stealing some Avengers merch. Kate sees this as the perfect opportunity to put her skills to use, so she finds Hawkeye’s old Ronin suit and gets to work. Unfortunately, this causes more chaos than resolutions, and all of that action is when Clint is alerted to what’s going on.
He’s shocked to see his suit in action, but it doesn’t take him long to stumble upon Kate and her newly rescued, one-eyed dog, Lucky. The two of them realize there is a threat and Clint reluctantly lets Kate join in on the mission. All Clint really wants is to get home to his family in time for Christmas, but the challenges ahead of them keep escalating. My favorite non-threatening activity they get sucked into is a round of LARPing, which seriously confuses Clint and it’s absolutely hysterical! Kate is totally digging it though, and it ends up gaining them some useful allies in the end.
While the tracksuit gang is problematic, it’s their boss, Kingpin, who’s the real leader, and (SPOILER!) it turns out Kate’s mom has been the one responsible for a lot of the bad stuff that she’s come across over the course of six episodes, including the murder of Jack’s uncle. After a lengthy battle with both a sea of tracksuit gang members and the Kingpin himself, Kate does the hard and right thing by having her mother arrested. Sure, she was trying to right the debts of Kate’s father, but I kind of don’t think that extends to murder. I also don’t think this is the last we’ll be seeing of Kingpin. Hopefully not Yelena either! She’s the other “bad guy” this season, as she’s looking to kill Clint for letting her sister die. Thankfully, Clint is able to get out the whole story before that happens.
Yes, if you’re wondering, Clint does make it home in time for Christmas with Kate and Lucky in tow, and it seems like maybe Clint is ready to hand over the torch so he can spend some quality time with his family. Who knows? I’m not privy to the secrets Marvel keeps. Anyways, I think I might have liked this just as much as WandaVision because it felt like a show and not just an extra long and chunked movie like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Haliee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop was extremely likeable and relatable, and I hope we see her with Clint a little bit more in the future, but also with Yelena. Their chemistry was electric and hilarious! Well done again, Disney.