Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld starrer Disney+ mini-series Hawkeye has been a holiday show through and through. The finale came as a perfect Christmas gift wrapped in adventure, laughter, bittersweet memories and some heart-wrenching moments. The fifth episode had left us on a cliffhanger where Kate Bishop (Steinfeld) found out that her mother Elanor Bishop (Vera Farmiga) is involved with the one they are fighting against. The Kingpin makes a dashing entry in the sixth and final episode of the action-drama show.
The season finale episode also reveals that the murderer Kate is searching for is not her stepfather Jack, as she had suspected, but her mother Elanor. The latter also framed the former for a crime he didn’t commit. And with all these revelations, Kate has a difficult choice to make, along with saving her mother from the Kingpin.
However, that is just one of the heroine’s concerns. The Tracksuits are also onto Clint and Kate, and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), who is convinced that her sister Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) died because of Clint won’t stop before killing him. On the other hand, Maya (Alaqua Cox), who started off as the series’ antagonist trying to kill Ronin (Clint’s vigilante alter ego) has changed her motive as she now knows that the people behind the murder of her father is her own.
The episode resolves all these issues in the last episode with a festive flavour added to it. Yelena and Kate’s elevator fight and banter would leave you rooting for them. Whereas Kate and Clint’s fight with the mafia will remind you of Home Alone’s Kevin setting traps for the kidnappers. The trick arrows make a comeback along with a new superhero costume for Clint.
Clint also openly accepts Kate as his partner, making it one of the sweetest moments of the episode. She reminds him that she felt safe watching him fight aliens years ago in New York and he made her realise that you don’t need to fly or shoot lasers out of your hand to be a superhero.
The most emotional scene in the series comes when Clint and Yelena face off against each other one last time. Now, Natasha has been a shadow throughout the entire series. There hasn’t been an episode without her mention, or Clint and Yelena regretting her loss. When he exhausted all ways of making her believe that Natasha sacrificed her life to save others, he whistles their secret tune. Clint then goes on to tell her that Natasha always talked about her and her safety was always on her mind.
Yelena is heartbroken remembering her sister and the audience are too. But, the scene loses its essence as it is hurried. However, the characters get their closure.
Coming to Maya, who makes a rather late entry into the episode, she tries to stop Kazi from killing Hawkeye and convinces him to start afresh with her. She fails, and their fight ends in him dying in her arms. She then sets off to kill her uncle, the Kingpin, but not before he has his share of the fight with the young archer.
Kate’s fight scene with him was filled with hope as the young superhero took all the punches, and yet stood up every time to protect her mother from getting killed. Marvel’s young line of superheroes is something to look forward to.
However, even with all these exciting plot points and menacing villains, the series had a rushed ending to compensate for its slow start. Kingpin’s character might have got us all excited, more so because of the Daredevil crossover, but his storyline in the series was not satisfactory. With a Christmas themed show, Marvel sure took a risk, and that can be considered as one of the major highlights of the show.
This means MCU is taking a leap with its storytelling along with the characterization and the upcoming films of the fourth phase can take us through a new experience.
Hawkeye ends with Kate getting her mother arrested for her deeds and joining Clint and his family for Christmas, making it a series with a quintessential festive ending.
Hawkeye, starring Jeremy Renner, Hailee Steinfeld, Vera Farmiga, Fra Fee, Tony Dalton, Zahn McClarnon and Alaqua Cox is streaming on Disney + Hotstar.
