Hawkeye Recap: More Cookie, Please — Plus, Is Maya’s Uncle a Crime Kingpin?
This week on Disney+’s Hawkeye, light was shed on Clint and Kate’s captor, ahead of a rousing car chase and the fwip!ing of one of the MCU’s sickest trick arrows ever.
Episode 3 of the six-episode series opened with a flashback to the early childhood of Maya Lopez (aka Echo), the Tracksuit bigwig whose goons now have Clint and Kate mortifyingly strapped to playground rockers. As a tyke born deaf, Maya had to attend regular school because her father William (played by Fargo‘s Zahn McClarnon) couldn’t afford specialized education. William spoke of how Maya would forever have to “jump between two worlds,” that of the deaf and the hearing. As such, Maya grew up learning to pay extra-close attention to things, including her beefy karate classmate’s weak spots. (After said class, William told his daughter that her “uncle” would take her home, as an unseen figure adoringly touched the lass’ cheek….)
Flash-forward some years, and we see Maya as a young adult witnessing Ronin’s storming of the Tracksuits’ hideout — and his eventual inflicting of what would be a fatal wound on her father. Ergo her beef with Ronin, or at least whoever has been running around in his suit. Cut to the present, and Clint is confronted by his captor, who takes notice of his hearing aid but is frankly disappointed to see he lacks the ability to properly communicate via ASL. With Maya’s cohort Kazi serving as interpreter, Clint and Maya have some words, at least until he has been able to wear down the duct tape binding his hands and break free. A foot chase through the loft ensues, with Clint pulling off some nice acrobatics until he can grab a bow ad sail an arrow through Kate’s own duct tape. She then ably joins in the fight, nearly besting Kazi, after which she and Clint appropriate a sedan outside and get motoring.
What follows is a seven-minute car chase which Kate spends much of dangling out the passenger window, grabbing random arrows of Clint’s as he drives (sometimes, backwards). The joy here is seeing (and see Kate see) the effects of each trick arrow, ranging from bubbling goop that gunks up a windshield to impressive explosives to one that manages to strap a dozen or so Christmas trees to the baddies’ car.
The car chase climaxes on a bridge, where Clint parks their car across all lanes and he and Kate prepare to confront the arriving bad guys. He hands Kate a seemingly ordinary arrow to “shoot high,” so that it comes down on the approaching van. Clint then grabs a Pym-branded arrow, and… you get goosebumps just imaging what comes next. And sure enough, Clint aims his arrow to hit Kate’s and “embiggen” it to, like, telephone pole size (if not larger), and it comes crashing down on the van.
Alas, amidst this sprawling clash with the Tracksuits, Clint’s hearing aid got smacked free at one point, and Maya defiantly crushed it with her foot. As such, there was a breakdown in communication between him and Kate in the scenes that followed, where they (sweetly but separately) expressed concern about Pizza Dog needing a walk. After getting the hearing aid fixed at a local shop, Clint filled in Kate some on the Tracksuits’ past, hinting at the “uncle” of Maya’s who is the true (ahem) kingpin of the criminal enterprise. Clint worried about what other souvenir from the Avengers compound Maya’s peeps were clearly after at the auction, but Kate is fixated on stepdad-to-be Jack Duquesne’s apparently illicit doings. At Eleanor’s apartment (the palatial nature of which astonishes Clint), Kate logs onto the Bishop Security database to do some snooping on Kazi (who has ties to something called Sloan Limited), while Clint touts the place… until Ronin’s blade is thrust up against his throat, held by the aforementioned Jack!
What did you think of Hawkeye Episode 3, titled “Echoes”? And is Maya’s “uncle” indeed who we think/know he is?
Only thing I don’t get is why Ronin would stop going after the tracksuits before finishing the true boss. Be it kingpin or a kingpin lackey it just seems like a lazy approach. Then again we don’t have a lot of details about how Clint picked his targets or how far up the food chain he went. What we do know is he targeted Cartels and organized crime families all around the world (New York, Mexico, and I think Japan (when Nat found him, plus more.)
If Fisk was Blipped Ronin wouldn’t have been able to kill him because he would have been dust at the time.
True. I think part of the problem is we don’t know how deep Ronin went into the TM or any organization he attacked. For example, are the current TM people who got blipped and thus spared from Ronin, or did he only target the leadership? We know he killed a lot of other gang/family/cartel members, but they may have been collateral damage while going for the bosses. I just wish we would get more details about the five years. I wouldn’t even mind a two hour Disney plus movie called Ronin filling in those blanks. It really would be a good companion piece to this series.
We are getting an Echo series on Disney+, and she was clearly around during the blip. So you may get what you want! At least in flashbacks.
Wow I hadn’t thought of this. The remaining half of every group Ronin attacked would blip back thirsty for revenge.
Also whereas Hawkeye is usually pretty mission focused, his mental state as Ronin probably wasn’t the best (given that caused him to become Ronin), and we know from Endgame that even Rhodey was shocked by some of what he’d done. Safe to assume that some of what he did was pure rage, rather than surgical.
Plus if Wilso– , er. Maya’s uncle is as formidable as even Clint makes him out to be, he simply may not have been able to get close, and moved on.
If the sacred timeline follows the Netflix timeline and takes the uncle’s life story from there, then it is possible that the uncle would have been working his way into polite society during Maya’s childhood and later, would probably have been in jail or exile when the blip happened. And if the uncle is anything like the guy in the Netflix shows, he would have been running any prison he was put in and could probably walk out at any time.
Of course the first thing we see of Wilson Fisk was… The Hand. And if that laugh wasn’t recognizable as all get out, D’Onofrio posting a picture of himself at Disneyland’s Christmas set-up just before the episode dropped should put all doubt to rest.
I actually had to rewind and rewatch that scene. I’m certain I heard Vincent D’Onofrio chuckle as the hand reached out.
What a fantastic episode! I already love the Echo character so much. Watching Kate and Clint bond was also really sweet. The phone call between Clint/Kate and his son was so sweet and emotional. Definitely my favorite part of the episode. So well done!