The Best Gifts Come With A Bow

Sometimes, it’s that one extra unexpected present that you wouldn’t ordinarily have been that bothered about that makes all the difference. No matter how much you may have dropped hints, pleaded and ultimately begged for the ‘Instant Muscles’ Incredible Hulk, the Corgi Spider-Copter or that Captain America board game where you had to help The Falcon ‘land’, there was always something hidden away at the very base of your pillowcase that gave you that extra little unanticipated thrill first thing in the morning on Christmas Day. Even if it was a giant Spider-Man poster that you had already spotted at the local newsagents’ and which when unrolled turned out ironically to have a motionless fly trapped inside it.

Poor old Hawkeye, it has to be said, never was exactly the most universally beloved of the big-screen Avengers, even when he actually literally saved the universe. From his very first appearance tracking the Asgardian interloper in Thor, there was something about rough tough ruthless Clint Barton that didn’t quite fit. The least spectacularly ability-displaying of the original lineup, whose trick shots and close-quarters combat skills were frequently left vainly jostling for attention alongside staggering displays of shield-throwing, lightning-channelling, airborne hi-tech defensive and offensive manoeuvres, gymnastic fighting moves and generally just being a big green monster smashing everything up, he also had a far less complicated character and even less narrative time to explore what there actually was to complicate about it. To make matters worse, whenever this did happen it was generally courtesy of interactions with his distractingly normal family, who had an unfortunate habit of stalling the action and momentum entirely the instant that they appeared on screen; the fact that all of his children somehow actually looked older than him did not exactly help either. While plans for a Black Widow solo movie were temporarily derailed for entirely different reasons – and you can find out much more about what they reportedly were here – the prospect of a headlining venture for Hawkeye was conspicuously not even mentioned at all. No matter how brilliantly Jeremy Renner played him, and no matter how crucial he may have been to numerous major storylines, at least as far as the wider public were concerned Hawkeye seemed destined to just be just there.

This was why it was something of a surprise when, at Marvel’s in retrospect possibly slightly hubristic panel at the D23 Expo late in 2019, the next slate of releases – which would of course run into problems of their own for reasons that nobody could ever have realistically anticipated – included a six-part television outing for Hawkeye. Even there, having finally secured his own moment in the title, he was up against much anticipated return big-screen outings for Doctor Strange, Spider-Man and Thor, intriguing-sounding small-screen outings for Scarlet Witch, Loki, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and the alternate reality off-kilterness of What If…?, the equally intriguing prospect of ‘new’ characters in the form of Shang-Chi and Eternals and, as if to add insult to injury, the Black Widow movie at long long last. Nobody really expected that much of it, many of them probably wondered what it was even doing there to begin with, and Hawkeye was overall about as hotly anticipated as, well, a six part series featuring Hawkeye. Tellingly, the original guest I had in mind to chat to about in on It’s Good, Except It Sucks politely declined as they just didn’t really think they could be bothered with it.

Then, right in the middle of a lot of very unexpected things happening in an even more unexpected order, something even more unexpected still happened. Whilst everyone was locked into furious arguments about whether Eternals was any good or not and trying to work out what was going on with those odd empty-ish sort-of spaces on the poster for Spider-Man: No Way Home, Marvel released a trailer for Hawkeye and it actually looked… really good? There were jokes, there was action, there were stunts with futuristic new Christmas lights backed by sleigh-swinging old-fashioned Christmas music, and everything suddenly took on the fervour of an advent spent hoping for that Incredible Hulk Smash-Up Action Game. What was more, it was released an episode a week during advent, adding to the joyfully low-key sense of occasion, excitement and fun, and revealing itself to be a genuinely action-packed and Christmassy edge-of-the-seat escapade that refused to ever take itself too seriously at any point in proceedings. Unfortunately it ended up finding itself a little lost in the Christmas rush – partly due to the overall lack of enthusiasm for Hawkeye, partly due to a growing backlash against ‘theme park’ superhero movies which were supposedly stifling ‘real’ cinema, and partly due to the sheer exhaustingness of lockdown and its aftermath – but those who did make the effort were rewarded with a show that was vastly more enjoyable than it had any right or reason to be, and if nothing else was at least certainly a lot more fun than Sorry We Missed You and The Irishman. One of those viewers who really enjoyed it was regular It’s Good, Except It Sucks guest Vikki Gregorich, and you can find our chat about Hawkeye here. So if you’re tempted to watch Hawkeye for the first time after reading all of this, or even if you’re revisiting it as a festive rewatch like some culturally scorned counterpart to The Box Of Delights, then get that plunger-tipped arrow lined up at your nearest ’72 Challenger and let’s go…

1. Never Meet Your Heroes (24th November 2021)

Clint Barton – or Hawkeye – made his first appearance in issue 57 of Tales Of Suspense in September 1964. Initially depicted as a villain and indeed a founding member of the Circus Of Crime, Clint would later find himself repositioned as an antihero and then a plain straight-up hero, meeting The Avengers after rescuing Edwin Jarvis from a street robbery and consequently becoming a longstanding member of the team. Forming a particularly close and effective partnership with Natasha Romanoff, whilst remaining very much a lower profile character he has also nonetheless proved pivotal to many major storylines. Hawkeye was introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent tailing the titular God of Thunder in Thor, before teaming up with Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, Iron Man and The Hulk to repel Loki’s attempted invasion of Earth in Avengers Assemble. By the time of Avengers: Age Of Ultron they seemed to be struggling to find much for him to do outside of spending extended downtime with his family and being mocked for being very very slightly older than Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, although both of these plot-dragging motifs would stand him in slightly better stead in the larger narrative. After siding with Captain America and indeed Scarlet Witch against the Sokovia Accords in Captain America: Civil War, and getting some superbly acidic exchanges with Spider-Man and Black Panther in the process, Clint took a plea bargain that would allow him to stay with his family whilst technically under house arrest. This resulted in him having to sit out the events of Avengers: Infinity War, but in Avengers: Endgame, we discover that the disappearance of his entire family in Thanos’ snap has driven him to hunt down and assassinate any and every criminal who survived in the guise of mysterious hooded nemesis Ronin. After being tracked down by the remaining Avengers, he resumes his previous mantle and is sufficiently driven by the overwhelming need to restore his family that he fully supports Scott Lang’s ridiculous ‘time heist’ plot from the outset, travelling with Natasha to retrieve the Soul Stone from the Red Skull but finding that while more or less the entire rest of the universe has reason to celebrate, his fortunes are somewhat more complicated. You can find chats with Vikki Gregorich about Thor here, Mark Griffiths about Avengers Assemble here, Joanne Sheppard about Avengers Assemble here, Garreth Hirons about Avengers: Age Of Ultron here, Mitch Benn about Captain America: Civil War here, Ben Baker about Avengers: Endgame here and Joanne Sheppard about Avengers: Endgame here.

It’s December 19th in New York City. Clint Barton is wrestling with his guilt over Natasha Romanoff’s self-sacrifice to defeat Thanos, the emotional and practical repercussions of his activities as the Ronin, and the impossibility of entertaining his Holiday Season-crazy family whilst dealing with all of the above. Champion archer Kate Bishop is wrestling with her uncomfortability at the expectations forced upon her as a Manhattan socialite, her mother’s intention to marry highly suspicious and dubiously wealthy master swordsman Jack Duquesne, and the financial ramifications of her campus college bell-ringing prank gone clock tower-demolishingly wrong. A one-eyed stray dog is wrestling with its present lack of pizza. Their paths will all unexpectedly collide thanks to a secret underground black market auction of artefacts recovered from the rubble at the Avengers Compound, which is suddenly interrupted by some jarringly casually dressed armed henchmen determined to get their hands and indeed wrists on a wristwatch…

Even aside from the full-tilt snow-dusted skating outside Rockefeller Centre razzle dazzle of Christmas in New York, what is striking about Hawkeye from the outset is just how much character they have finally afforded to Clint Barton, and in a realistically downbeat sense at that. We join him in the process of adjusting to his explosion-related hearing loss, still affected by the enormity of recent events and his personal failure in the face of overwhelming success, and feeling alienated and rejected and unwanted by the public and even by his former fellow Avengers. He is, at long last, treated as an ordinary man with extraordinary talents – not abilities – who found himself caught up in events that were beyond his control but which often only he had the nerve to confront head on. Nowhere does this find sharper relief than in the contrast between a restaurant owner insisting on paying for his family’s meal and the graffiti in the bathroom declaring ‘THANOS WAS RIGHT’; the fact that some people actually did well out of The Snap and violently resented having to go back to their second class status was addressed effectively in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier which you can hear more about here, and the equally difficult fact that some are just credulous conspiracy theory-toting hopeless cases would be further addressed in Spider-Man: No Way Home which again you can find more about here. As if to add insult to injury, his primary reason for being in New York is to attend the premiere of Rogers: The Musical, an actually hilariously done all-singing all-dancing retelling of the Captain America story featuring a recreation of the events of Avengers Assemble with a fictionalised version of himself lining up alongside characters who hadn’t even been involved and presented in a manner that suggests he’s been included by sufferance rather than any determination to express gratitude for his efforts. His quiet despair on seeing the actor playing Natasha is very effectively rendered, and is poignantly tempered by a small girl in the audience waving to him and his own daughter’s recognition of his emotional plight. Indeed, the most welcome surprise in Hawkeye is that his family, relegated to short appearances, actually prove to be well used and more than tolerable this time around. By way of contrast, Hailee Steinfeld gives Kate a highly relatable sense of knowing she is considerably more intelligent and capable than the society folk she is supposed to regard as her ‘betters’, yet she is roundly treated as a silly and unrealistic girl who needs to hurry on up and get married. Her resourceful subterfugal infiltration of the auction is as hilarious as it is nail-biting and although the two of them do not meet until the closing moments, they are both thrown straight into the central mystery and there is surprisingly little in the way of scene-setting beyond what is strictly necessary. Everything else is explained and clarified courtesy of reactions and character moments and the dynamic between the two is set up brilliantly by Kate, unaware of Clint’s plan to silently acquire and destroy the Ronin suit, just casually slipping it on to facilitate her escape – which despite its more serious implications, even he cannot deny she achieved extremely effectively. Although they still haven’t managed to recover that wristwatch. Or to get that dog any pizza…

2. Hide And Seek (24th November 2021)

Introduced in issue 1 of Young Avengers in 2005, Kate Bishop had taken up martial arts and sword fighting to bolster her skills as an archer following an incident in Central Park that she has always been too traumatised to revisit, ‘borrowing’ the name Hawkeye in tribute to one of her inspirations. Teaming up with the likes of Ironheart, Ms. Marvel, Wiccan, Patriot, Stature, America Chavez and Kid Loki – all of whom, it is worth noting, have recently been introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Kate quickly became a much loved character who has enjoyed several adventures alongside her more established namesake. Hawkeye marked Kate’s first appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, having set out on her chosen path after witnessing Clint fighting off The Chitauri at close quarters during the events of Avengers Assemble, followed by a discussion with Kamala Khan about the possibility of forming a team at the conclusion of The Marvels. You cannot help but suspect that they might be building up to something here. You can find chats with Vikki Gregorich about Hawkeye here, Una McCormack about The Marvels here and Anna Cale about The Marvels here.

While assuring his family that he’ll be home in time for Christmas, Clint stays behind determined to find the wristwatch, but doesn’t seem keen to elaborate on why it’s so important that he does. Kate has problems of her own as the Tracksuit Mafia, displaying the intelligence and reasoning they are so renowned for, have decided that because she wore the suit once she was very clearly the Ronin all along, and are determined to exact retribution. Lucky the dog has it worse than the pair of them on account of having had some pizza and then not had it. Deducing that their predicaments are somehow connected, Kate and Clint form an uneasy alliance – with the help of some cosplaying Hawkeye fans – but their inability to work together winds up leading them to exactly where they did not want to be…

Where the first episode of Hawkeye had contrasted the weary and self-doubt wracked Clint with Kate’s youthful arrogance and blithe disregard for consequence, here – and very effectively – we see her youth and inexperience trip her up, almost like delayed retribution for Wanda and Pietro sneering at the middle-aged archer way back in Avengers: Age Of Ultron. Not only do her suspicions of Jack lead the pair of them into a ‘friendly’ fencing match where he comprehensively both bests and outwits her, Kate’s attempts to ‘help’ Clint when he has allowed himself to be captured by the Tracksuit Mafia with the intention of working out what they are up to and then putting paid to them just result in both of them being properly captured, with a threat that the big boss is on the way for ‘a word’. Similarly, Clint’s despondency and feelings of inadequacy in the opening instalment are tempered by his discovery that there are many out there who literally hero worship him and are only too ready to put the skills that they have learned from his example at his disposal. The scenes in which he is prevailed upon to participate grumpily in their live-action role-playing are as witty as they are impressively staged, with his gradual realisation that they are not just silly people running around in silly costumes after all but potential skilled combatants with a very strong sense of right and wrong, but we will be seeing much more of them down the line. For now, events are left to concentrate on the inadvertently effective duo and their many and varied disagreements – taking in an hilariously awkward and entertainingly metatextual debate over whether a street entertainer is dressed as Hawkeye or Katniss Everdeen – and indeed their encounters with the Tracksuit Mafia, a winning combination of willing brutality that would have left the villains in Daredevil suggesting that they steady on a bit and a collective intellect resolutely untroubled by the possibilities of logic and reason. So far, essentially, everything is as amusing as it is exciting and meaningful – but at the end of the episode, we’re left with the distinct sense matters may take a darker turn, thanks to the appearance of a character that possibly even comics fans were not expecting to see…

3. Echoes (1st December 2021)

Nicknamed ‘Echo’ on account of her ability to observe and replicate fighting moves, Maya Lopez first appeared in the first instalment of Daredevil: Parts Of A Hole in December 1999. Deaf since birth, she was taken in and cared for by crime boss Wilson Fisk, who felt a sense of responsibility towards her after having to dispose of her father and his key enforcer William ‘Crazy Horse’ Lopez (or Lincoln, it seems to vary). Despite initially joining Fisk’s organisation herself, and later being courted by shadowy criminal network The Hand, Maya eventually gravitates towards the side of law and order – not least informed by an on-off relationship with Matt Murdock – albeit with a tempestuous streak and a complicated ongoing personal association with Fisk. A longstanding reserve member of The Avengers, her tendency towards soul-searching also briefly saw her assume the mantle of the Ronin. Making her debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Hawkeye, Maya lost her athletic mimicry on account of the production team’s suspicion that this would prove narratively limiting, but gained – if that’s an appropriate form of reference – Alaqua Cox’s prosthetic leg, which without ever being directly referenced afforded an additional depth and density to what was, staggeringly, her first acting credit. It was almost certainly her ability to make a violent and distrustful character powerfully sympathetic that led to Echo – a character who even some comics fans were not previously aware of – being quickly elevated to her own headlining series. You can find chats with Vikki Gregorich about Hawkeye here and Echo here.

With their plan to allow the Tracksuit Mafia to capture them so that they can fool them into revealing who is after the watch and why having gone slightly and inconveniently awry, Clint and Kate find themselves actually captured by the Tracksuit Mafia – and their evidently feared leader Maya Lopez is on her way. As Maya has been led to believe that her father was assassinated by the Ronin, and her henchmen are too dense – and indeed too fixated on the logistics of surprising their partners with concert tickets – to work out which one of the two avenging archers is the actual man or woman in the hood, Maya is not in the mood to waste time that could be more efficiently used for revenge and adopts the more straightforward approach of assuming she has a score to settle with both of them. Making their escape with a combination of sarcastic comments and good old fashioned bows and arrows, Clint and Kate manage to outrun their ineffective pursuers but Clint’s hearing aid is smashed in the process, resulting in Lucky’s pleas for pizza falling on literal deaf ears. Resolving to find out who is so keen to get their hands on the watch through via less a physically precarious route, they act on their suspicions about Kate’s well-connected mother’s business practices by accessing her secure files – only to find that someone else is already on to them…

In a blunt narrative and structural sense, episode three of Hawkeye is essentially just a series of action setpieces – a prolonged escape plot and fight scene, a lengthy car chase, and breaking and entering in a highly secured hi-tech facility. In tandem with this, the actual storyline moves forward very little, and it would not be unreasonable to assume on that basis that this, regardless of how likeable and enjoyable it may well be, is a more or less filler episode. That assumption, however, does not fit with what is slotted into and around those it has to be said astonishingly well realised and indeed acted setpieces. The escape is punctuated with wit that goes way beyond snappy one-liners, notably Kate’s unwanted but genuine and helpful contributions from a woman’s perspective on the argument about gifting Imagine Dragons tickets, which ends up being highly appreciated by the gang members who are it suddenly seems possibly reluctantly keeping her and Clint handcuffed to amusement arcade rides. From Clint’s opening refusal to use a ’72 Dodge Challenger as a getaway car, the ensuing chase is continually enlivened by staggering stunts and moments of levity, but most importantly by the deployment at long long last of actual proper comics-accurate trick arrows. Previously restricted to endless variations on grappling hooks with occasional allowances for one that lights up or something if it helps move a movie’s plot along marginally, Clint – and, to his initial unease, Kate – get to let fly with projectiles loaded with knockout gas, expanding purple goo, actual Pym Particles and of course a rubber plunger, with the Tracksuit Mafia’s van-skidding disbelieving reactions and stray blasts of Christmas music playing from passing vehicles and passed-by shops lending an extra sense of dizzying-paced thrills and peril. Their unanticipatedly thwarted attempt at subterfuge is underscored by a touching moment in which Clint is unable to hear his son on the phone, with Kate ‘translating’ by scribbling down what he is saying; it has to be said that by this point, that widely-exasperating family are seeming unexpectedly likeable and are being consistently used to considerable effect, suggesting that maybe little thought had gone in to their inclusion in the movies beyond the straightforward notion of including them. The real highlight however is the exploration of Maya’s backstory – quite a daring movie for a character literally only seen in a single cliffhanger before we meet her again as a young child – which does an enormous amount to contrast her vicious ruthlessness with a lifetime of having to fight for everything in a world that literally cannot and will not listen to her. Her and Clint, it is made abundantly clear, have so much and yet so little in common. What Maya does not have to contend with, however, are Kate’s constant uninvited attempts to improve Clint’s ‘branding’, which this time around involves a sketch for a new costume design based on Hawkeye’s impractical original comics outfit – a stunt also pulled off with similarly amusing and afficionado-satisfying elan in Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Cloak And Dagger, WandaVision and many others – and there is little doubt that we will be returning to that cumbersome purple ensemble. For the moment, however, a spectacularly risible character is suddenly starting to look a little more menacing…

4. Partners, Am I Right? (8th December 2021)

Originally teased as an upcoming new character in a collection of concept art for the Marvel Knights anthology series, Yelena Belova made her first appearance in January 1999 in the fifth issue of a celebrated run of Inhumans. Another graduate of the ‘Red Room’ gone rogue, she would soon be drawn into the first of numerous literally and figuratively explosive run-ins with Natasha Romanoff, with their abrasive rivalry provoking her to adopt the mantle ‘White Widow’. Other labels, however, proved less enticing; famously describing herself as ‘not… anything’ when quizzed about her sexuality, Yelena became arguably the first mainstream comics character to be fully identified as asexual, a trait that has laudably remained rigorously in place. Yelena made her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Black Widow, after breaking her conditioning and reuniting with her sister Natasha, father Alexei ‘Red Guardian’ Shostakov and mother Melina ‘Iron Maiden’ Vostokoff in a quest to take down the apparently still covertly extant Black Widow programme in a somewhat after the event storyline set between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. There’s a whole long story behind that, and some aspects of it might well leave you wanting to punch walls in frustration. Whatever actually went on with the end credits of Black Widow doubtless has an equally long story behind it, but it did conclude with a post-credits scene in which Yelena was approached by Valentina Allegra De Fontaine with an assignment to take out a target-favouring target… and that’s pretty much where we come in here. You can find chats about Black Widow with David Smith here and Miriam Kent here and Thunderbolts* with David Smith here.

Jack may be one step ahead of Clint and Kate’s plan to covertly discover who is bankrolling the Tracksuit Mafia, but whoever that might be is also one step ahead of him, and he is suddenly and conveniently whisked away by the police under suspicion of money laundering. Already unconvinced that he could have had the wherewithal, the motive or even the ability to just plain keep quiet about it, their suspicions are only further aroused by Kate’s mother making a corresponding request for them to just drop the investigation and not pursue it any further due to unspecific reasons. Tracking the stolen watch down to a nearby apartment building with help from Laura Barton – and taking some time out to ensure that there’s plenty of pizza left over for Lucky to abscond with – Kate cons her way into the building to retrieve it whilst Clint keeps watch from a nearby rooftop. Kate is alarmed to discover that whoever lives there has very detailed notes on them, Clint is alarmed to discover that the apartment is alarmed – with motion sensors – and without warning they are both attacked by Maya… at the same time?

Surprisingly for the output of a studio who are supposedly destroying art, the auteur imperative, audience intelligence and the entire concept and history of ‘cinema’ for the sake of packing out cinemas with movies that we are relentlessly informed have no emotion or depth, the fourth episode of Hawkeye is primarily driven by unexpectedly effective – and at some moments even verging on profound – character exposition. The faintly ridiculous Jack tempers his suspicion over Kate and Clint’s activities with genuinely expressed gratitude for ‘Archer’s efforts to protect New York, Eleanor Bishop’s sourly acidic rejoinder about Natasha Romanoff having been good at the job too simultaneously presenters her as both relatable and unlikeable to the audience, and Clint’s attempts to reason with Tracksuit Mafia strategist Kazi over Maya’s nihilistic fixation with the Ronin subtly suggest he is negotiating with a man who is largely uncomfortable with what he is called on to do but is unable to see any capacity for an alternative. Laura Barton, so often reduced to a momentum-stalling domesticated line-feed with an annoying fixation on ketchup on the big screen – a move that can even at the most charitable can only be described as a waste of Linda Cardellini – gets to enjoy indulging in some resourceful and cool-headed detective work, and the Clint Barton-adulating role players get an opportunity to discuss their pursuits with enthusiasm and passion and indeed in relation to their real-world roles in the emergency services and education. Most significantly, there is an extended interlude in which Clint and Kate, with their own yuletide plans disrupted by that ongoing business with the watch, decide to stage their own mini-Christmas whilst planning their next move. To a backdrop of festive funk and tacky holiday movies, they binge thoughtfully on pizza in Christmas jumpers as the conversation veers between comic as Kate realises she’s been outlining their operations in permanent marker, and tragic as Clint finally opens up about what happened with Natasha on Vormir and how this has now changed even his fond memories of how they met. There’s a debate about the practicality of a boomerang arrow as a combat weapon, target practice involving precision flipping of anything small and coin-shaped, and cocktails in a Thanos Was Right mug. There’s also a glorious moment later on highlighting Kate’s combination of ingenuity and inexperience, when a member of the public overhears her communicating with Clint and she simply doubles down on the idea of being in covert contact with an Avenger until he concludes she’s mad and leaves without much encouragement. The real highlight of this episode, however, is the return of a character distinguished by what can only be described as an aversion to emotional depth who had already emerged as the unexpected star of another movie entirely. It can hardly have been a surprise in and of itself to anyone who had seen the Black Widow post-credits scene, but Yelena’s appearance in the cliffhanger was nonetheless brilliantly handled as a surprise within the context of the episode itself, and in less than three minutes of screen time she gets to display some jaw-dropping fighting moves, grouchily find herself caught up in some comedy business with a poorly-aligned zip wire, and cause a rift between Clint and Kate – neither of whom, crucially, actually know who she is. What’s more, this wasn’t even the biggest surprise return that Hawkeye had to offer…

5. Ronin (15th December 2021)

Making his debut literally capitalising on Peter Parker’s momentary retirement in 1967’s ‘Spider-Man No More’ storyline, Wilson Fisk – the self-styled ‘Kingpin’ of organised crime in New York – began as a relatively straightforward mobster but would gradually evolve into one of Marvel’s most complex villains. Driven by a desire to act in what he has unilaterally decided are the best interests of the public and especially the ‘city’ and determining that it falls to him to take the difficult decisions that nobody else will, Fisk is fixated on controlling both the lawful and less-than-lawful methods of governance in a belief that having one individual strategically overseeing both is the only way to prevent chaos. Although he has occasionally sought enhanced abilities to assist in his activities, it has never quite worked out as planned and he prefers to rely on his considerable physical strength, ruthless brutality, charm, cunning, extortion and an impressive armoury of souped-up traditional artillery. It probably goes without saying that such ambition and its hard-headed implementation has brought him up against a wide variety of characters all the way from the X-Men and Ghost Rider to Howard The Duck and Squirrel Girl, although his most notable and longest standing antagonists are those closer to the street level and in particular Spider-Man, Iron Fist, Cloak And Dagger, The Punisher and especially Daredevil, with each man’s obsession with their nemesis occasionally driving them to alarming extremes of violence. He also found a less likely adversary through a less likely route, and one who proved that much more difficult to address as a threat precisely because of his status; Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson, who found that stories alleging Fisk’s complicity in corruption made for lucrative front page material. When there is a larger threat to contend with, however, Fisk never has any hesitation in throwing in his lot with the heroes and placing his resources and contacts at their disposal without any thought of personal gain. This challenging if misguided humanitarian impulse is one of the defining traits of his character, and whether he is shown to harbour humane thoughts towards even those he treats inhumanely – as can be seen from his history with Echo – or repositioning his entire operation to keep the public clothed and fed during the Secret Empire storyline, that persistent delusion that he is acting for the greater good challenges readers to view him as an outright villain, especially when many of those he runs up against are morally questionable at best themselves. This has inevitably made Wilson Fisk a difficult character to adapt in other media where slow-reveal exploration of complex moral conflicts is not exactly a viable option, giving rise to results as varied as the comedy crime boss and his ‘special neck band’ in Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends and whatever it was they were trying to do exactly in the 2003 Daredevil film. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, aware that there was a greater opportunity to explore the character and his motivations on the small screen than in a movie, three series of Daredevil were built around Vincent D’Onofrio’s staggering interpretation of Wilson Fisk, a cultured and highly intelligent yet easily enraged thug with a corrupt accomplice in every walk of public life, with more than a touch of influence taken from certain real-world analogues to his narcissistic belief in a right to ‘rule’. Such was the extremity and intensity of his ongoing war with Matt Murdock and Frank Castle that understandable critical concerns were raised that it would simply not be possible to incorporate the character into anything else going forward. That question was brilliantly answered in Hawkeye, and it turned out that wasn’t the only surprise return on that day too. You can find a chat with Gary Bainbridge about Daredevil here as well as Vikki Gregorich on Hawkeye here and Echo here, and Miriam Kent on Daredevil: Born Again here.

None too pleased with the suspicious details she has uncovered about her mother and Jack, Kate tries to find out more about her mystery assailant from the previous night. Similarly none too pleased with the suspicious details she has uncovered about her father’s assassination, Maya tries to find out the truth about why the Tracksuit Mafia’s accounts of that fateful meeting don’t quite add up. None too pleased with himself over what happened to Natasha Romanoff, Clint resolves to convince Maya to back down by force if he has to. None too pleased about the lack of pizza, Lucky looks for some pizza. None too pleased about pretty much everything in general, Yelena recalls her experiences around Thanos’ Snap and stumbles across a vital lead that it’s fair to say they are all none too pleased about…

If you ever wanted definitive and unarguable evidence of why ‘spoiler culture’ is not only a thoroughly mean-spirited and utterly self-aggrandising pursuit that is not just disrespectful towards audiences and creatives alike but is also actively detrimental to your own personal enjoyment, then look no further than the morning of 15th December 2021, when millions of unaware moviegoers poured into cinemas to watch Spider-Man: No Way Home with little to no idea of what to expect. Not only did they get to see Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield back in web-slinging action – and even despite the months of rumours, the gasps in the cinema at the appearance of the latter in particular really did suggest that a considerable proportion of the audience were not expecting it – alongside their big-screen antagonists, there was also a surprise appearance by Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, last seen on the small screen in 2019 and betraying only the mildest hint of his secret double life as Daredevil by instinctively catching a Peter Parker-bound brick mid-lobbage. Reportedly, if matters had not been thrown off-course by lockdown and social distancing then there would also have been appearances by America Chavez, Danny Rand and Jemma Simmons, but even then it still would have been Daredevil’s long overdue welcoming into the big-screen fold that made the sort of impact that the brick resolutely failed to. An even bigger and more exciting surprise, however, awaited anyone who had got up early to catch the latest episode of Hawkeye before heading out to their local Odeon – right at the end of the episode, thrillingly captured in a fuzzy and awkwardly-angled photo on a shakily hand-held phone, there was Daredevil’s arch-nemesis Wilson Fisk, once again played by Vincent D’Onofrio and looking very much like he meant both figurative and literal business. Coming at a moment when smug columnists were falling over themselves to invent convoluted reasons why the earlier Marvel Cinematic Universe television series didn’t ‘count’ and all of the characters should be recast with immediate effect, the unexpected return of two of its most prominent figures in a single morning in the throes of intangibly strange times was a very welcome surprise indeed. If anyone had tried to spoiler either of them for you, then it would probably have been quite reasonable to allow any passing brick to continue its progress unimpeded. Although he is seen on screen for a handful of seconds if that, Wilson Fisk’s reappearance – “the guy I’ve been worried about this whole time” according to Clint – looms understandably large over this episode, but there is plenty worth celebrating to be found elsewhere, not least in the deliciously spiky confrontation between Kate and a macaroni hot sauce-dousing Yelena. Despite their conflict of interests they appear to actually quite like each other but are both too smart to show that, constantly vying to get inside each other’s thoughts with subtle or indeed in Kate’s case not especially subtle psychological subterfuge, including an hilarious discussion of Yelena’s tactic of meticulously using the full names of anyone who is standing in her way. Apparently mostly improvised by Hailee Steinfeld and Florence Pugh based on a scripted scene of tone directions, it’s an absolutely superb display of comic acting with a serious edge and really does an enormous amount to set everything up for a spectacular finale. Also, in yet another surprise for anyone who did the double-whammy on that socially distanced December morning, Yelena announces her intention to visit the redesigned Statue Of Liberty that proved so irresistible to Doctor Octopus and company. They don’t just throw all this together, even when it involves throwing a bottle of hot sauce. Anyway, how are they going to get out of THAT cliffhanger…?

6. So This Is Christmas? (22nd December 2021)

Introduced in the appropriately named Lucky – A Clint Barton Adventure in 2012, Lucky The Pizza Dog was originally the mascot of The Tracksuit Mafia before being rescued by Clint and forming an immediate bond with Kate Bishop. Despite usually being deployed largely for comic relief, the anchovy-favouring monocular hound has also occasionally got in on the action, usually either courtesy of his bitey protectiveness towards his arrow-slinging human friends or his food-foraging friendship with Squirrel Girl’s flatmate Nancy’s cat Mewnir, with the pair of them once memorably incapacitating Taskmaster. A surprising but enthusiastically welcomed addition to Hawkeye, Lucky also made an appearance alongside Kate in the post-credits scene of The Marvels. You’ll never guess what he was eating. You can find chats with Vikki Gregorich about Hawkeye here, Anna Cale about The Marvels here and Una McCormack about The Marvels here.

With just one shopping day to go until Christmas, pretty much everyone else in New York is frantically dashing round searching for the latest sold-out must-have Christmas present, but Clint and Kate, Wilson Fisk, Kate’s mother, Maya Lopez, The Tracksuit Mafia and Yelena Belova are all descending on Rockefeller Plaza in a race to get their hands on a certain watch – while Lucky takes the opportunity to descend on some pizza…

For reasons that nobody has ever quite been able to fathom, ITV in the seventies and eighties in particular had an overwhelming obsession with presenting their big Christmas spectaculars – especially those that landed on Boxing Day – ‘On Ice’. Ballets, circus acts, ostensibly formal Beatrix Potter adaptations rendered inadvertently comical through the sheer impracticability of attempting to navigate a sheet of frozen water whilst sporting an oversized Jeremy Fisher head with limited capability for peripheral vision, pretty much anything and everything would find itself slapped into a pair of skates and pushed out in front of an audience whose silence was rendered just as cacophonous as their cheering by the associated non-navigable ice rink acoustics. Often actual regular shows would be sent out on skates too – variety and comedy shows, that is, so sadly we were denied the spectacle of Lord Winstanley doing a figure-skating flourish whilst presenting This Is Your Right On Ice – with the inevitable consequence that the once at least imaginative gambit came to be roundly mocked as a cheap and tacky cliché, most memorably by Mel Smith and Bob Goody who gamely attempted to deliver their regular Children’s ITV book review show whilst careering into the cameramen. Although much of the final episode’s action takes place whilst skidding around outsider the Rockefeller Center, Hawkeye has very little in common with any other shows that took place ‘On Ice’ either conceptually, spiritually, dramatically or even technologically. Except that, perhaps inconveniently for embittered nostalgists, it genuinely does represent as good as an example as you are liable to find nowadays of the sort of dazzling high-speed no expense spared Christmas television entertainment that in some senses never really existed even though everyone likes to tell themselves that it did. It’s the climax of a series that has played gleefully fast and loose with festive trimmings and seasonal sentimentality alike, and it’s all been leading up to a fairy light-tangled big battle with a volley of trick arrows that is as wrapped up in witty gags with festive iconography as it is as full of nailbiting twists and turns as a good thriller should be. What’s more, everyone involved gets their big moment, whether it’s Jack and the cosplayers putting their fencing and battle re-enactment skills to good use in holding off the Tracksuit Mafia and guiding the guests to safety at a pivotal high society Christmas bash, The Tracksuit Mafia taking mid-skirmish time out to thank Kate for her unsolicited relationship advice, Kate’s gutsy showdown with an infuriated Wilson Fisk – who for his part absolutely does not want to hurt her but she persistently refuses to get out of his way – and Echo’s ambiguous confrontation with her former paymaster or Clint and Yelena coming to a realisation that Natasha would have wanted them to fight together rather than fight each other. It is only a shame that, while not especially wanting to trade in what ifs – even if they’re about What If…? – considering that the Rockefeller Christmas Tree featured heavily in both Hawkeye and the concurrently-released Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter Parker didn’t swing by and offer a casual and unhelpful ‘oh hey, Clint!’ whilst Hawkeye was clinging to the upper branches, although presumably that was due to rights complications on Sony’s side, and they in turn were probably too busy working out how to edit all the interesting stuff from the Morbius trailer out of the finished movie to bother too much about addressing it. There’s even a nice heartwarming Happy Holidays-compliant ending as Kate and Lucky join the Bartons for Christmas, which brings with it a surprise and indeed a complication all of its own. That troublesome watch, it transpires, belonged to Laura Barton, and inconveniently identified her as Agent 19 – codename ‘Mockingbird’ – of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Quite where this now leaves Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. and their own comics-accurate Mockingbird Bobbi Morse is another question, but frankly in a narrative where Ant-Man can find himself inaccurately inserted into a musical based on one of the most globally famous in-universe events in history and entire sell-out Broadway audiences neither notice nor care, pretty much anything is possible.

Hawkeye is – at least in terms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – so much more than just a comedy action thriller set at Christmas that surpassed everyone’s expectations. It took a character who was both underused and a poor fit on the big screen and placed him in the perfect setting, using his general unpopularity both with the audience and other characters – Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, which under the original pre-lockdown schedule would have been released shortly beforehand, notably featured Doctor Strange and Wanda sniggering at the idea of asking “the archer with the mohawk” for help – as a starting point for the storyline, calling on the ‘real world’ admirers Hawkeye would have had for assistance rather than the other superheroes, and even gave his widely detested family some enjoyable and well-used narrative interludes. It brought in a lesser-known character and skilfully highlighted her combination of ingenuity, inexperience and know-it-all youthful arrogance, and paired her effectively not just with the experienced field operations veteran but also with a damaged assassin with a darker backstory who unlike everyone else in Kate’s life has her pegged as someone who deserves respect and needs keeping a cautious eye on within seconds. It explores the complex position of the severely physically impaired in the unthinking everyday view of the rest of the world. Most importantly for followers of the franchise, however, it brought in a memorable villain from a much more grim and brutal series that many smartarse columnists were wasting everyone’s time trying to actively write out of history because reasons and reintroduced him in a lighter context without a single compromise to the performance or the character. Not that any casual viewers would need to know any of this, however – while it is fair to say, whatever the reason or the circumstances, that certain Marvel movies and shows from around the same time found themselves a little too caught up in the ongoing narrative for their own good, there is nothing in Hawkeye that would confuse anyone who hadn’t seen The Falcon And The Winter Soldier or Eternals, and in some respects it is a shame that it was hidden away on a streaming service with little incentive to draw in casual viewers. Had it been on major terrestrial networks, it would almost certainly now be inspiring run-up-to-Christmas rewatches in the same manner as The Box Of Delights; and if you take exception to that, I’m going to not particularly politely suggest that perhaps you are not quite as interested or invested in the idea of quality television entertainment as you effect to be. Hawkeye is exactly the sort of rip-roaring tree-trimmed edge-of-the-seat fun that The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year should be about, and that original trailer that took everyone so much by surprise really was correct. The best gifts do come with a bow.

Buy A Book!

There’s more about the circumstances surrounding Hawkeye and what went wrong – and didn’t – for the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Keep Left, Swipe Right, available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Alternately, if you’re just feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee here. I could, as they say, drink it all day.