This review contains spoilers for episode 4 of Hawkeye.
In an early scene in the fourth episode of Hawkeye, “Partners, Am I Right?”, Clint has a poignant chat with Kate’s mom, Eleanor. While Kate has expressed nothing but enthusiasm about her burgeoning superhero career, Eleanor begs Clint to cut her out of his latest case. She wants to save her daughter from a life of constant danger and even brings up the dark pit in Clint’s soul, Natasha Romanoff’s death. She tells him, “Being good isn’t always enough to keep you alive.”
Eleanor’s concern adds a unique angle to Kate’s origin story. No previous MCU hero’s mom has been worried about them. When Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May found out about Spidey’s powers, she was surprisingly supportive of his superheroics. It also adds a lot of weight to Clint’s arc in the series. Not only is he reeling from the grave mistakes of his past; he’s coming dangerously close to making one in the present.
“Partners, Am I Right?” solidifies Clint and Kate as the best character dynamic in the MCU’s Disney+ content so far. Sam and Bucky were too similar to be mismatched and Loki and Mobius’ friendship ultimately boiled down to inconsequential bickering, but the more character-driven Hawkeye continues to contrast Clint and Kate in interesting ways. The episode cross-cuts between Kate reluctantly spending time with her family and Clint reluctantly spending time away from his. Clint struggles to hear conversations he’s a part of while Kate continues to eavesdrop on her mom’s conversations from another room.
The Familiar Buddy Comedy Takes Some Surprisingly Dark Turns
Goofy banter between heroes is par for the course in an MCU narrative, but in Hawkeye’s latest episode, the familiar buddy comedy takes some surprisingly dark turns. Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld’s fun, snappy back-and-forth builds to some moving dramatic payoffs. As Clint reflects on his career as a bow-wielding assassin, his self-effacing narrative of his life continues to conflict with Kate’s rose-tinted perspective: “You were a hero.” “I was a weapon.”
Renner nails the comedic one-liners, but he also brings plenty of grizzled pathos to scenes in which Clint relives losing his family in the Blip and becoming the Ronin. His sharp, nuanced delivery of “It’s not a good story” when Kate asks about the shot he didn’t take abruptly grounds typical Marvel banter in a startling reality. As always, Steinfeld perfectly captures Kate’s balance of unbridled confidence and debilitating awkwardness.
Some Of The MCU’s Best-Directed Action
In its latest episode, Hawkeye has some more of the MCU’s best-directed action. Troop Zero’s Bert & Bertie continue to prove their mettle as action directors after last week’s jaw-dropping single-take car chase. Their action sequences hilariously utilize unforeseen consequences like Kate getting stuck in the middle of a zip-line, dangling above a busy street.
There’s a palpable tension in the episode’s climactic scenes as Kate deviates from the plan, infiltrates Maya’s apartment, and stumbles upon a much worse threat than she or Clint imagined. Maya is keeping a notebook with Clint’s family’s names and his kids’ ages. Clint is no longer up against a generic crime syndicate with a silly name. Ruthless contract killers are keeping an eye on his children – it’s every parent’s worst nightmare.
Bert & Bertie pay off this tension spectacularly with the action-packed final set-piece. The rooftop fight has much more going on than a straightforward hand-to-hand combat sequence: Clint fights a masked assailant who he assumes is Maya while Kate fights Maya herself. Of course, the masked assailant is Yelena (following on from Black Widow’s post-credits scene) and they all end up in a four-person brawl.
There’s a lot at play here – Maya and Yelena fight for the right to kill Clint, while Kate fights them both to protect her “partner slash best friend” and Clint desperately defends himself in the middle of it all – but the sequence’s boldest, most explosive moment is silent and action-free: a single look shared by the veteran Avenger and his young apprentice.
The Ending Brings The Episode’s Self-Contained Emotional Arc Full Circle
The ending of “Partners, Am I Right?” brings the episode’s self-contained emotional arc full circle, paying off Eleanor’s conversation with Clint from the opening scene. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Tony Stark is worried that Peter Parker will screw up as a superhero. In Hawkeye, Clint knows Kate has what it takes, but following his chat with Eleanor, he’s afraid she’ll be killed in battle and he won’t be able to live with yet another death on his conscience.
There’s a breathtaking moment during the climactic set-piece as Kate falls off the roof. She’s saved in the nick of time by a trick arrow, but she very nearly plummeted to her death, just like Nat. Clint looking over the ledge and realizing the danger Kate is in is an extremely powerful moment. She tells him to pull her up onto the roof, but he cuts her loose into some Christmas lights and insists that she go home and stop getting herself into life-threatening situations.
In the final moments of the episode, Clint terminates his partnership with Kate. The Yelena reveal doesn’t disappoint, and Clint instantly identifies her as a Black Widow from her gadgets and combat style. A Black Widow being sent to kill Clint is the perfect visual metaphor for his guilt over Nat’s death. Obviously, Clint will reteam with Kate at some point in the next two episodes, but his genuine concern for her safety puts a grounded, relatable spin on the MCU’s now-familiar mentor-mentee Phase Four formula.
Hawkeye Is Easily Marvel’s Best Disney+ Show To Date
It’s still unclear if the show’s final episodes can pull together all the various story threads and stick the landing with the murder mystery. But Hawkeye’s riveting character development and deep dive into its themes have made it by far the MCU’s most satisfying, evenly paced, and emotionally engaging Disney+ series to date.