Five Things We Learned From The ‘Hawkeye’ Double-Episode Premiere

This morning, Disney Plus dropped not one, but two episodes of Hawkeye onto us, the first Disney Plus appearance of an OG “core” Avenger in any series so far, now that Clint Barton is back. But this entire project is meant to be a launchpad for Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop, who seems likely to either replace Hawkeye on the Avengers now that he’s trying to be retired, or lead the Young Avengers team that Marvel appears to be assembling.

Across these two episodes, we learned a few things about the MCU, the series itself and some other stuff. Here’s what stood out the most to me. Obviously, Spoilers follow.

1. The Avengers Tower Got Sold – It’s a comment Clint makes to Kate about how they can’t go hole up there. At this point in time, Tony Stark is dead, so I suppose it makes sense some of his assets would be…redistributed. We saw Stark Industries moving out of the tower in Spider-Man: Homecoming, but who owns it now? But it also really drives home the point that there kind of aren’t Avengers right now? Not really. No more Cap, Tony and Natasha. Thor is in space somewhere. Hawkeye’s retired. Bruce is still around and about to start hanging out with his cousin for the She-Hulk series, but right now, the Avengers are mostly reduced to a memory and a smash hit Broadway musical.

2. Clint’s Hearing Loss – In an effort to steer more toward the comics, the MCU has now given Clint a hearing aid. He’s asked about it, but we simply see a montage of all the times a very human Clint has had to endure wild injuries and explosions, and he’s not exactly sure when the hearing loss happened, specifically.

3. No One Even Connected The Dots With Ronin – Clint’s “dark period” was when he went full samurai and started butchering criminals as Ronin, violence we’ve really only seen on that scale from The Punisher. But all these years later, no one seems to have ever connected him to the vigilante, short of the Avengers who knew, and his wife seems to know.

4. Comic Departures – This is in many ways a fairly faithful adaptation of many elements of the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye run, beloved by fans, but there are a good amount of changes. Already in the first two episodes, we’ve seen them having to adapt to Clint having a family and being more responsible, as opposed to single guy disaster Clint from the comics. And the introduction of Echo (the woman at the end) is completely out of nowhere, as she was not a Hawkeye character, but a Daredevil character. Disney has already told us she’s getting her own spin-off, and rumor has it that may include Netflix Daredevil characters, and possibly Matt Murdoch himself.

5. Jack – We are veering into comic spoilers here, but it’s clear that one element of the comics will remain the same, and it explains why Jack is so good at swordplay. That’s because his name is Jacques Duquesne, the villain “The Swordsman.” In the comics, he has a history with Clint when he was younger, but it’s unclear if that’s still intact here. The Swordsman has a wild set of adventures over time in the comics, including a romance with…Mantis, of all people, but it seems more likely his role will be limited to what we saw in the Fraction/Aja comics here.

So, that’s what I extracted. Anything important I missed? No signs of Yelena yet…

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and its audiobook, and The Earthborn Trilogy, also on audiobook.