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The Hawkeye Premiere is Messy but Promising
A review for the first two episodes
Why don’t people like Hawkeye that much? Throughout the past few years, posts on my Twitter timeline have referred to him as the most boring Avenger, played by a boring actor. I’ve heard people say Jeremy Renner looks too much like Popeye, but I don’t know, Popeye’s kind of hot. This seems like a positive to me.
There’s a meta conversation in the second episode of this premiere where Kate Bishop (the more protagonist-y of the two protagonists), attributes Hawkeye’s lack of popularity to poor branding. “Your whole thing is being low-key,” she says, arguing that people want heroes who wear their heart on their sleeves, not quiet, cynical guys who keeps their feelings to themselves.
It’s a nice moment, one that seems to set up the central tension (cynicism vs sincerity) that will define Kate and Clint’s relationship throughout these six episodes, but it’s also one that side-steps the real reason why Hawkeye has never been that memorable: because he hasn’t been given much to do. He spent most of the first Avengers movie as a mind-controlled zombie, and it was only in Endgame that he got his own storyline with clear emotional stakes. Even on a show that’s seemingly named after him, he isn’t the character with the most interesting things to do.
