In the ‘Hawkeye’ finale, Clint and Kate partner up one more time to take on a slew of enemies including the Kingpin and Yelena Belova…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
There were a lot of loose ends to tie up in the “Hawkeye” season (or perhaps series) finale and for the most part all of those threads were closed in the end.
Last week’s episode ended with the highly anticipated revelation that Wilson Fisk aka The Kingpin had been the big bad hiding in the shadows this entire time — the man behind the Tracksuit Mafia and so much more — and he was also working alongside Eleanor Bishop, who it turns out hired Yelena Belova to kill Clint Barton.
That’s a mighty tangled web to unravel but it’s a mess that Clint was determined to clean up after first meeting Kate Bishop after she accidentally wore his Ronin costume, which suddenly put a mighty big target on her back from all the criminals he killed during the five years after Thanos snapped away half of life in the universe.
As the season moved forward, Kate started to realize there was a lot more going on with her family including suspicions about her soon-to-be stepfather Jack Duquesne before then discovering that her mother Eleanor was knee deep in a criminal enterprise as well.
Now the finale set up the last showdown pitting Clint and Kate against a long list of enemies coming after them as they also attempted to uncover the answers to this massive plot — and a few questions still remained even after everything was finished.
With that said, let’s dig into the “Hawkeye” season finale recap for the episode titled “So This is Christmas?”…
Partners
Picking up where we left off last week, Eleanor Bishop arrived for a meeting with Wilson Fisk, who it turns out has been her business partner and benefactor for many, many years. At the start of the series just before the Battle for New York got underway, Eleanor Bishop and her husband were arguing about money and a deal gone wrong.
It turns out, Derek Bishop owed Wilson Fisk a lot of money and that was the argument he was having with his wife, who ended up paying for that debt after his death.
Fisk is understandably concerned when Eleanor suddenly pays him a visit while revealing that she’s the one who had Armand Duquesne killed on Kingpin’s orders and ultimately framed her fiancé Jack as the CEO of Sloan Limited — the company that served as a front for the Tracksuit Mafia. But now that her daughter Kate is home, Eleanor is drawing the line where she’s concerned and she wants out of the partnership with Fisk.
In fact, Eleanor has kept files as proof that Fisk has been behind everything and she’s not afraid to use that information if he comes after her. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Wilson Fisk over the years, he doesn’t take kindly to threats.
The video that Yelena Belova sent to Kate contains this exact conversation between Fisk and Eleanor, which leaves her shaken. Kate is stunned to learn that her mother was the mastermind behind Armand’s murder not to mention hiring Yelena to go after Clint.
After everything that’s happened, Kate can’t help but apologize to Clint for dragging him into this ordeal so she tells him to go back to his family and she’ll do her best to clean up the disaster left in the wake of her mother’s criminal enterprise. That’s when Clint tells Kate something she’s been waiting to hear all season long.
“Kate, you’re my partner. Your mess is my mess. I’m not going anywhere until this is finished.”
~ Clint
Back at Kingpin’s office, Fisk receives a visit from Maya Lopez, who has come there to tell him that she’s finally letting her vendetta go after attempting to kill the Ronin. She believes her thirst for vengeance has gotten the better of her and she can’t continue to put herself and others in harm’s way to get justice for her father’s death.
Fisk can’t help but question the sudden turnaround in her demeanor but Maya attempts to explain it away that grief has just gotten the better of her. She then asks for a couple of days off in order to get her head straight before exchanging ‘I love you’s with the Kingpin.
After she leaves, Fisk finally expresses his rage with Ronin running around the city, an Avenger taking interest in his business and now Maya turning on the only family she’s ever known. He then gives Kazi the order to carry out that the people of New York need to be reminded that the city belongs to him.
Clint and Kate then begin to prepare for their operation that night in order to hopefully stop Kingpin, find out how deep things have gotten with Eleanor and hopefully avoid a bullet from Yelena.
That’s all going to require some serious fire power and so Clint tells Kate that it’s time to build some truly dangerous trick arrows. Of course, Kate is thrilled to hear that Clint knew how to build these arrows all along but now she actually gets the chance to help him.
Before leaving, Kate finally tells Clint the story about the day he helped save her during the Battle of New York and she was amazed that he could face down an alien horde with nothing more than a bow and an arrow. Clint didn’t have any super soldier serum pumping through his veins and he certainly wasn’t a god sent from Asgard but he still took on the threat with no fear whatsoever and that was the day Kate realized that being a hero took more than just super powers.
He made her believe that she could be a hero and now Kate is finally ready to take on that role.
Following an evening spent assembling these arrows along with the heart-to-heart, Clint and Kate get dressed up to go to the Bishop Security holiday party where everybody involved in this ordeal will be together. Once they arrive, Kate lets Clint know that they have allies all around the building after she called on their LARP’ing friends to serve as the caterers to the event.
With Grills and the rest of his first responders perusing the party, Clint and Kate separated in order to track down Eleanor to get some answers. Of course, Yelena shows up to the party as well because her mission won’t be finished until Clint is dead.
When Eleanor finally arrives, Kate swoops her up to confront her about the partnership with Kingpin while Jack also shows up to the party after getting out on bail. While Jack is very curious about the status of his relationship with Eleanor, Kate has much bigger problems to discuss with her mother due to the criminal enterprise she’s been operating behind the scenes for pretty much her entire life.
Before Kate can get any real answers, a sniper starts firing into the building from across the street.
It turns out Kazi was stationed there in order to take out Eleanor Bishop but he got an added bonus with Clint being in the same building at the same time. With Kazi firing bullets into the room, Clint tells Kate and his LARP’ing pals to clear everybody out of there for their own safety while he deals with the assassin across the street.
While Clint is able to subdue Kazi with a gas loaded arrow, Kate is stuck trying to slow down Yelena after they run into each other at the party. Kate does everything possible to prevent Yelena from getting to Clint — including the always annoying trick of pressing every button on the elevator while going down to a lower floor.
In the end, Kate slows Yelena down but she can’t quite stop her — she is a Black Widow after all — and that’s when Natasha’s little sister throws down a grappling hook and begins climbing the side of the building in order to get to Clint on the 12th floor where he’s just taken out Kazi.
Kate attempts to warn him but Yelena gets there first as she begins firing her gun at Clint, who manages to get out of the way just in the nick of time. He avoids her bullets at Yelena ends up going past the window all the way to the ground below.
Kate decides to follow her down the same line as she actually jumps out of the building and slides down — with an assist from Clint — before landing on the ground as well. That’s when Kate realizes that the Tracksuit Mafia has just shown up in full force as she begins to fight with them as well.
She gets a helping hand when Jack Duquesne shows up with a sword in hand to assist his would-be stepdaughter in the fight. Kate apologizes to Jack for believing the worst in him when it was actually her mother orchestrating this entire plot.
Upstairs, Clint is attempting to get down there to join them but he’s interrupted by the Tracksuits, who are searching for the incriminating evidence that Eleanor has stashed away on the Kingpin. Clint then gets stuck in a fight with Kazi, who attempts to battle an Avenger but soon finds out he’s outgunned in just about every way possible.
Clint subdues Kazi but the rest of the Tracksuits come gunning for him, which forces Hawkeye to dive out a window on a rappelling line of his own — except this one snaps and he’s sent flying into the giant Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.
After retrieving her gear from the LARP’ing crew, Kate takes her trick arrows up to another floor before taking out some more Tracksuits and then firing into the tree in order to get Clint back down to the ground. She ends up knocking over the entire Christmas tree but Clint is finally free from the tangled mess of lights while sitting like 200 feet in the air.
Kate joins him on the ice ring where Clint takes off his tuxedo to finally reveal the outfit she had specially made for him — and it features the classic Hawkeye symbol. She’s happy he finally took her advice and started paying attention to branding.
The celebration is quickly cut short when the Tracksuit army descends upon the plaza, which forces Kate and Clint to fire up those trick arrows to take them out in bunches. The best one utilized yet again is the Pym arrow that shrinks down a van full of Tracksuit Mafia members and even Clint isn’t quite sure how to expand them back to regular size.
It’s not really a question he has to answer because an owl swoops down from the sky and takes the van as a late night snack.
Just then, Kazi and his last remaining Tracksuits show up and Clint is able to take two of them out with another trick arrow while Kate gets word that her mother is leaving on the other side of the building. Kate tells Clint that she has to go after her mother and he promises to clean up the rest of the mess with the Tracksuits.
With Kazi still standing, he prepares to take a shot at Clint but the Avenger is taken down by Yelena, who has finally caught up with him. Kazi then has his own problems to deal with when Maya returns to exact her revenge on the real people responsible for her father’s death.
Maya knows that Kazi was following Fisk’s orders when he didn’t go to the meeting where Ronin ultimately killed her father but now she’s asking him to just stop all this and they can leave together. Kazi refuses because this is the only life he’s ever known and in the end, Maya is forced to kill him in order to stop him.
As for Clint, he gets demolished by Yelena, who is determined to kill him after she believes he was responsible for Natasha’s death during the events of “Avengers: Endgame.” Just when it looks like Yelena is going to finish him off, Clint whistles at her in the same way that Natasha used to do when they were growing up together as Black Widows.
Yelena is stopped dead in her tracks because that was something only she shared with Natasha — but Clint explains that her sister shared everything with him and spoke about her quite often. Clint reveals that Natasha told him the entire story about how she freed her sister from the Black Widows and the final battle where she could have easily died in order to save Yelena’s life because that’s all that mattered to her. Clint tells Yelena that Natasha loved her very much and if it was up to him, he would have been the one to sacrifice himself on Vormir when one of them had to die in order to retrieve the soul stone.
But Natasha refused to let him go as she sacrificed herself instead.
As much as Clint was willing to die for her, she just wouldn’t let him do it and so he’s been grieving her loss ever since. Yelena finally relents and actually helps Clint up to his feet after believing that Natasha was exactly the kind of person to give up her own life in order to save someone else.
Yelena is mostly sad that she didn’t get more time with her sister but Clint knows how much Natasha cared about her. She ends up helping Clint to his feet where he tells her that he’s sorry for her loss as Yelena cries while mourning her sister’s death.
As for Kate, she finally tracks down her mother’s car just as Wilson Fisk arrives to exact his revenge on his old business partner. Kate tries to stop him but Kingpin shrugs her off like a buzzing fly but he’s soon knocked into a building after Eleanor runs her car into him.
That leaves Kate alone with the Kingpin and she soon finds out that he’s quite a formidable opponent because he smashes her in just about every way possible while snapping all of her fancy trick arrows in half. Just when it looks like Kate is going to lose this fight, she uses Clint’s quarter flipping trick to trigger one of the arrows that sets off an explosion, knocking Kingpin to the ground where he ends up unconscious.
Outside, Kate checks on her mother before accusing Eleanor of being the mastermind behind the entire criminal plot that nearly got both her and Clint killed numerous times. Eleanor tries to explain that there’s a lot more to this story than meets the eye but Kate isn’t interested in further explanations.
Instead, the police arrive and arrest Eleanor Bishop for the murder of Armand Duquesne and Kate has to watch as her mother is hauled away in handcuffs. When they get inside the store, Kingpin is gone but at least some sort of justice has been done.
A few moments later, Kingpin is wandering down the street, limping from his injuries as he attempts to get away. That’s when Maya shows up to take out the person most responsible for her father’s death.
While Fisk claims that Maya is his family and sometimes family doesn’t see eye to eye, she’s tired of the lies as she pulls out her gun and places it to his head. Two gunshots ring out but we never actually see what happened — it’s very safe to assume that Kingpin isn’t dead because bringing him back for a single episode of “Hawkeye” when he’s easily one of the best villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be ludicrous.
Plus, Maya will soon be getting her own Disney+ show called “Echo” so it’s likely that story will continue in some form or fashion in the future.
Finally, Clint and Kate reconnect after both were able to subdue their attackers and he knows broken hearted after discovering everything about her mother. More than anything, Clint just wants to tell Kate that he’s proud of her, especially after she had his back and he was able to finally find a new partner.
The next morning, Clint and Kate arrive at the Bishop home for Christmas morning and his children are overjoyed.
Kate is greeted by the kids and then Laura Barton, who gives her a hug after hearing so much about her husband’s new partner that helped stop the Kingpin and protect her family. Kate also brings along Lucky the dog to celebrate Christmas with the Barton’s.
While the kids open presents, Clint finally returns the watch found at Avengers tower to its rightful owner — his wife Laura. She looks on the back and it’s inscribed with the symbol of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. along with the No. 19.
Agent No. 19 is none other than Mockingbird — the famed member of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The character was originally named Bobbi Morse and she was actually played by Adrianne Palicki during two seasons of the Marvel series “Agents of S.H.I.E.LD.” but it’s clear that is just being swept under the rug in order for the new version to be revealed as Laura Barton.
As for Kate, her journey with Clint comes full circle when he takes her outside and the light a fire to burn up the Ronin costume that got them into this entire mess. She then poses a question to Clint to ask him if he likes the name Lady Hawk for her?
What about Hawk-shot? You know like Hotshot except with a Hawk?
None of those sound all that appealing to Clint, who turns to Kate and says he has a better idea when the show goes to the final screen to reveal the title “Hawkeye.” Of course, Kate Bishop is the new Hawkeye and she will certainly turn up again in some future Marvel project — already one of the more beloved characters introduced in recent films and TV series.
It’s not clear what will happen next for Clint or Kate but it’s always possible that Marvel orders another season of “Hawkeye” because this is still very much an open ended story. The reason why Kingpin wanted Armand Duquesne dead was never revealed and it feels like Eleanor’s incarceration will come along with a lot of problems left behind in her wake.
Here’s hoping “Hawkeye” season 2 is on the way.
As for the famed Marvel post credits scene — this one was a bit disappointing because it was the opening number to “Rogers: The Musical,” which depicts the Battle of New York with the Avengers. It’s a fun musical number but not exactly the hint most fans were hoping for in relation to what comes next for Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, Yelena Belova or even the Kingpin after his return to the fold.
Still, “Hawkeye” was a ton of fun and here’s hoping we see these characters again sooner rather than later!
