A bit like the character of Black Widow, it feels like the Marvel Cinematic Universe has sometimes undervalued Clint "Hawkeye" Barton. Hawkeye has been hanging around, helping save the world since Thor (2011) but has played second fiddle to the space gods, guys in super-powered armour and giant green monsters. Just as the film Black Widow tried to right that wrong by giving Natasha more to do, so the Hawkeye mini-series tries to show Clint Barton some appreciation, and is fortunately much more successful.
Hawkeye is pure, knock-about fun. After the weirdness of WandaVision and Loki, this show gets back to basics. A guy with a bow and arrow solving problems in New York City, helped out by a new protege. The bad guys are criminals, there's no reshaping of the space/time continuum and there's a fair few other Marvel cameos and references to keep fans happy.
The show rests on the charisma of Hailee Steinfield as Kate Bishop and this is a good thing, because she has it in spades. Stanfield is irrepressible in her role as someone who becomes a superhero and has a huge amount of fun on it. Jeremy Renner starts off by delivering his normally effective-but-quiet performance as Barton, but is soon infected by his new partner's enthusiasm. His laconic humour kicks in and he shakes the blues of having to confront the deaths of some of his best friends to embrace his new role as a mentor.
Florence Pugh drops by as Yelena Belova, reprising her role from Black Widow, and is even better here, with a line in sparkling banter with Kate Bishop that makes you want a full buddy team-up TV show featuring the two of them. The rest of the supporting cast is also great, from Kate's ambitious mother to the members of the criminal gang known as the "Tracksuit Mafia," who are surprisingly keen on gossip and oversharing. Alaqua Cox is also very promising as Maya Lopez, who is slated for her own spin-off show, Echo. Of course, the dog is an instant big hit.
The show's tone sometimes gets a bit darker, but mostly is on the light side: it's a Christmas caper in New York City which is not as twee and annoying as it sounds. The pacing is solid, the humour mostly lands and the infectious performances of the main cast make for a fun time.
The main complaint - beyond that the show might be a bit too light and frothy for its own good - is that the determination to keep the main villain a secret until the final episode means that the villain gets very little development, and because it's unclear if their previous appearances actually happened or not (since they're a transplant from the Netflix Marvel show, whose canonical status is still a bit up in the air), it's hard to work out what's going on with them. The fact they are almost immediately defeated doesn't help with that.
Still, Hawkeye's first, and for now only, season (****) is a winner. It's fun and it doesn't outstay its welcome, at the cost of feeling maybe a little disposable at times. The show is available to watch now worldwide on Disney+.
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