I thought it was great.
I thought the ending was fine. It was decently fun to watch if you don’t think too much about the details, but definitely would not stand up to any scrutiny. Pretty average for a Marvel ending.
I really liked the final episode and I think Hawkeye is the best of the Marvel shows so far. I loved Loki, but I think Hawkeye was overall better.
I loved that Kate fought Kingpin. I liked them using all their arrows. I liked that I was right and it was the Mom(revealed last episode, but still). I like the fiance fighting with his sword. I liked the Larpers helping, but it was a bit too far when they had their costumes on. I liked the confrontation of Yelena(?) and Hawkeye.
I liked a lot of it. Great show and put it all together and a very decent Hawkeye movie. Better than The Eternals, for sure.
I liked the finale, it was completely keeping with the rest of the series. Yelena was excellent, as always.
And the post credit scene was amazing. I can’t believe Marvel pulled that off.
I didn’t think it sucked, but it did run into predictable timing issues. Once again, Marvel set by up a lot of fascinating plot/character dilemmas, and then rushed them in a congested last episode.
Won’t go into detail yet either but the scene that was emblematic of this problem was the big homecoming. Hawkeye has been working towards this from episode 1. He’s sacrificed time with his family for duty, and his reward is the big return to family home and hearth.
How long did he and his kids share screen time for? 10 seconds? Maybe 15? It was the very definition of perfunctory. But somehow Disney which owns Marvel couldn’t give Marvel which was making a show for Disney enough time to let their story breathe.
I really enjoyed the finale - light and amusing with a few serious beats, but overall very satisfying. Great to see D’onofrio again, and I’m 99% certain he’ll be back.
Looks like I’m in the minority, which is good - it’s more fun when people like these things. I really wanted to like it, because until the finale this was my favorite of this year’s TV series. Figuring in the finale, it now falls after Loki and WandaVision, which is… still pretty good, actually.
But I found the finale really frustrating. Just a quick outline of what bugged, because I have to say it somewhere and my wife and daughter don’t want to hear my complaining 
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The handling of Kingpin was (IMO) ridiculous. This awesome character - whose defining characteristic is moving subtly behind the scenes and controlling the levers of power while never allowing any dirt to accrue on his own person - wanders randomly into a street fight to personally murder a rogue subordinate completely in public, then gets into - and loses - a brawl with a non-super-powered rookie hero?
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The final resolution of the Kazi-Maya arc was unsatisfying. The possibilities for a dramatic, interesting confrontation had been lined up, and instead we got “come with me” / “nah” / “ok - STAB.”
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Maya’s confrontation with Kingpin was annoying. Either he’s alive (he’s definitely alive), in which case it was a cheap misdirection, or he’s dead, in which case bringing Vincent D’onofrio in was a cheap trick (why yes, I am still salty at the waste of Evan Peters in WandaVision, why do you ask?)
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Yelena just sort of deciding not to fight Clint anymore because he knew Natasha’s whistle was (for me) dumb on the level of “my mother’s name was Martha, too.” It’s not like it should come as a shock to Yelena that Clint and Natasha were close - she, and as far as I can tell everyone in the MCU, knew that. But she went from “you’re lying” to “obviously you’re not lying” in such a manufactured way - she let it go because the script told her to, basically.
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Eleanor’s backstory was dull. Oh, she owed money to Fisk. DRAMATIC REVEAL. Just make her an actual bad guy, you cowards. And Jack turning out to be just some guy who likes to fence was a disappointment, too. Also, were some of the tracksuits attacking him with… swords? Why?
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The less said about the LARP thing, the better.
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I think Marvel overestimates how much I care about their pretend musical.
Ultimately, all really well acted and if the future of the MCU is Hailee Steinfeld, Florence Pugh, and Vincent D’onofrio I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. But a cooler landing would have made it better, at least for me.
I just finished. I enjoyed it but…
They had a lot of loose ends to tie up in that last episode, and I wasn’t sure how they would manage it. As it turns out…they just kind of didn’t. They left a lot of threads just dangling.
What was up with the watch? It was linked to Laura somehow, but how? What would it have mattered if Kingpin wound up with it? Why did he even want it? Why didn’t he just buy it, instead of sending in the Track Suit Mafia to (ineptly) steal it? How were Laura and Clint linked to Kingpin? Why was the watch even in Avengers HQ in the first place?
What exactly was the deal with Armand? Kingpin wanted him out of the way apparently, but why? And why did he have Kate’s mom, of all people, take him out?
What exactly was the deal with Jack? Was Kate’s mom just stringing him along solely to have him take the fall for Sloan, Ltd? If so, why? What was so important about that one random shell company that she needed to marry someone just to set him up? And is he just a random playboy that randomly happens to be a master fencer?
I could go on, but…it just felt like a rushed, sloppy finale.
I still enjoyed it, though.
I loved Kate and Yelena friend-fighting. It was a really nice change of pace from the flirt-fighting that action movies and shows seem to think are a thing that make sense. Between Black Widow and Hawkeye, I’m really enjoying Yelena as the new Black Widow.
I thought the LARPer support squad was maybe a little too goofy, but they were ok. At least they didn’t get a lot of screen time.
It seemed like they had different fight and stunt coordinators in this episode than they did in the rest of the series. They had some really well done action sequences.
I also liked D’Onofrio’s Kingpin. They really leaned into the “350 pounds of solid muscle” version of the character, even if D’Onofrio doesn’t really have the build to totally sell it. But he’s a good enough actor that I still bought the physical, feral menace.
And the credit cookie was just delightful.
I was personally fine with that. The comics version has varied a bit over the decades, but while being legally untouchable is a defining characteristic of the character, I don’t think he’s ever been depicted as hesitating to physically engage with heroes. In fact, he’s usually depicted as being eager to do so. He enjoys psychologically dismantling and destroying his enemies, but he also enjoys doing so physically and personally. And that’s also part of his untouchability. He really can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it.
And, yeah, he lost the brawl with Kate, but only after she shot him, he was hit by a car, and then he got blown up by multiple trick arrows simultaneously, including at least one or two “Too Dangerous” ones. And he still walked away. She had to literally pull out every trick she had, and she still barely put him out of action, and that only briefly.
Isn’t that what happened with Daredevil?
And Jack really was just a himbo she framed to ease Kate’s suspicions. I am a little disappointed that he didn’t have more to do. Agreed that a lot of the answers were underwhelming, but Hailee, Florence and Alaqua did well.
Jack was such a fun red herring - turned out to be exactly what he appears, and what he appears to be is a very amusing fop.
What is up with that watch Clint gave back to his wife? Was that a Captain Marvel logo on the back?
Agreed 100%!
SHIELD, and the number 19. Comic book relevant, as Hawkeye’s wife was a former SHIELD agent (Agent 19) who became the costumed hero Mockingbird.
Jack being just a super suave chill dude that was badass with the sword was one of my favorite parts of the finale. Dude was just stabbing people left and right like it was nothing, i loved it.
I still have hopes that Jack’s more sinister side (the Swordsman, after all, had mostly been a villain in the comics) and some prior relationship with Hawkeye (again, per the comics) are being held for a Season 2.
Of course. Because the one thing you want all your undercover operatives to have is a distinctive expensive watch with your agency’s logo on the back!
I still don’t understand the whole urgency of retrieving it. It was a Rolex engraved with a SHIELD logo. Not a Rolex engraved with a SHIELD logo and “Best wishes Clint and Laura Barton. Sincerely, N. Fury”
More subtle than the baseball caps!
Do you think there will be one? I know Loki will have a season 2.
It was fun when I realized that “obviously I was framed” was a true statement. Also seeing him lose track of opponents and have to be warned “behind you!” (as a duelist, I’m guessing he typically only faced one opponent at a time).
I didn’t like the ending for Kingpin. I somehow missed that Echo was his “daughter” and this new character (may have) KO’d the Kingpin.