Hawkeye, new Marvel show on Disney+

To me, this is strange. If I went through a trauma I wouldn’t go see a musical about it.

New Yorkers aren’t the only ones who go to Broadway shows. Maybe Rogers is an “only for tourists” show.

This is probably it. And the show has been running so long that the initial protests with people holding signs saying “Our trauma is not your entertainment” have petered out.

One thing to keep in mind when weighing the trauma the average New Yorker feels over the Battle of New York is that the canon death toll of the battle, as stated on-screen in Civil War, is seventy-four people.

I can pretty easily see the general public accepting a “Rah rah, we kicked their butts!” take on the Chitauri invasion. It’s been around 15 years since it happened. It was post-9/11, so you don’t have that whole “illusion of safety being punctured” thing. The death toll is not only a fraction of the number that died on 9/11, but an even smaller fraction of the number of dead the attackers intended to kill, so the Avengers’ intervention is going to be viewed as a huge, life-saving success. And there’s no morally ambiguous or political elements to it. The invaders are entirely “other.” There’s no nice Chitauri gentleman running the shop down on the corner to make you consider a bunch of difficult nuance. Space bugs tried to kill us, and we killed them instead. Go us! I imagine there’s a ton of popular media that has sensationalist takes on it.

Also, I think Clint’s reaction was less to the battle itself, and more about seeing his dead best friend dancing around on stage, which isn’t going to be a problem for most of the audience.

When they first showed her, I thought it was the sister from Shin Chi and the 10 Rings, but I guess no tie-in to that movie

Well, in the comics, Echo is a super-hero, and she’s got her own Disney+ series upcoming, so I think it’s pretty likely that at worst she’s going to wind up being an anti-hero, and more likely on a path to redemption.

As to Kingpin, it seemed to me like that was pretty clearly his hand we see pinching little-girl-Echo’s cheek (it even sounded like the voice of Vincent D’Onofrio, the Netflix-verse Kingpin chuckling. And Clint explicitly said that Echo isn’t the ultimate boss of the Track Suit Mafia, there’s someone above her, and Echo and her boyfriend definitely seemed to be discussing a boss.


As to the rest of the episode, still fairly fun. I thought the CGI for the trick arrows was oddly low quality for an MCU show - it looks like this show only got a fraction of the budget of the other D+ MCU series. I thought the brawl in the warehouse was a step up from the melee in the underground auction, at least. The execution of a couple of the stunts was a little rough, but I did like the ball-pit gag and the Jackie Chan-style shopping cart-fu gag.

Also - did Kate just straight up kill the TSM guys in the moving van? Because it kind of looked like she totally blew those guys up and burned them to death, which would be oddly dark for the tone of the rest of the show. Not too mention, given the TSM guys were explicity trying not to kill them, and are more comic relief than real threats, it kind seems like that would make Kate the bad guy…

The actor has a prosthetic leg; that trait was added to the character after she was cast.

Alaqua Cox is also actually deaf and actually of Native American descent, which are traits of the comic book original. She was also a college athlete, but as far as I know, she doesn’t actually have photographic reflexes…

Anyone other than me go “Bazinga!”?

I did wonder the same thing, although obviously she didn’t intend to do that.

Also, I’m guessing the Big Arrow put a rather large hole in the bridge.

I will also mention that I rather like the whole “different music over the end credits each episode” approach. It worked well for Loki and it works well here.

Well I was right that Hawkeye’s hearing issue would impact his encounter with Echo, but it turns out that his signing skills are rudimentary at best “Me eat cookie - yum” (or something like that)

Brian

I’m wondering if that’s his real level or if he’s downplaying his ASL skills in case he needs to “eavesdrop” on Echo’s conversations with others.

But “Me eat cookie” was pretty funny.

I’m pretty sure that’s his actual level of fluency - as he himself says, he’s hard of hearing, not deaf. And when he uses his own hearing aid (undoubtedly a StarkTech design with unrealistic range and clarity), his hearing doesn’t seem impaired at all. The ASL he does have actually seems largely driven by his son, Nate, wanting to use it to communicate with him (hence him knowing the signs for wanting a cookie).

I’m gonna assume, the Stark Foundation has a ‘clean up super-hero shit’ fund and crew, cause WTF?? Whose job is it to clean up a giant arrow?? (ok maybe it wears off? I guess?) still the aforementioned giant hole…

And just once, I’d like to see competent cops show up in a timely manner and actually be some help.

Edit: I’m hearing a lot about Young Avengers…uhhh…there’s no REAL Avengers! They’re all dead and old and scattered and close to retiring or becoming baddies.

Also: Not only is the first role I’ve seen Zahn Mcclarnon play where he was cast because they needed a Native as opposed to him playing a Native…if that makes sense…

Echo is the only native super-hero I’ve ever seen that had ZERO connection to The Rez or some sort of stereotypical spirituality. And as noted, the actress is an amputee and actually deaf.

Talk about rolling up a bunch of progressive policy into one character!

Even in a superhero show that would be a bit unrealistic.

In Spider-Man: Far From Home, one the Tower of London guards, who aren’t just there for show, opens up on the drones with an assault rifle, covers Our Heroes as they flee into the Tower, and appears to disable at least one drone, before presumably being himself horrifically shredded and killed by drone miniguns off-screen….

In Avengers, the cops actually respond pretty quickly to the Chitauri invasion, but are hopelessly, hilariously outgunned. The cop that appears to be the on-scene commander is initially skeptical of some rando in a colorful outfit shouting out orders (which seems competent and reasonable), but once Cap establishes his bona fides by being good at punching things, the cops do seem to be genuinely helpful with crowd control and evacuation of civilians from the combat zone, which none of the Avengers otherwise seem much concerned with. I think it was also established in canon in some minor bits of dialogue and background info in subsequent films and shows that the NYPD and FDNY saved hundreds or thousands of lives by coordinating that evacuation.

Seriously. My biggest gripe about the Bourne films is how legions of cops are always mere seconds away all over Europe. In Chicago, several neighbors and I called in shots fired and waited 15 minutes for a squad car; we were two blocks from the station when it was on Halsted and Addison.

They take two weeks to develop?

We know who does that clean up because we saw it happening in Spider-Man Homecoming. For the stuff they don’t want the public to have access to there is Shield and Damage Control.

Trivia: Both the leads in Hawkeye are Oscar nominees.

As is one of the supporting actors (Vera Farmiga), who also has two Emmy nominations.