Disclaimer: this review of Hawkeye Episode 1 requires so much nerd movie knowledge bullshit that it may very well be unpalatable for everyone except me. The one on Episode 2 is much less insider baseball, maybe try that one.

I am the number one, player-hatingest Hawkeye hater out there. Every time I see him on screen, I just think, “What is even the point of you?” I wish he died in Endgame instead of Natasha. If I had the full infinity gauntlet, I’d snap my fingers but only Hawkeye would disappear. Yet here I am, despite myself, watching his fucking TV show, because I’m also the type of person who has marathoned all the MCU films multiple times, has watched most of the Avengers movies in theaters twice, and has watched every episode of every Disney+ show rain or shine. I’m a self-capturing captive audience. The only person I may hate more than Hawkeye is myself.

Admittedly, hating Clint is up there with “The Beatles made good music” in terms of opinions that are boring for how common they are. My reading is that most MCU observers are neutral on Clint at best, and generally see him as a punchline. Even Disney and Marvel are aware of this; they knew you wouldn’t care when he sat out the entirety of Infinity War, and in this episode they create a fake musical where the joke is that he gets outshined by Ant-Man, who wasn’t even there. Hawkeye fuckin’ sucks!

I think one of the biggest problems with MCU Hawkeye is a pretty basic one, in terms of writing: he’s the character equivalent of a double beat. What I mean is this: what would you say if you had to describe Clint Barton? “Cool assassin, often a little in over his head because he’s got no superpowers but has to mix it up with gods and supervillains anyway, and secretly he’s got a big old heart and loves family? Also, arrows.” Something like that is pretty much it. And also, change some pronouns and lose the arrows and you’ve just successfully described Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow. Unfortunately for Clint, he also spends most of his first major appearance brainwashed and off-screen, so Nat gets there first. Not to mention, Natasha is also a little more interesting; her whole angst with her dark and murder-y past thing adds another layer of character psychology that Clint just never gets—that is, until this series, where he’s reckoning with his past as the minority-murdering Ronin. No matter where you look, Clint is an also-ran.

Fun thought experiment: replace any instance of Clint in this episode with Natasha, and it not only makes sense, I also think it often plays better. Nat would definitely be haunted by her past and the people she’s lost, it’s kind of her whole thing. Nat would definitely be exasperated by some kid dressing in her murder bondage. Nat would definitely be able to catch a molotov cocktail and throw it back at a bunch of street punks (literally the one cool thing Clinteye has ever done). Plus, since she doesn’t have Clint’s nuclear family, you get the bonus of not having to watch these awkward dinner scenes where all the line readings have me convinced that Clint is only pretending to love his kids, and that his kids secretly despise their dad for being the Worst Avenger.

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The other thing that has always confused me about Hawkeye is why Jeremy Renner is playing him. He’s always felt like a too-tight shoe or something. Especially because I think there is the slightest of wrinkles that the MCU tried to use to differentiate Clint, but it never really worked with Renner behind the bow: he’s also the down-to-earth funny guy, the only one who really seems to understand just how ridiculous everything they’re doing is. You see it a little bit in his writing in Age of Ultron and Civil War, but eventually it fell by the wayside.

A while ago I started to do the classic thought experiment of “who would be better-suited for the role?” Who is someone that could balance competent badass with surprising sentimentality and add a dry sense of humor? Ryan Reynolds was my first thought—imagine a less 75% less annoying Deadpool and I think you’ll see what I mean. Once I started thinking beyond white guys, John Cho was next; in this case, imagine nu-Trek Sulu but with better [read: any] character writing, or a less cartoonish live-action Spike Spiegel, and sprinkle either of the two with some Harold. But my favorite mental-casting has been Fast and Furious’s Sung Kang. I mean, Han basically is Hawkeye, with a car instead of a bow and arrow. Now any time I’m watching an MCU thing, I mentally replace Jeremy Renner with Sung Kang and then mourn the reality. Try it for yourself (or if you’re not an FF fan, you can swap in Cho or Reynolds). It’ll break your heart.

Put simply, the MCU has a Hawkeye problem, and it knows it. So in addition to all the other standard storytelling/thematic wrangling you’d expect from a narrative, Hawkeye also has the fucked-up task of justifying its main character and its own existence.

All of this leads me to why, despite myself, I’ve been having a lot of fun with Hawkeye so far, and I’m actually kind of interested in where it’s all going. The new Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, is basically a Frankenstein of the two things I’ve been talking about, a sort of millennial mishmash between Natasha and a funny Hawkeye. It’s even been kind of working thematically: I get the sense that Clint’s reticence to train her is partly because of how much she reminds him of Natasha (and possibly his jealousy that she knows how to deliver a quip). Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop has the potential to go where no MCU Hawkeye has gone before: being likeable.

Other Thoughts:

• Okay, so how far along in the process do you think they got in having Lin-Manuel Miranda write the song for the Rogers musical? Like, the show art is definitely a nod to Hamilton, and Miranda is deep in the Disney family, so at the very least it must have crossed a writer or producer’s mind, right? I want to know if they ever actually made the ask, and if so, how much money did he end up saying “no” to? What’s the price point on getting LMM to scribble a few rhymes about Captain America?
• In my notes, re: guy at the Rogers urinal who wants a selfie: “Not sure which is the bigger tip off that this guy is evil: the lack of personal urinal boundaries, or the fact that he’s obviously lying because he claims Hawkeye is his kids’ favorite.” Calling it now, that guy is The Kingpin
• Also in my notes: “This show starts with maybe the most unbelievable premise in all of MCU: That out of the lineup of the OG six avengers, someone thought Hawkeye was the most inspiring” Bazinga, got ‘em, burnt and turnt, hey-yo.
• I almost titled this one “Only Hawkeyes in the Building” due to the New Yorky rich vibes (and to stay current), before I landed on this title, which years ago was the title of a Podcast that I pitched to one of my friends where we would talk about ~*~Azns~*~ in Pop Culture (except I hadn’t watched any FF yet at the time so the title was still “John Cho Should’ve Been Hawkeye”)
• I do mention it briefly, but among the many Just Hawkeye Things, is like… did anyone else think it was weird that we know that, canonically, during the Thanos timeskip Hawkeye went around murdering Mexican and Japanese people?
• I really do hate Hawkeye!