Hawkeye Episode 6 Finale (SPOILER REVIEW)

I have had a busy week with Christmas but I am finally here to review that last piece of Marvel content of the year. The Hawkeye served us with conclusions, shocking moments, and a lot to digest. In this season finale (hopefully there is a season 2 with this), Clint and Kate attempt to take down the Tracksuit Mafia once for all, which also involves Kate's mother, Eleanor, and the secret villain of the show - SPOILER ALERT!- Wilson Fisk AKA the Kingpin. You'd think that's it but how could we forget the return of Yelena, attempting to inflict her revenge on Clint, led to believe that he was responsible for Natasha's death. 

This finale, although, not the strongest episode of the season, does successfully tie up the loose ends that were brought up in the first place. Whether excuted properly or not, is hard to say as most of the story arcs did not have time to properly get us wondering let alone rooting to learn more about due to the number of episodes and episode runtimes. Especially with big reveal of Vincent D'Nofrio's return as the King of Hell's Kitchen was posssibly too short to muster that they way they ended things definitely leaves the narrative in this season jarringly wide open unlike most season finale that were satisfying to consider as a season finale whether setting up another season or not.

In terms of how Marvel studios plans on connecting to the Netflix-made origin of the character is unsaid but his return alone should excite fans of the Daredevil show especially after - SPOILER ALERT! - Charlie Cox makes an appearance in Spider-Man No Way Home. How will the MCU include the other characters from the Netlix catalogue is nowhere near to certain. 

We also gain a lot of revelations such as Laura Barton's involvement with SHIELD, the possible plot for the ECHO spin-off series, and the eventual redemption of Yelena. As it turns out, Laura was in fact Agent 19, the serial number for Mockingbird. For those who are comic book fans - will know that Bobbi Morse is Mockingbird and she actually marries Clint in the comics. In Agents of SHIELD, Adrianne Palicki's portrayal of the character was never called Mockingbird and had another love interest. Whether Hawkeye is canonizing the ABC show is unsure but they seem to be changing the narrative just a little bit by making his wife a former agent who had donned the moniker. 

Yelena, on the other hand, was finally given the truth as to how Natasha had sacrficed her life to save the world. She and Clint share the most touching moment in the episode as they reminisce their relationship with Natasha, making these character very much affected by her death. Inlcuding Yelena to this Hawkeye storyline puts a bigger dent to that loss of a character since we came to learn how close Yelena and Natasha were before and after the Red Room intefered and trained the two girls to be highly skilled assasins. Yelena's sisterly connection to Nat is just as strong as as the connection the two SHIELD agents share. This makes Yelena's redemption in this particular arc complete and satidfying as well as finally allowing these two characters to finally close the book on Natasha by letting her rest in peace. However, the redemption was entirely achieved with the possible future appearance down the line tackling with how she handles being misinformed. Making Yelena the coonstant vengeful character might get a little old so, I hope they wrap up that soon and properly.  

Speaking of vengeance, we seem to be heading towards that infamous storyline with Maya Lopez. After learning the involvment of Wilson Fisk with whatever that has been happening in the show, we also learn that the 'Uncle' from episode 3 was also him, making Wilson a sort of father figure to Maya, even if he was responsible for hiring Ronin to kill her father. Due to that, Maya attempts to kill Wilson by recreating an comic book scene but the camera pans away from the confrontation, leaving the audience with the sound of a single gun shot but with no idea whether she shot Wilson or not. Considering since Vincent D'nofrio's return seems pretty unlikely to be short lived let alone being only featured in one episode of Hawkeye, D'nofrio is without a doubt going to return to terrorize the streets once again. Whether its in the Maya Lopez-led Echo series or not, time will tell. 

The episode is honestly flawed but the finale does not consider itself a bad finale and I have seen some pretty bad ones. With that said, Hawkeye as a whole was a pretty thrilling ride. It might have been the least anticipated amongst all the other Disney Plus shows Marvel Studios had sprouted out this year but these six episodes were pretty strong entries to the MCU with the shock value, character developments and grounded action. I really hope there is a season 2 since Hawkeye was never confirmed to be Miniseries like WandaVision or Falcon and The Winter Soldier but there is still so much more Marvel content to come this upcoming year. I am sure there will be other things to be excited and ecstatic about beyond Kingpin's return.