Hawkeye Was Better Than Anyone Was Expecting

Hawkeye. Image courtesy of Disney.

I think one of the most important things about making a good show or movie is knowing thyself. Getting the production team, actors, writing staff and show-runner all on the same page about fundamentally what kind of show they are making is critical to its ultimate success. And yet, it often doesn’t happen and the end-result is a tonally uneven show or movie where visions and styles clash and it feels messy. The Wheel of Time is a good recent example where it just doesn’t seem like anyone was on the same page.

Disney Plus’ Hawkeye was not a show that anyone was clamoring for. Hawkeye is widely agreed to be the lamest of the Avengers, so much so that SNL and others have parodied just how ridiculous it is that on a team of world-beating super-humans and literal gods, there is a regular guy whose super power is archery. And to their credit, the team at Disney knew this, acknowledged it and in fact based the entire show around the fact that, at the end of the day, the whole thing is kind of silly. They dialed in just the right tone for this project, and everyone knew what kind of show they were making. The end result is a Hawkeye series that is way better than it has any right to be, and than most people were probably expecting.

The show is compact, with six episodes. The cast is fantastic, especially Hailee Steinfeld who is such a terrific actress. I’m not surprised though, especially given how she helped elevate another genre flick like Bumblebee and show us that a Transformer movie can, in fact, be enjoyable. There are some really cool action sequences, in particular the Children of Men-style car chase. The cameos at the end are great. It’s well-paced and well-written. Sure, some of the jokes don’t quite land but overall it was a very solid series.

Much of this is obviously owing to the acting and the writing, but from a bigger picture perspective it comes down to everyone understanding what kind of show they were making - a hokey super hero series with an absolutely ridiculous concept. There is no way around that, and they didn’t try to fight it. By leaning into it, and designing entire sequences around the selection of silly but actually kind of clever trick arrows, the show embraced its fun side and has so far ended up being one of the better, more coherent Marvel series on Disney Plus.

Marvel kind of stumbled earlier this year when they tried to give one of their other 2nd-tier Avengers a stand-alone film. So it’s pretty refreshing that they pulled off this Hawkeye show, hitting just the right tone to make it all come together, because you just wouldn’t have expected that going in. Who the hell wanted a Hawkeye series? Turns out, we all did!