Hawkeye, Episode 4 and the Ghosts I Called

First of all, this is an episode analysis. With spoilers! So watch the fourth episode of "Hawkeye" first before reading on.

Christmas is going down the tubes. At least for Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye. He's still busy cleaning up Kate Bishop's mess. Disguised as Ronin, she's fallen on the Tracksuit Mafia's radar. The Clint had once driven driven by blind rage as Ronin once almost wiped out - and thus made the head of organized crime to the enemy.

(K)one open secret: the Kingpin.

On the run from Maya Lopez aka Echo - presumably something like Kingpin's foster daughter - Clint and Kate are also trying to solve the murder of Armand Duquesne. Their prime suspect: Armand's nephew, Jack Duquesne. But when they try to prove Jack's guilt, they run into his arms.

The Sword Master

Awkward silence. At the table where Clint, Kate, Jack and Kate's mother Eleanor sit. Like two caught kids, the two would-be investigators are allowed to explain themselves to mom and dad. Eleanor is worried about her daughter's safety. Jack finds it rather... exciting that Kate is working with a real Avenger on an Avenger case. But then it's still Eleanor who finds the words to make Clint wonder.

"Kate's not a superhero," she says.

"She's obviously not. But she's good," Clint says.

"So was Natasha Romanoff," Eleanor counters.

Oops. That one's been sitting. Definitely going to cause problems during the episode. But good, Clint was able to take the ronin sword from Jack without being noticed. Interesting: In the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Clint and Jack have never met. In the comics, however, Jack "Swordsman" Duquesne played an important role in Clint's life.

In short, as Swordsman, he once trained young Clint Barton until the lad became the best archer in the world. Together, they performed in a circus for outcasts. One day Swordsman, owing money, robbed his own circus. Barton found out. Swordsman fled, leaving Barton badly wounded in the fight. Years later, Swordsman resurfaced and has been a constant and bitter enemy of Hawkeye ever since.

Next lead: Sloan LTD. The name popped up in Clint and Kate's research. In fact, Clint's wife Laura finds out that Sloan LTD is laundering money for the Tracksuit Mafia and their "head honcho" Mephisto - no, fun, Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin, most likely. And the CEO of Sloan LTD: Jack Duquesne. While I'm still ruling him out as the culprit behind Armand's murder. But Jack is definitely not clean.

The Christmas party

Yay: Kate Bishop takes her mother's words about never being alone at Christmas to heart. Equipped with pizza, Christmas movies, gruesome Christmas sweaters, and a Christmas tree, she trudges to Hawkeye's lair. Clint, of all people, who sacrifices his family Christmas to fix the Ronin thing, would otherwise be alone because of her. I really like this Kate Bishop character.

Together, they come up with a plan. Clint tries to get to Maya "Echo" Lopez through Kazi. Kate, meanwhile, is to mobilize the LARPers from episode two to acquire new trick arrows. The medieval fantasy squad, after all, is largely made up of police and firefighters. And since Clint's stuff is stored in the police evidence room, they're supposed to help an Avenger in need. Two thoughts:

1. Now we know what the rather stretching episode two was for: to introduce the LARPers.
2. The Boomerang Arrows Discussion: One-on-one from the comic, but with the roles reversed.

In the Hawkeye comic by Matt Fraction and David Aja - known as Fraction Run - the trick arrows thing is kind of a running gag: Kate makes fun of the fact that boomerang or sucker arrows are totally useless. Like this:

She does this until it turns out (much) later that a trick arrow, such as the Boomerang Arrow, is quite useful after all. In the Right Situation. Something like this:

Then the show gets serious. Clint tells Kate about his best shot yet: The one he never made. It's a story we've known since the first "Avengers" movie: S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Hawkeye was supposed to finish off Natasha Romanoff, a KGB agent and member of the Black Widow program, back in Budapest. But he spared her, allowing her to get out. Since then Romanoff was not only a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but also something like a sister for Clint. Until her death in "Avengers: Endgame."

Plus: Kate finds out that Ronin wasn't someone Clint would have known, for instance, but Clint himself. I like how the series portrays the growing bond between Clint and Kate. It doesn't feel rushed. Or forced. The chemistry between the actors is spot on. The dialogue is well written. The characters grow on me. It's beautiful. Just beautiful.

The Rolex

Clint gets the part with Kazi done quickly. Kingpin, the head punk, continues to be mentioned without being mentioned: Apparently he doesn't like attention. Echo's vendetta against the ronin who once murdered her father does attract it, that attention. Kazi knows it's not good for Kingpin to be unhappy. Not for anyone.

Across town, Kate invites the LARPers right into her lair while they wait for the trick arrows to be brought to them. They're also supposed to be making new costumes for Clint and Kate at the same time. Clint doesn't think that's cool. More importantly, though, is the text message Clint gets from his wife Laura:

"The Rolex wasn't destroyed."

Wait, wait, wait. There was something. In the first episode, the Tracksuit Mafia raided the black market auction to get "a watch". The fact that the ronin costume was auctioned off, which Kate then put on, was just a coincidence. Earlier in the episode, Laura asked if something else could have been stolen from the destroyed Avengers headquarters: the watch.

That watch that one of the Tracksuit Mafia pocketed in the first episode?

The Black Widow

Watch sends a signal from someone else's apartment. Apparently, it could be linked to a female who has gone into hiding and isn't supposed to get busted. Who, Clint doesn't reveal. But no sooner has Kate broken into the apartment than she discovers who owns it: Maya. The fight begins.

On the roof outside the apartment, where Clint is keeping watch, a fight breaks out as well. A masked assassin. Hired by Maya? I don't think so. Because as Kate and Maya's fight soon shifts to the same rooftop, the assassin attacks Maya as well. With combined forces, Clint and Kate manage to drive off both Maya and the assassin. However, not before discovering the identity of the mysterious assailant. It's Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh.

We know Yelena from "Black Widow" in the MCU. Growing up as sisters, she and Natasha Romanoff were actually part of a sleeper agent program for the KGB. They later joined the Black Widow program in the Red Room, where they were trained and manipulated. It was only thanks to Natasha's help that Yelena was finally able to break free from the Black Widow program. But instead of living a free life, she allowed herself to be recruited by Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Fontaine, whose motives in the MCU are still unclear, has already recruited the U.S. agent in "Falcon and the Winter Soldier." And at the end of "Black Widow," she talked Yelena into believing Hawkeye was to blame for Black Widow's death.

In the comics, however, Yelena and Natasha never had a particularly sibling-like relationship. After all, Yelena was Natasha's biggest rival in the Black Widow program. Again and again they fought against each other. Once, however, Natasha succeeded in removing Yelena from the influence of the Red Room. She did this by having her and Yelena's faces surgically swapped à la "Face/Off". For a while.

Don't ask.

Yelena was able to leave the Black Widow program with it. She still resented Natasha for the temporary face swap. For a while, though, it helped her leave the life of a spy behind. First, she worked as an underwear model. Then she founded a wildly successful underwear empire and a couple of soft-core porn channels in Moscow. To do this, she housed abused sex workers in a fancy, big house in Havana and provided drugs to women suffering from AIDS.

Um... don't ask.

In the end, Yelena did take on the Avengers. During one fight, however, she was injured so badly in the torso that a mysterious A.I.M. scientist could only save her by turning her into an adaptoid. With that, she lost almost all of her humanity. But in return, she gained the ability to absorb any superpower she was attacked with. This made the former Black Widow one of the most dangerous opponents the Avengers have ever had.

The Farewell

As the episode comes to a close, things get dramatic. Clint feels reminded of the initial promise he made to Kate's mother: to protect Kate. Add to that traumatic, painful memories of Natasha.

"Somebody hired a Black Widow. The whole thing just got very serious very quickly," he says.

Clint and Kate are no longer a team. End of episode.

How did you guys like the episode? Drop it in the comments. The next episode analysis will follow next Wednesday, December 15.