‘Hawkeye’ Episode 4: An MCU Fan Favorite Arrives to Cause Trouble (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Disney+ series Hawkeye, Season 1 episode 4, “Partners, Am I Right?”]
Hello, Yelena (Florence Pugh)!
It’s no surprise that Natasha Romanoff’s (Scarlett Johansson) sister would appear in Hawkeye, given the post-credits scene of Black Widow, which featured her learning the (extremely false) info that Clint (Jeremy Renner) was responsible for Nat’s death. She shows up to complicate everything for the duo of archers, just as they start to really bond — and as they learn more about Sloan LTD and what Jack’s really up to. Here’s how it happens.
Marvel/Disney+
After Jack (Tony Dalton) holds the Ronin sword to Clint’s throat, everyone — Eleanor (Vera Farmiga) included, since she was also in the apartment — sits down and has a nice chat, during which Clint reluctantly admits that Kate (Hailee Steinfeld) is helping him with a case. After that, Eleanor sees Clint out and asks him to be careful with her daughter, since, as she points out, “being good isn’t always enough to keep you alive.” After all, she says, look at what happened to Natasha Romanoff. Suspicious, Clint has his wife look into Sloan LTD, the Bishop family’s company, and she discovers that it’s a front for the tracksuit mafia. She also asks whether anything besides the sword (which Clint stole back on his way out) went missing—namely, the Rolex—and Clint’s clearly perturbed by the suggestion, so that Rolex means something.
Kate stays with her mother and Jack for a bit and sees how much they care about each other, which makes her feel bad about Clint being unable to go home to his family. She goes to see him at the safehouse apartment bearing “pizza and Christmas cheer,” and they plan to make a plan to take down the Tracksuits and Jack, who is CEO of the company… but instead they end up bonding while having a cute little Christmas party. Aww!
Disney+/Marvel Studios
It’s all very sweet until Kate asks him what the best shot he ever took was, and he says, “The one I didn’t take.” He doesn’t want to explain further, but Kate presses him, and he explains the “different call” he made about Natasha way, way back before the Avengers. She also correctly guesses that he lost his family in the Blip and that he didn’t just meet the Ronin: He was the Ronin. Their party ends on a somber note, with Kate going to bed and Clint having flashbacks to Nat’s death.
The next day, they do, in earnest, get a plan together. Kate goes back to the LARPers from the earlier episodes and asks one of them, who is an NYPD officer, to get Hawkeye’s arrows out of evidence lockup. Meanwhile, Clint goes back to the henchman Maya (Alaqua Cox) was closest to and tells him that her obsession with Ronin is going to get her killed—this is his, and by proxy, her, final warning. From there, he goes to meet Kate, who’s become part of the LARPers Christmas party (impressed by their work on their costumes, she volunteers to get them material for new ones plus “two more”). He then gets a text from his wife that says the Rolex is transmitting a signal from an apartment, so he and Kate, plus their arrows, head over to check it out.
Kate goes against the plan and breaks into the apartment, with Clint involuntarily serving as her lookout. She gets the watch (which Clint explains belonged to someone he used to work with who’s been out of the game a long time, but it could be tied back to them). She starts to leave, but she pauses when she sees a notepad with the names and ages of Clint’s family members on it. Too late, they realize it’s Maya’s apartment—and Kate can only listen in alarm as Clint is attacked. Then she’s attacked by Maya, although Clint says Maya’s on the roof with him, so… it’s not abundantly clear who’s fighting whom. Thanks to a zip line arrow from Clint, Kate makes her way to the roof and fights alongside him against a mysterious masked assailant and Maya. And, surprise! The masked woman is Yelena.
Maya’s knocked unconscious, Yelena gets away, and after the fight, Clint’s more than a little cross with Kate. “You’re not my partner,” he tells her. “You never were.” He tells her he won’t “do it”—meaning, he won’t involve her in a case that’s now significantly more likely to get her killed—and he orders her to go home, breaking her heart. (But don’t despair: If the trailers and promos are anything to go by, we still have plenty of this partnership in our future).
Hawkeye, Wednesdays, Disney+
