The violent legacy of Ronin sits at the center of Disney Plus’ Hawkeye
Avengers: Endgame was happy to move past Clint Barton’s brief career as a murderer, but Hawkeye isn’t letting him off the hook yet
TV Features Hawkeye
This post discusses plot points from the first two episodes of Hawkeye, which premiered November 24 on Disney Plus.
Some of the Avengers made the most of the five years that lapsed after Thor (Chris Hemsworth) killed Thanos (Josh Brolin) in the beginning of Avengers: Endgame: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) had a daughter, Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) figured out how to be the Hulk and be smart at the same time, and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) helped coordinate worldwide (and intergalactic) rescue operations. Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), however, abandoned his Hawkeye gig and traveled the world murdering criminals as a vigilante named Ronin in an attempt to find some modicum of justice in a world where his family was erased by Thanos’ snap and various bad guys were allowed to live.
Clint quickly rejoined his friends, with the only real reminders of his years as a murderer being his awful new haircut and his decidedly grouchy attitude. When the Avengers brought back everyone who was lost in the initial snap, Clint even got his family back and pretty much immediately went back to his self-deprecating “I’m just a guy with a bow” quips in time for the big final battle. Everything worked out, and though his good friend Natasha was dead, Clint could finally put Ronin behind him to live a nice life in peace.
That’s the plan going into Disney+’s Hawkeye, at least, and it’s quickly derailed by the snooping-related shenanigans of Hawkeye fan and world-class archer/gymnast/shenanigan-instigator Kate Bishop (Dickinson’s Hailee Steinfeld), who steals the Ronin suit from a bad guy auction and wears it while beating up a bunch of tracksuit-wearing goons, ending up all over the local news in the process.
Clint immediately sends his family away and jumps into action, both to find out who’s wearing his suit and to get rid of it (and therefore the memory of his time as Ronin) once and for all. Hawkeye leaves this as mostly subtext, but Clint’s time as Ronin hangs over his head pretty clearly in the show’s first two episodes, so it seems like it’s going to be the thing that drives him as the show goes on.
It’s unclear at this point if he’ll face any real consequences for the people he killed as Ronin or if he’ll just have to personally reckon with the fact that he’s a murderer (the show pointedly notes that the general public doesn’t know who was originally in the Ronin mask, and Clint’s in no hurry to change that). Thankfully, Hawkeye is at least letting that surprising character beat from Endgame stand and not just jumping eagerly back to the status quo.
At the same time, the legacy of the Ronin persona is an important part of Hawkeye’s history in the comics, especially in terms of how he passed the Hawkeye name down to Kate Bishop, and it provides a potentially important clue for what might happen in the Disney+ series. In the comics, Clint first wore the Ronin suit after being brought back to life by the Scarlet Witch during the House Of M event. He had just met Kate Bishop, who had since adopted the Hawkeye name, and he decided to let her keep it after being sufficiently impressed with her skills (as seen in Young Avengers Presents #6).
Comic book Clint didn’t become a secret murderer as Ronin; he was just Hawkeye in a different costume and with a greater emphasis on sword stuff. But he kept the name until after the good guys stopped a nefarious plot from Norman Osborn, a.k.a the Green Goblin, that involved a team of evil Avengers—with Daredevil villain Bullseye as the phony Hawkeye (as seen in the Dark Reign arc). Eventually, Hawkeye became Hawkeye again but encouraged Kate to still be Hawkeye as well, which was how things stood in the fan-favorite Matt Fraction/David Aja Hawkeye series that the show is partially based on and it’s how things have stood ever since.
But, Clint wasn’t the first person to wear the Ronin suit in the comics. That would be a woman with the ability to perfectly replicate anyone else’s fighting moves named Maya Lopez, a.k.a. Echo, who was raised by Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. the Kingpin, to be an assassin. She later realizes that the Kingpin is a bad guy and tries to kill him, resurfacing later as the mysterious vigilante Ronin and helping Luke Cage’s New Avengers team from time to time before passing the Ronin suit and name on to Clint.
Maya Lopez (played by Alaqua Cox) makes her MCU debut in Hawkeye, and she pops up for the first time at the very end of the show’s second episode. She will also be getting her own spin-off at some point in the future, indicating that Marvel Studios has some plans for the character.
She seems like a bad guy so far on Hawkeye, but maybe Kate and Clint will show her the error of her ways, maybe she’ll serve as the justification for the introduction of the Kingpin to the main MCU timeline (for now, Netflix’s Daredevil, though MCU-adjacent, isn’t canon), or maybe she’ll kick off a vigilante mission of her own. Whatever happens, it seems like the Ronin suit and the people Clint killed while wearing it aren’t going to be swept under the rug just yet.
45 Comments
So Echo can mimic everyone’s moves (I see how the name works) and they’re seemingly use the character but they previously decided to X-Men Origins: Wolverine Taskmaster despite the almost decade before that it took to repair that mess with Deadpool.I can’t even.
Tasky is fine. It’d be one thing if the movie said, “This is Tony Masters, THE Taskmaster” the way Origins did with Wade/Deadpool. But instead, they gave a different character the Taskmaster codename and left it at that. It would be so easy in a future installment to introduce Masters as having assumed the codename. The two situations really aren’t that similar at all.
The problem for me was that I found a Youtube video that fit all of Taskmaster’s fight scenes into about 3 minutes. Also Taskmaster, like Deadpool is known for his verbal quips to a degree at least. So off course lets relive the sew up Wade’s mouth fiasco even in spite of the subsequent years spent undoing it as already there as a lesson of things to undo.Putting all that to one side, I did see a quote from one of the scriptwriters saying he tried to use Tony Masters but “couldn’t see how a mercenary like him would go work for someone like Dreykov.” If only there were countless examples from history to draw from.Between this and the head writer of WandaVision saying they didn’t know who Mephisto was despite using a significant part from one of his stories despite using it in the show, I do wonder sometimes where they find these people.
Marvel don’t hire writers and directors with encyclopedic comics knowledge, nor should they. There are always people in the writers room (or producers) who know that shit. I think the massive critical and commercial success of the likes of Wandavision vindicates them. Mephisto would have been a far less compelling villain than Agatha.Taika Wattiti claims to have only read one single issue of Thor, which he didn’t enjoy, and he made one of the best Marvel movies.
Yup. Comics fans have a misconception that they’re Marvel’s target audience. The fact is, they’re too small a demographic to build a strategy around. Movies definitely get every comics fan into the theaters, but comics rarely get more than a couple movie fans to wander into their LCS after. Money-wise, it’s a one-way street. So why cater to the small money when 90% of their target audience won’t give a shit about how faithful it was?And I’ll admit, as someone who does read and love the comics, and who specifically has a soft spot for Taskmaster…I really didn’t give a shit, either. It worked thematically, it worked emotionally, it made for good action sequences. That’s all I needed from it.
Given the state that Black Widow’s Taskmaster is in in the movie, it would also be simple enough to have the character develop into a more comics-accurate portrayal over time without all the mind control and such.
This whole thing is proof that grown ass adults will complain about whatever bullshit they think is oh so important to the universe this company has spent billions developing just because it isn’t the exact same as the comics. as someone who didn’t know who the hell taskmaster was going into that movie and doesn’t really care after seeing it, yall can shut the hell up with your “shes not my taskmaster” bullshit.
Wasn’t Taskmaster in Black Widow?
I think OP was comparing Taskmaster’s presentation in Black Widow to Deadpool’s presentation in X-Men Origins: Wolverine
I’ve made the same argument on various occasions!
If it wasn’t Tony Masters, then no Taskmaster wasn’t in Black Widow.I’m not unreasonable, though if what they were trying to pass off as Taskmaster was any good, I would accept it – but it wasn’t. Neither was the film in general if we’re being honest.
Can’t even what, stop being a total ding dong?
I believe that’s more your specialty going by our respective comment histories. I’m more scorching often dated hot takes.
There’s only one dominant Taskmaster in today’s popular culture and his name is Greg Davies.
I completely concede your point about Greg Davies.
God, I’d love Greg Davies to turn up in an MCU movie and give everyone shit for the whole runtime.
I saw Ronin and thought John Frankenheimer. Nope, just some nerd sht.
“he’ll just have to personally reckon with the fact that he’s a murderer”What? Didn’t the first Avengers movie state that Hawkeye was just as much of an amoral assassin as Natasha Romanoff?
You and I remember the first Avengers movie very differently.
“But let’s do a head count here. Your brother, the demigod. A super soldier, living legend who kinda lives up to the legend. A man with breathtaking anger management issues. A couple of master assassins and YOU, big fella, you’ve managed to piss off every single one of them.”
From a purely fictional standpoint, I don’t think the work of an assassin is necessarily amoral. I wouldn’t even say that all fictional assassins are murderers, especially if they’re state sanctioned. But I honestly just never got the impression that Barton killed all that many people, even though he was one of Fury’s heavies for a long while. We see him ready to incapacitate Thor, and we know he was sent to “kill” (Natasha’s assessment, not exactly unbiased) Black Widow, and decided not to, to no apparent reprimand. How red is his ledger, and if he didn’t cry about it as much as Natasha did, why did he suddenly get all weepy over his Ronin persona in Endgame?
I think it’s the context of the Ronin persona, really. I mean, that wasn’t him assassinating targets under some misguided/conditioned ideal of a greater good, but really taking out his anger on people he could justify killing. Any wetwork he did with SHIELD was assassination, but as Ronin he was practically a serial killer. He thought his family was gone and not coming back; he was expecting Ronin to be a one-way trip he’d never have to come back from and answer for beyond one of those criminals finally getting him one day. And then, after his whole crusade going after people that he felt didn’t deserve to live, Natasha (who spent the last five years actively working to keep the rest of the world in one piece) sacrifices herself for the Soul Stone and Clint with his five-year-murder-spree is left behind. I think it’s less about him feeling bad about what he’s done and more about him feeling like he didn’t deserve to live when Nat died. Retrieving the suit is more about making sure nobody can ever connect it back to him (and by extension, his family), but it’s the reminders of Nat (like at the musical) that are eating at him more.
I’d point out that this is Tony’s description of them, which isn’t necessarily completely accurate. Fury probably wouldn’t have described them that way. Also, note that Cayde originally said “amoral assassin,” and Hawkeye has been clearly depicted as possessing a moral code.
Just because Tony called Hawkeye a master assassin doesn’t mean he actually is one. Hell, Tony had just met him when he said that.
It’s a bit open there… Widow was an actual assassin; she killed people for the KGB (or whatever).I think ‘assassin’ is supposed to be synonymous with ‘non-powered secret agent’ or something. We certainly never got real confirmation on his background, and he never showed remorse for his past deeds like Widow constantly did.
So you forgot the part where Tony Stark describes Hawkeye as a master assassin?
Loki contended that BW was amusing in her attempt to salvage a man no more moral than herself. And since he had a peek into Barton’s brain, it may be that Hawkeye (a reformed bad guy) had done some bad things. But maybe Loki was bullshitting for advantage.
I think even if he was an assassin before, at least he was working for SHIELD, so I guess they were state-sanctioned? Which doesn’t make things necessarily okay, but it’s at least kind of a justification as compared to the ton of killing he did as Ronin which was basically just him turning into the Punisher but with swords.
Earlier than that. His literal first on-screen appearance is getting into position to kill Thor if Fury says the word.
A tortured vigilante who humourlessly killed bad guys without remorse – maybe Hawkeye’s real shame is that the Snap temporarily turned him into a DCEU character.
“Sorry, guys. Don’t know what came over me. I had sort’ve an… Oliver Queen moment, there, huh?”
“Urge to use Salmon Ladder rising*
Joke’s way too old.
maybe Hawkeye’s real shame is that the Snap temporarily turned him into a DCEU character
Wait until he finds out how many people have Failed This City.
so how evil you think kate’s mom is gonna turn out to be?xx
Seeing as how Vera Farmiga, who has been known to portray casually evil/unhinged characters, I’d say 8/10. Capable of horrible things but not as bad as killing her own daughter.
She’s a villain who works for Madame Masque in the comics so that wouldn’t be shocking. Though I think they may have her actually be Madame Masque, rather than working for her, just for simplicity’s sake.
Comic book Clint didn’t become a secret murderer as RoninYeah, he was more like a public one in the comics.
I’m looking forward to seeing what they’re going to do with Echo. I’m not particularly happy with what they’ve done with her lately in the comics, but from what it sounds like, this is going to be a slightly less recent version of her. I like how they’ve already set up the ASL, too. It’s a nice touch.
It’s interesting that Clint’s wife seems to know about Ronin/the suit–I view that as a positive development. I like the direction the show is headed in, and while I’d love to see someone like Kingpin introduced in the series, just having Kate Bishop introduced is enough.
We are all going to have to skate over a lot of things here. I mean they are never really going to cope with the “murderer” bit. Kate Bishop’s family are FISA/NSA (yet somehow she can’t just look up who was in Armand III’s place a bit before) and we are supposed to root for them. The LARP scene was supposed to be cute, and the moment where he lets that guy call him “Clint” was great…but that guy is a fireman who stole from a burning apartment. Kate is a rich spoiled brat. And Jeremy Renner’s character is supposed to be a Clint…and has been cast in that role many times (including in Mayor of Kingstown…not to be confused with Mare of Easttown) the blue collar guy, here he is even a midwesterner with a lot of kids…people there is nobody more LA actor than Jeremy Renner. The scenes where he is humble work, the scenes where he is like “why does everybody say I love you” and he’s auditioning for “Last Man Standing” are a fucking joke.