This review contains spoilers for episode 3 of Hawkeye.
Before Hawkeye premiered on Disney+, Marvel Studios announced a spin-off series called Echo about Alaqua Cox’s character Maya Lopez, who was teased at the end of the second episode. The prologue of the third episode, aptly titled “Echoes,” acts as sort of a backdoor pilot for this spin-off, detailing Echo’s origin story.
From the offset, Lopez is a sympathetic villain. Well-developed villains are rare in the MCU, and villains that the audience can relate to are even rarer. After the prologue shows Ronin murdering everybody in Echo’s crime syndicate – including her father, the boss – it’s clear that she has a valid reason to want him dead.
Like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye didn’t team up its lead heroes right away. The first episode ended with Clint saving Kate from the Tracksuit Mafia and the second one ended with Kate trying (and failing) to save Clint from the same mafia. “Echoes” finally brings the duo’s first proper team-up as they both escape from captivity.
Clint And Kate’s First Proper Team-Up
The episode’s action proves that they make great partners when Clint has the patience to deal with Kate. They have strong communication when they’re fighting enemies together – even when Clint can’t hear – and their in-sync actions are reminiscent of Clint’s experiences with his previous battle buddy, Natasha Romanoff. Kate has a lot of fun with Clint’s trick arrows and Clint is genuinely impressed by her skills as an archer. Unlike Sam and Bucky, they’re developing a real dynamic based on their differences.
It was clear from the first two episodes that Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld share terrific chemistry, but they get even more chances to show it off in “Echoes.” Clint breaking his hearing aid in an early scene adds a fun twist to the dynamic of a stoic man-of-few-words antihero and his talkative young apprentice.
Hawkeye Tackles Its Themes Head-On
A lot of Marvel’s Disney+ content has touched on interesting themes without really digging into them. WandaVision, for example, introduced the theme of grief with Wanda’s inability to deal with Vision’s death, but didn’t have much to say about it beyond a couple of quotable one-liners.
In a key dialogue scene in a restaurant, Hawkeye gets stuck into its themes. Clint and Kate have a fascinating conversation that contrasts Clint’s view of himself with the way Kate sees him. Thanks to his dark days under the guise of Ronin, Clint’s own narrative is that he’s a bad person who shouldn’t be looked up to as a role model, but Kate begs to differ. She’s idolized him since she was a kid and, even within the past three days, she’s seen plenty of evidence that he’s a hero with a good heart. The truth is, like everybody, Clint is somewhere between 100% good and 100% bad.
MCU stories rarely deal with these moral quandaries, opting instead to go for a black-and-white view of good and evil in which a straightforward hero takes down a straightforward villain. In “Echoes,” Hawkeye has established a hero who doesn’t think he’s a hero and a villain who doesn’t think she’s a villain, both of whom have both positive and negative qualities. Future episodes will need to explore this further, but it’s a great start.
The Action Scenes Are Spectacular
With the first episode’s wine cellar fight and the second episode’s fencing duel, Hawkeye came out of the gate with some thrilling action sequences, and the action in the third episode is even more spectacular. Directing duo Bert & Bertie are best known for helming the comedy-drama Troop Zero, but they’ve proven an impressive aptitude for action filmmaking here. They capture the first few minutes of the car chase teased in the trailers with a visceral unbroken long take from the backseat.
“Echoes” continues Hawkeye’s ongoing tradition of setting its action scenes in inventive places. The car chase takes a turn through a Christmas tree lot. During a fight in an abandoned kids’ play area, Clint hides in a ball pit and Kate pushes goons around in a shopping cart. Hopefully, this will continue throughout the rest of the series.
Again, one of the greatest aspects of Hawkeye’s Christmas setting is the way it impacts the soundtrack. Christophe Beck’s score continues to deftly blend his usual style of Marvel music with familiar seasonal melodies. This unique sound circumvents the MCU’s problem with forgettable music. In “Echoes,” the soundtrack also mixes in a few licensed holiday-themed pop hits like “Father Christmas” by the Kinks.
It Doesn’t Feel Like The Middle Of The Story
While “Echoes” is another strong episode for Hawkeye, it doesn’t feel like the middle of the story. Halfway through its six-episode run, Hawkeye is still setting up plot points. There isn’t much movement on the murder mystery teased in the pilot and the threat posed by the Tracksuit Mafia hasn’t gotten any bigger. The writers could be building to explosive payoffs for all these setups in the second half of the run, but it would be a first for the MCU’s Disney+ era.