Hawkeye Episode 5 is the penultimate instalment of an American television miniseries created by Jonathan Igla for the streaming service Disney+, based on Marvel Comics featuring the characters Clint Barton / Hawkeye and Kate Bishop / Hawkeye. The miniseries will run for six episodes in total.
Entitled “Ronin”, Hawkeye Episode 5 is – at about 40 minutes – the longest instalment in this miniseries thus far. Much of that runtime was spent setting up Easter eggs and MCU connections that function mainly as fan-service rather than plot points. In fact, nothing much actually happens in this episode. Which is a flaw of most of the streaming TV series that the MCU has been producing since WandaVision onwards.
The ultimate reveal – besides more Yelena (above) – in Hawkeye Episode 5 is of course saved for its very end when a certain highly anticipated villain is shown in the very final scene. The hints have been there throughout – “Fat Man”, “the Big Guy” etc etc etc. Those of you who have been following the internet chatter will know who exactly we are talking about. If you don’t then we won’t spoil the ‘surprise’ for you.
So that’s a huge problem – there are so many setups and special reveals prioritised in these TV series that any drama and tension in the story is sacrificed completely in its service. Which has always been a criticism of the MCU of course, and with these streaming TV series, the need to constantly set up other stories gets in the way of story-telling and reduces these series to expository functions only.
And so, most of what passes for sub-plots get resolved in the final episode – or we hope so anyways! Will diehard fans be getting any more guest appearances – will it make any difference to the story at hand? We will have to find out….
Now streaming on Disney+.
… still there’s more …