TV

This Avenger’s done with Ronin from his past

DRINKING GAME

Knock back a beverage of your choice every time…

One of the characters brandishes a sword.

There’s a conversation involving sign language.

Clint or Kate uses a trick arrow.

Clint is dismissive of somebody calling him a hero.

You can hear a Christmas song.

Clint promises to be home for Christmas/apologises for not being home for Christmas.

A member of the Tracksuit Mafia says the word “Bro”.

“You might want to lose the bow for the subway.”

EPISODES 1.01-1.06 Christmas 2021 was a double whammy for Marvel, with Spidey ruling the big screen and Hawkeye scoring a bullseye on TV.

While both trade on their live-action Marvel heritage (beyond just the MCU), tonally they’re different beasts. No Way Home heads off into the magical, mindbending realms of the multiverse, while Hawkeye is almost a step back towards the street-level superheroics of the Netflix Marvelverse.

For the moment, Marvel is adeptly using its vast tapestry of continuity to explore new aspects of the superhero genre without having to reinvent the wheel each time. Hawkeye takes full advantage of that opportunity.

In one respect Hawkeye is another stepping stone towards Avengers Mark II. Just as Black Widow gave us a younger Widow for the franchise to take forward, here we have Clint Barton reluctantly becoming mentor to the young woman who takes over his mantle, Kate Bishop, a spoilt rich kid who’s idolised Hawkeye ever since she saw him in action during the Chitauri attack on New York. Dreaming of becoming a superhero herself, she has trained in martial arts and archery and, of course, become preternaturally gifted at both. Quite frankly she’d be a preposterous, annoyingly entitled character if Hailee Steinfeld didn’t play her with such self-effacing charm.

Their paths finally cross when Barton takes his family on a Christmas break to New York, only to discover that his former persona as the cold-blooded vigilante Ronin has come back to haunt him. Throw in a bunch of bumbling gangsters who think red tracksuits are cool, various LARPers, a pizza-eating stray dog, a surprise villain, a musical version of The Avengers, trick arrows galore and some of the most inventive action scenes ever seen on TV and you’ve got a series full of tweetable moments.