After the release of Black Widow, Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye was the only original Avengers character to not have his own solo venture. Now, in the same year, that’s come to us in the form of a six-episode Disney+ series, which, for the most part, was enjoyable — it’s better than Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but not as good as Loki, What If…? and WandaVision — which is a shame, because I really wanted to love it. I’ve always liked the character of Hawkeye, and this series had a lot going for it. Unfortunately, it fell into the trap many of the Marvel Disney+ series have so far.
The entire series seems to be written with anticipation, edging towards a major reveal near the end that eclipses what we’re supposed to be caring about. Rumors don’t help, but come on — there are a lot of those, most of them just theories, and many of them prove to be untrue anyway. Of course, the major Hawkeye reveal (which I won’t spoil here) did turn out to be leaked beforehand, but it was still kept under wraps rather well for most of the show’s run…until the last few episodes.
These problems have manifested in different forms, depending on the series. With WandaVision (the first), it was purely rumors — rumors that the character of Mephisto would appear and be behind everything, rumors that Doctor Strange would appear in the finale — and the actors didn’t exactly help. Paul Bettany himself said that there was a big cameo in WandaVision’s finale that hadn’t been leaked yet, and “[they had] fireworks together.” He was, of course, referring to the character of White Vision, also played by Bettany. It’s an expert troll, but might be seen as frustrating by fans expecting something more.
