Disney’s ‘Hawkeye’ Proves Accountability Is Impossible in the MCU
Hawkeye (2021) is a cute buddy comedy about the titular Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) passing on his title to a new generation. His protege is a rich trust fund kid named Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), who has idolized him since seeing him swing out of a building in the first Avengers movie. Cute Christmas decorations are everywhere, making it similar to the action movie Die Hard, only funnier. Running gags like the mob using “Bro Delivery Service” vehicles to transport its goons keep things moving enough for you not to think too deeply about the premise.
Yet the moment you start thinking, things fall apart almost immediately. One of the biggest problems with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has always been about accountability. The series has been more than willing to bring up important issues such as racial justice, wealth inequality, and government overreach, only to drop them to focus on the next big bad: the conversation about greater government oversight from the Civil War film was sidestepped to deal with the fallout from the Infinity War saga; the new Doctor Strange 2 trailer makes it’s pretty clear that Wanda Maximoff will not be held accountable for enslaving an entire town; and of course, every villain in the franchise is depicted as having a valid point, only for that point to be discarded for going too far (see Killmonger, Ultron, Karli Morgenthau, etc.).
We see this trend continue in the Disney+ show Hawkeye, where former spy and Avenger Clint Barton is being pursued by the New York criminal underworld for the terrible things he did following the first Infinity War movie. The narrative alludes to a deeper conversation about collateral damage only for Clint to walk away, facing zero accountability for those actions. We stop focusing on these deeds so that we can instead shift our attention to the “real” bad guys that run New York City’s criminal underground.
For those who need a refresher (something that increasingly is necessary when breaking down any MCU property), Hawkeye was one of the first Avengers (AKA those superpowered people who saved the world over ten years ago). He first appeared back in the original Thor movie in 2011. He is much older now — hence the need to reluctantly bring in new blood — and this makes for a premise you’ll recognize if you’ve watched any old school buddy cop movie.
Clint and Kate meet after she prevents goons from crashing an illegal auction. The hilariously named Tracksuit Mafia is trying to steal the suit of the mysterious vigilante, the Ronin (whose long since been MIA). Kate wears the suit to have some anonymity to stop the mafia from stealing it, and shenanigans ensue. This last-minute decision prompts the criminal underworld to believe that the Ronin is back on the scene, causing them to go after the inexperienced Kate. This forces Clint to come back into the world of vigilantism so that he can keep her safe, leading to a wacky and emotional set of fights scenes and revelations.
To add to the intrigue, we soon learn that Clint was the original Ronin. This fact is not so much a spoiler as a thing that happened over six movies and three shows ago, so you might have forgotten. He lost his entire family after the events of the snap (i.e., that thing that killed half of all sentient beings in the universe), and this sent him down a murderous rampage where he indiscriminately killed anyone he believed to be a criminal.
This history sets up an interesting premise, as we first believe that we will be earnestly exploring the fallout of those actions: the collateral damage that comes with doling out justice indiscriminately. The first primary antagonist is a mob lieutenant named Maya Lopez (played by Alaqua Cox), who claims that the Ronin killed her father. She understandably wants revenge for this extrajudicial killing, and much of the first half of the season is our leads trying to get her to stop her bloodthirsty rampage.
The second (sudden) villain is the assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), an MCU character first introduced in the movie Black Widow. She is resentful over the loss of her adopted sister Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson). Yelena blames Clint for Natasha’s death and ideologically serves as the voice of dissent. As she says to Kate in episode 5:
“I have a question for you….Why do you risk your life for him, Clint Barton? How has everybody forgiven him for his past?…You are so fond of him. It tells me you don't really know who he is….He came here to protect his reputation. Do you know how many people he has killed? The trail of blood that follows him, you could wrap around the entire world. ”
I would love to exist in a world where this criticism was treated seriously, but unfortunately, that world is not the MCU. Kate quickly justifies Clint’s collateral damage as necessary to save the world. Like every MCU property before this one, the nuance brought up by this show’s antagonists is sidestepped by the narrative. These two characters turn out to not have valid criticisms of Clint after all. Maya’s father was actually killed by Wilson Fisk, AKA Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio). Yelena’s hatred for Clint is ultimately a misunderstanding, as he didn’t kill Natasha at all. She chose to die in End Game so that the other Avengers could get the Soul Stone. These two people didn’t really disagree with Clint because the narrative isn’t willing to let us genuinely question his “good guy” status.
The series ends, not with Clint having to grabble with his decisions (and the ideology that led him to make those choices), but him ending pretty much where he started: with his family loving him and him being respected by the world-at-large for his perceived heroics. There is no greater oversight as he hands the equivalent of “WMDs-in-arrow-form” off to an entitled trust funder. There are no reparations to the victims he has killed in his long career as a spy and vigilante. Clint symbolically destroys the Ronin suit, as if symbolism can somehow make up for his past actions. His emotional change meant to stand in for accountability.
It turns out that all the depth the show first foreshadowed was never really there, to begin with: merely an aesthetic used to give viewers the illusion that they are watching something more meaningful.
In many ways, this show has broken my perception of the MCU completely. It has made me doubt I will ever see any form of accountability from these characters — No matter how many people they kill. No matter how they violate the sovereignty of nations and the personhood of “nonpowered” persons — it seems there will unfailingly be a big bad to justify these characters’ actions. Whether we are talking about tyrants like Thanos, or the criminal mastermind Kingpin, our heroes will always have to table conversations of accountability for another day.
Ultimately, this is a story about avengers — a word that comes from the Old French word avengier, which means “to take revenge.” The only justice these figures will ever know is retributive violence. They dole out “eye for an eye” punishments that categorize people and things into good and evil. Their methods are largely divorced from the systems of poverty and inequality that drive most people’s actions. Hawkeye was never going to be forced to question his actions following the Snap, and I was a fool for thinking that would happen for even a moment because that story would involve a solution more significant than simply punching and shooting at things.
Retribution is not accountability, and yet it is all these heroes seem to know, which makes me sad for our world. If the greatest heroes in our stories only know how to take revenge, what does that say about our models for justice?