The First Two Episodes Of Marvel’s Hawkeye Are A Beautiful Tribute To New York City And Broadway
The first two episodes of Marvel’s Hawkeye go deeper into original Hawkeye Clint Barton’s (Jeremy Renner) story as we are introduced to future Young Avenger Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). The show takes place during Christmas time in New York City as Bishop gets caught up in a criminal conspiracy that forces Hawkeye out of retirement to help her.
In the first episode “Never Meet Your Heroes,” we go all the way back to the events of 2012’s The Avengers, where a young Kate Bishop sees Hawkeye in action as her New York City penthouse crumbles around her. This inspires her to take up archery, which will ultimately prepare her to take on the Hawkeye mantle in the future. This episode also pays beautiful tribute to New York City and the Broadway roots of the city, with Brian d’Arcy James of Shrek The Musical, Hamilton, Smash, and more playing the late Derek Bishop, festive scenes of Christmas in the city, and a hilarious parody musical Rogers: The Musical stealing the show.
Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, known for Hairspray, Catch Me If You Can, and songs in Smash, wrote the song “Save The City” for Rogers: The Musical, inspired by the Battle of New York in The Avengers. We see the Avengers mixed with regular New York citizens and first responders singing a battle cry of “someone please save New York.” A number of stage veterans were brought together to bring the musical to life, including Rent’s Adam Pascal and Grease’s Ty Taylor as Lead New Yorkers, Aaron Nedrick as Iron Man, Avery Gillham as Hawkeye, Frozen’s Harris Turner as Hulk, Aladdin’s Jason Scott MacDonald as Thor, Meghan Manning as Black Widow, Pretty Woman: The Musical’s Nico DeJesus as Ant-Man, Tom Feeney as Captain America, and Jordan Chin as Loki. However, while watching the Broadway show with his family, Barton isn’t impressed to relive the experience through a musical number… especially the appearance of Ant-Man who wasn’t even at this battle.
Clint has plans to spend the holidays with his family, but things take a turn when he discovers someone… cough cough, Kate… is using his Ronin suit and gets caught up with some criminals you don’t want to mess with. As we dive into the second episode “Hide and Seek,” Clint attempts to help Kate disentangle herself from the Tracksuit Mafia while trying to get the Ronin suit back after its stolen by a… LARPer. Yes, that means we do see Clint dabble in some live action role playing to get the suit back. Meanwhile, Kate hides out in her aunt’s apartment, giving us a big Easter egg to Marvel Comics’ Moira Brandon. In the comics, Brandon was a famous movie star who later on in her retirement ended up saving Hawkeye and his wife from villain Crossfire and became an honorary Avenger. Eventually both Clint and Kate end up in the hands of the Tracksuit Mafia, where we get our first look at Alaqua Cox making her Marvel debut as Maya Lopez. While she seems to be in cahoots with the Tracksuit Mafia, this is just the beginning for her as she has a spin-off show coming down the line called Echo which will explore her life as a deaf superhero.
Hawkeye is a perfect tribute to New York City and delivers a fun odd couple duo with grumpy Clint partnering with hero-in-training Kate. Having the whole show set around the holidays brings a whimsical spin to this time sensitive story as they must wrap everything up before Christmas.
Catch Hawkeye out on Disney+.
