Relationship Spotlight: Kate Bishop & Clint Barton (Hawkeye)

*A few Clint-Kate-related spoilers.*

It seems like the most I’ve ever been invested in Clint in the MCU is through his relationships: with Natasha, with Wanda, and now with Kate. When he’s interacting with one of these characters, he works for me in a way that he often doesn’t on his own.

Clint Barton is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent superspy who, in the face of alien invasions or robot armies, usually just puts his head down and gets the job down. It doesn’t bother him that he goes up against superpowered individuals armed with a bow and arrow. He doesn’t scare easily, is what I’m saying. But when he first meets Kate, it’s not an exaggeration to say she’s probably not far from his worst nightmare.

Where Clint is discreet, Kate is an enthusiastic wrecking ball. Where Clint is taciturn, Kate overflows with a zillion questions, and as soon as she has his phone number, she will leave him endless voicemails (psst—he’s hard-of-hearing, Kate. If you’re gonna bombard him with messages, text him!) Where Clint is serious, Kate is excitable. As she gloms onto him as Hawkeye’s #1 fan, you can practically see the dismay behind his eyes.

So at first glance, this seems like a classic odd-couple duo. They’re such different people, and it might appear like Kate’s goal in life is to aggravate Clint and get in his way. But it doesn’t take long for their “just leave me alone, kid” relationship to develop into something more important for the both of them. Even though Kate is very green in the field and often blunders in before she’s ready, she absolutely has Clint’s back and is always willing to learn and improve. Once she wheedles Clint into showing her the ropes, she proves a relatively quick study, and she helps him out of a tight spot more than once.

But it’s about more than just fighting alongside each other. At a time when Clint is chasing some ghosts from his past, away from his family and not sure if he can take care of everything before Christmas, Kate is there. She helps him through a phone call from his son after his hearing aid gets smashed in a fight. When he feels down about being away from home (but won’t admit that,) she makes him take a few hours off for them to get into the holiday spirit: wearing ugly sweaters, watching Christmas movies, and listening to holiday music as they make margaritas. Once the truth comes out about the Ronin, she doesn’t condemn him but listens to his regrets and assures him that he’s still her hero.

And Clint could use a little of Kate’s energy and enthusiasm right now. The Tracksuit Mafia’s vendetta against the Ronin is stirring up a lot from his past, and he’s dwelling heavily on the loss of Natasha while also missing home. Kate’s goofiness and warmth helps draw him out, which in turn allows him to let her in. He becomes the mentor she craves, teaching her to be a better archer and showing her some of the skills (both hard and soft) that go into being an Avenger. By the end of the miniseries, it’s entirely believable that he’d invite her to come home with him for Christmas, which, considering where they start out, is quite the journey for both of them.

Character Highlight: Clinton Barton a.k.a. Hawkeye (The Avengers)

I feel like Hawkeye has never gotten quite a fair shake from me, and that’s in large part due to the first Avengers movie.  It was my introduction to his character, and it’s pretty lacking to say the least.  Even though he’s been given more characterization in subsequent movies, it still sort of fights with the blankness of my first impression of him (a few Hawkeye-related spoilers.)

True, I came to the MCU a bit backwards.  The Avengers is actually Hawkeye’s second film appearance, but even if I’d seen his cameo in Thor first, I still wouldn’t have had much sense of him.  Between the couple of minutes of screentime there and his first few minutes of The Avengers before Loki puts the whammy on him, there’s time to figure out that Hawkeye 1) is great with a bow and arrow and 2) seems to enoy deadpan snark.  That’s not a lot to go on, and putting characters under a spell is always going to resonate more when we actually know who they are and care about them.  (Granted, going into The Avengers, I only knew Tony and Pepper, but if I’d seen it as intended, Hawkeye would have still been the Avenger I’d known the least about.  By the time that movie hit, we’d met everyone else in more than just cameos – even Bruce had had the sort-of-canon(?) Edward Norton movie, not to mention the Hulk is much more of a pop culture figure in general.)  As it was, the main reason I cared about what happened to him the first time I saw it was because I saw how important he was to Natasha, and I cared about her.  Nothing to do with who he was, because I didn’t know.

That was a tough position to put Hawkeye in for his first big rodeo, and for me, he’s never quite recovered from that.  Every other MCU hero has made a bigger impression on me, including newcomers like the Vision, supporting heroes like Rhodey, and briefly-appearing ones like Pietro.  Because it isn’t like we haven’t gotten a better sense of who Hawkeye is since then – wry humor and a wicked shot, sure, but he’s also a competent agent, a loyal friend, and a (secret) family man with an apparent obsession with home renovation.  It’s just that that filled-in-later characterization can’t supplant the cipher I initially saw him as, and that’s a problem.

What I do like about Hawkeye is mainly how he relates to other characters.  I like his friendship with Natasha, especially in the last part of The Avengers; the “do you know what it’s like to be unmade?” conversation between them on the Helicarrier is particularly good.  I also enjoy their traded comments as they fight in Civil War.  But even more, though, I think I like his interactions with the Maximoffs.  His running feud with Pietro is great – despite what we know in hindsight, I still love that moment in Age of Ultron when he’s grumbling to himself about how he could shoot Pietro right there and no one would ever know – and it’s cool to watch the evolution of the quasi-mentor-thing he has going on with Wanda.  After being the only one not to get hit with her mind mojo and in fact giving her quite a good hit himself, he eventually becomes the person who helps her collect herself during the attack on Sokovia, giving her the focus she needs to use her powers for good and help protect the city.  The main reason he joins Team Cap in Civil War is because he finds out Tony’s keeping Wanda under house arrest at the Avengers base, and I like that.

Although I’ve come to enjoy him more than my first exposure to him as a Loki brain puppet, I feel like Hawkeye will always be near the bottom rung in my estimation of Avengersverse characters, and that’s a shame.  Because really, it’s about what was written for him rather than who he actually is as a character.