Hawkeye: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 5
By Mike McNulty
A surprise reveal at the end of Hawkeye’s fifth episode becomes one of the most dominant Easter Eggs any Marvel Studios/Disney Plus series has ever had.
A lot happened in the penultimate episode of Disney Plus‘ Hawkeye. Entitled “Ronin,” we saw Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) take drastic measures to protect his family. Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) not only figured out Ronin wasn’t Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), but that there was more to her father’s death than she realized. Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) had a “Girl’s Night” with Kate. And Jack Duquense (Tony Dalton) was arrested for his ties to the Tracksuit Mafia, only for Kate to learn that he wasn’t the only criminal living under her mom’s roof.
As far as Marvel-related Easter Eggs go, on the other hand, they weren’t as obvious or plentiful as one might have expected. The ones we did get, however, not only tied back to earlier points throughout the series, but also to previous Marvel Studios projects and one other television series in particular.
In fact, three of the things we’ll be taking about are actually related to, shall we say, someone who makes a very big presence on the series, and perhaps the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward. But before that happens, we do have to talk a little about the new Black Widow. And, as always, there are SPOILERS involved not just with Hawkeye, but with other MCU projects, too.
What happened to Yelena after Black Widow?
“Ronin” opens with a pre-credits prologue which also serves as a mini sequel to Black Widow. It appears that two years after the events of that movie, Yelena took on her sister’s task, travelling the world and deprograming other Black Widows like herself. We also learn that she was one of the Blipped.
Just like what happened with Monica Rambeau in WandaVision, we get another dramatic example of what it was like for those snapped out of existence by Thanos from their point-of-view. Only this time, we do see that for them, it literally did seem like they were only gone for five seconds instead of five years, especially when the décor of the bathroom changed right before Yelena’s eyes.
This also doesn’t just reinforces the trauma of having years of one’s life suddenly gone, but also makes it even more horrible for those who knew it was coming. Because although folks like Yelena weren’t aware of what happened to them, what about those with a heightened sense of awareness? The reason we saw Peter Parker double over in pain prior to his own disappearance in Avengers: Infinity War is because he literally felt himself being erased because his spider-sense was warning him about it.
Yelena also appears to have taken on some of the more jovial personality traits of her father, Alexei Shostakov, a.k.a. Red Guardian. After all, when she sat down opposite Kate eating Macaroni and Cheese with lots of hot sauce, how could you not think of the awkward family dinners Alexei, Melina, Natasha, and Yelena used to have as a family?