Hawkeye season 1, episode 6 review: So This Is Christmas?

It’s Christmas in life and on Hawkeye. Your gift is a recap review of the season finale with some spoilers from Hawkeye and Spider-Man: No Way Home if you want them. So be warned. 

Hawkeye episode 6, the finale, premiered this week on Disney Plus and we’re here to find out how it all comes together.

Does it wrap up like a present with a neat little bow? Find out, I’ll be your guide.

A week before Christmas

Where we left our archers last week, Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) was averse to teaming up with Kate (Hailee Steinfeld) because of the risk involved. He’s a pro at this but it’s not the safest lifestyle, especially for a kid who can get hurt or worse.

Kate, however, proves she can handle herself just fine, even against a Black Widow (Florence Pugh) who just so happens to show up at her wrecked apartment for a chat and some mac n’ cheese – with extra hot sauce. (No arsenic sauce for this Grinch.)

Yelena just wants to talk because she has thoughts and opinions to unload about Hawkeye, a man she’s trying to kill, and she wants to warn or possibly convince Kate when the young wannabe hero hasn’t known him that long.

Hesitant in believing Yelena and trusting Clint, Kate learns what viewers and Marvelites have been keeping their fingers crossed for this whole time: her mom (Vera Farmiga) was working for the big man all along. And, yes, “the big man” is the Kingpin.

You’re a mean one, Mr. Fisk

Kingpin, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), is the mobster at the center of things and his presence here seems to make the Netflix Daredevil series canon – if Charlie Cox’s cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home didn’t mean that was a foregone conclusion already.

Vincent D’Onofrio has verified he is playing the same guy he played in Daredevil but there are a few differences between shows and portrayals. Most notably, he’s sporting a Hawaiian shirt and appears more powered up than before.

In the pivotal battle for Kate Bishop, he has the upper hand and just keeps on coming no matter what she does though she holds her own very well against Hawkeye’s extra comic book-y Fisk.

The thing about it is Fisk isn’t really the final boss; he’s more of a baptism by fire for Kate’s budding heroics and one piece of what happens at the climax mixed in with Yelena’s confrontation with Clint and Jack Duquesne’s swordplay.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Falconer

Now for that burning question: does this miniseries fit as a holiday entry? Between the setting and its themes of family and redemption established here, I say it more than qualifies.

Tributes to some timeless Christmas movies are thrown in as well. Accounted for are the battle plan to foil the bad guys, right out of Home Alone, and the office party thrown topsy turvy by terrorists as seen in Die Hard (regardless of whether you think that’s a Christmas movie or not).

And it’s the MCU so you know they subject us to Scrooged and National Lampoon levels of hijinx encapsulated by Hawkeye getting stuck in Rockefeller Center’s Christmas Tree and Kingpin getting blown ten feet in the air.

Home for the holidays in Hawkeye

In all, I think Hawkeye pulls its threads together into a fine entertaining yarn that keeps the Marvel train chugging into the next Phase. And there will be more than a good chance D’Onofrio’s Kingpin or at least Charlie Cox’s Daredevil will be along for the ride, which is what fans have been demanding.

But for now, Clint gets to spend Christmas with his family before, maybe, retiring and giving Kate the bow for good.

The full season of Hawkeye is now available to stream on Disney Plus for you to binge on this holiday.

Maybe you watched it all already. Tell us what you thought of it from beginning to end in our comments.