Hawkeye: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 6
By Mike McNulty
The season finale of Hawkeye brings plenty of Christmas cheer, and plenty of Marvel comics related goodies and callbacks.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all you Marvel-ous Easter Egg and clue finders out there. Or at least it’s Christmas and a week before New Year’s when your humble writer is typing this. And who would’ve thought that a Disney Plus series about the Avengers’ “weakest member” would prove to be quite the pleasant little Christmas present that it turned out to be? Or that it would also be a secret Daredevil spin-off?
It will also be our last Easter Egg hunt for the year, until the arrival of Moon Knight, She-Hulk, or Secret Invasion whichever comes first. So let’s go find some more hidden treasures hidden throughout the season finale of Hawkeye, appropriately titled “So This is Christmas?” That includes seeing what other volley of trick arrows Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) manage to unleash. But our first target has to start with the guy who stole the show last week, and pretty stole this episode, too.
Even more of the Kingpin
As teased at the end of the last episode, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) is back, and is the “Big Guy” who also “helped” Eleanor Bishop (Vera Farmiga) with her many problems, including paying off her late husband’s debts; framing her fiancée, Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), for the murder of his uncle Armand; and hiring Yelena (Florence Pugh) to assassinate Clint. He also, as it turns out, is a walking Easter Egg in this episode.
For starters, not only is the Kingpin first shown wearing his classic white Armani suit, he’s also carrying his signature diamond-handled walking stick cane. Although a mere accessory here, in the comics it contains a hidden laser cannon, with the tip of the cane acting as the gun barrel. In addition, the diamond contains a vial of sleeping gas designed for knocking out opponents in close-quarters.
In a later scene, the Kingpin goes through a slight wardrobe change, choosing to wear a red-and-white Hawaiian shirt underneath his Armani. This an outfit that’s lifted directly from the pages of Marvel’s original graphic novel, Spider-Man: Family Business by writers Mark Waid and James Robinson, and artists Werther Dell’Edera and Gabriele Dell’Otto. Curiously, the plot of the graphic novel bear no relation to the actual story from this episode. Family Business involves Peter Parker meeting his apparently long-lost secret agent sister, Teresa, as they embark on a globe-trotting adventure, where the come across an exiled Wilson Fisk attempting to break into a secret Egyptian pyramid.
There’s also a couple of callbacks to Netflix’s Daredevil, as well. Seems that Kingpin still wears the Kevlar woven suits designed by Melvin Potter (a.k.a. Gladiator in the comics), as he was able to shrug off Kate’s arrows, multiple explosions, and being hit by a car. Also, those cufflinks that Kate threw to trigger the trick arrows (itself a callback to episode 4 where Clint taught her his coin tossing technique)? Those belonged to Wilson Fisk’s father, which Fisk himself would keep as a kind of twisted memento. And if you saw the first season of Daredevil, then you know just how twisted a keepsake those cufflinks really are.