‘Hawkeye’ Finale Analysis. Plus, Director Rhys Thomas on Kingpin and More
02:22:22 Share

Emmy award-winning producer, actor, and comedian Larry Wilmore is back on the air, hosting a podcast where he weighs in on the issues of the week and interviews guests in the world of politics, entertainment, culture, sports, and beyond. Check out Larry Wilmore Black on the Air on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Experian. I don't know if you've ever looked in your subscriptions on your phone and noticed that you...

had like four or five subscriptions, maybe you didn't realize you were still paying for, or maybe you got some email for something and you're like, I thought I canceled that. Well, this is what happens. These days, anyone could be missing out on savings from subscriptions they've totally forgotten about. It's not just the ones you forgot to get rid of, it's the ones that they have better deals.

And that's where Experian comes in. It's like a personal assistant for your subscriptions. It can cancel over 200 plus subscriptions in categories like streaming services, meal kits, entertainment apps, and more. You could save an average of $270 per year

Plus, they'll even let you know if your provider offers you a better deal to stick around. Find out how much you could save by downloading the Experian app today. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed. $270 a year average.

Estimated savings of one plus cancellation. Paid membership with connected payment accounts required. See Experian.com for details. This episode is brought to you by Alien Romulus, the scariest movie of the summer. Alien Romulus is now playing in theaters everywhere, including IMAX. This movie looks terrifying.

And I cannot wait to see it. Alien Romulus comes from Fede Alvarez, the director of intense horror movies like Evil Dead and Don't Breathe. And it is produced by the legendary Ridley Scott, the mastermind behind iconic films like Blade Runner and the original Alien. Can't wait for this one. Alien Romulus, rated R, now playing only in theaters. Get your tickets now. When I was younger, aliens invaded. I was alone and I was terrified. But then I saw you.

Fighting aliens with a stick and a string. That's how you jump from that building even though you can't fly, even though you don't have superpowers. And I thought if he could do that, then I didn't have to be scared. You showed me that being a hero isn't just for people who can fly or shoot lasers out of their hands. It's for anyone who is brave enough to do what's right no matter the cost. I'm ready.

Greetings and welcome into the Ringerverse here on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin, and it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only to Rockefeller Center, but to join us on the Ringer's Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. Joining me...

Today, now that she's finished shrinking down more tracksuits for Rocky the Owl's evening snack, much to Steve's delight, it is my house of our working title co-host, Ringer Senior Staff Writer, Joanna Robinson. Joe, hello, partner. Howdy, partner. Oh, my goodness.

Joanna, a few programming reminders before we dive into the robust and very full podcast quiver here today. The holidays are here, but the ringer verse is not going anywhere. Not only are we here with you today, folks, to talk about the Hawkeye season finale, but

We did such a long podcast that we're putting it out in two parts. Okay. We're here today with our finale analysis and a wonderful interview that Joanna will tell you about right now. Executive producer and director Reese Thomas, who joined us at the beginning of the season.

to talk about as much as he could at the beginning of the season without spoiling anything, is now back to freely talk about everything that he can now talk about. It's still Marvel. There's still things he can't talk about. But we're going to talk about trick arrows that might have been. We're going to talk about are people dead or alive? We got all kinds of stuff to chat to Reese about. And he was so generous with his time. So you got a nice long chat with him after our finale analysis.

Amazing. And then come back to the feed for part two of our Hawkeye finale chat, which will be a season awards discussion. We're going to hand out some sweetie superlatives. Shouts to Jack. Hi, sweetie. We'll be answering your mailbag questions. And Ben Lindberg, our resident Star Wars scholar, will be joining us for a few minutes to

of Boba Fett primer talk. What you need to watch, what you need to read to get ready for the book of Boba Fett, which is mere days away. That's not all, though. Next week, you can hear some Matrix talk. The Matrix Resurrections pod will be dropping on Monday on The Ring Reverse. That's a House of Midnight team-up. Joe, Van, and Charles plugged in for that one. That film is on HBO Max. You can stream it at home and then listen. And then...

Boba arrives, as just mentioned. So we've got the Midnight Boys, Van and Charles, pew-pew, dropping their instant reaction Boba thoughts next Wednesday. And then Joe and I will be back with our deep dive on Boba on Friday. So you just spent the holidays with Hawkeye and the MCU, and now you get to spend them with us. Okay? And I just got to say really quickly, Ben...

Did such a good job of getting me excited and ready for Boba. And you're going to want to get ready, too. You're going to want to get on our level, do all the homework. You're going to want to hear what Ben has to say about it. I can't wait for Boba. I'm so excited. This episode, excited to talk about Hawkeye. Next episode, Hawkeye, Boba, combo, transitioning into Star Wars. What a time. What a time here on The Ring of Rose. How can you follow all that, Jo? How? Well...

You can follow all of it by following the pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, by following our social feeds, The Ringer vs. on Twitter, The Ringer vs. on Instagram, The Ringer vs. on Facebook, The Ringer vs. everywhere. Okay? Spoiler warning. We are going to talk about everything that happened.

in the Hawkeye finale, so this is Christmas. We are also going to be talking across these two episodes about the Hawkeye season as a whole. We're going to dabble a little bit in some Netflix Marvel talk. We're talking about the entire MCU run to date. We're talking about Marvel Comics canon. All of it.

Okay. So proceed with caution on the spoiler front, more caution certainly than young Armand VII did when he dared to engage Jack Duquesne in a conversation about one day inheriting his wine collection. Do you remember when you podcasted in the Hamptons, Joe? Everybody does. Everybody does. All right. Let's pod. Let's talk about the Hawkeye finale. Joe.

overall impressions of the finale and the season. Give us the snapshot before we delve further into these specific character arcs and resolutions. I think if this finale had been a slam dunk, you know, I would feel overwhelmingly positive about the season. I feel mixed about the finale. And so I think that tilts it towards like a mixed positive feeling.

for the season as a whole. There's so much that I loved. There's stuff in this finale that I loved. But there's some wobbliness in the ending here that, you know, makes the whole thing feel a little more wobbly than it did. How about you, Mel? Yeah, I'm also mixed on the finale. I enjoyed some of it quite a bit.

And then did not feel as fulfilled and satisfied by other parts of it. I would almost like divide it into halves. I think the first 25, 26 minutes, um,

I was enjoying fun vibes, good energy, quirky moments, just enough heart. Felt like it had that real action adventure, street level holiday romp spirit preserved. A label maker. We got the label. You gotta love a label maker, yeah. All of that was wonderful. I think in the back half when, and we'll obviously run through all of the characters and the pairings and the groupings more specifically in a few minutes here, the resolution of certain character arcs

And the overall then way that we assess kind of the pacing and balance of the elements in the season based on where we netted out. And also, you know, what we might anticipate about what we could see in the future and other MCU installments. The second half of the finale and that resolution like left me wanting in some spots. Overall, my mixed response to the finale does not really change how I feel about the season. I mean, of course,

The finale is a part of how you view the season, and certainly my adoration for the Loki finale is part of why I loved that show so much. But overall, I really enjoyed Hawkeye. I had a bad five weeks. Me too. I had a great time with these six episodes. I think that at the most fundamental level, the show...

its mission of establishing Kate Bishop as Hawkeye and as a foundational part of what the MCU will be moving forward. I had an absolutely wonderful time with Yelena and Jack and Lucky.

I liked the contained timeframe. I liked the street level, like more intimate feel. There was a lot about it that I really, really loved. And I think that there are a lot of things about it that actually feel like successful templates for Disney Plus shows moving forward. I think that the questions about the finale and more broadly the

dreaded Marvel finale discourse is, of course, worth talking about for a second because this is not the first time that that has been a fairly widespread conversation point in the wake of a phase four television show. And I'm curious. And of course, that this the Marvel finale problem discourse

Disney Plus or these television shows or Phase 4. I do think there's something to the fact that this feels maybe a little more pronounced or lasting in the television shows than it does in the movies. And part of that is just structure, right? Van and Charles talked about this a bit on Midnight Boys.

If something about the conclusion of a movie doesn't work for you as well as the first couple acts of the movie, you're still leaving it contained two, two and a half hour, one sitting, one viewing experience, probably feeling like you had a lot of fun. Yeah. Or...

Over five, six, however many weeks, the hype and the buildup and the fan anticipation and conversation around the finales I think is inevitably, and I don't necessarily even think this is a bad thing, I think this is just reality, is going to foster a little bit more

of the possibility of a letdown because we all spend so much time talking about what we're expecting and then saying, oh, we either saw this coming or we didn't. It didn't live up to our theorizing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. For me personally, and I recognize that this is not necessarily everybody's take,

am willing to take that in the trade-off of having those prior handful of weeks together talking about and sharing it because I think that the shows have just been broadly such a delight in that respect. It is such a fun and fulfilling way to, as a Marvel and nerd culture community, spend a lot of time and energy and heart in

with the characters we're interested in getting to know better and with our own ideas and sense of possibility. So I've really loved the Disney Plus show phase four experience to date. I'm really excited for more. I'm excited for more Star Wars shows as well. It's not been perfect, but what is, you know? Other than Loki. Yeah, no, it's...

I think Jomi raised this point on Midnight Boys and you alluded to it just now, which is this idea that Marvel's finale problem is the same conversation as Marvel's third act problem, which is something we've been talking about in the films for a long time. And the question is, what do you want at the end of a Marvel story? Do you want an action-y spectacle or do you want some sort of emotional catharsis that

The best of Marvel somehow manages to do both. I would put Winter Soldier is my favorite example of that, but also Endgame or, without any spoilers, No Way Home, I think actually really delivered on a lot of emotional beats wrapped up in this final fight. But when you have a fight that feels...

Just more about the moves and the CGI and all that sort of stuff. And that's where, I mean, like, we talked about this a little bit before we started recording this podcast, but like...

The WandaVision finale, I didn't love it, but when I think about it and choose to just remember the things that I liked about it, I get really emotional thinking about Wanda and Vision and their final moments together. That emotional stuff in that finale really lands for me the way that the battle in the sky doesn't land for me. Falcon and Winter Soldier, I actually don't have anything other than like...

the barbecue at the end when Bucky goes to like hang out with Sam and his family. Like that I like and everything else in that finale feels pretty janky to me. And then the Loki finale, you know, I, I'm not as high, high, high on Loki as you are, but we both love that finale. And it's not just because Jonathan Majors comes in and does whatever he does with He Remains. It's because in that final fight, it's,

It's Sylvie and Loki sort of fighting through all their baggage. Like that's what that fight is about. You know what I mean? And so I think they try to do this in the Hawkeye finale. But honestly, I think the major issue in the Hawkeye finale is that there's just too many emotional equations that they're trying to balance. Where you're trying to give us Yelena and Clint and Eleanor and Kate and Maya and Kazi and Maya and Kingpin and all like balance all of that.

to be home in time for Christmas. And I just think that that's like too many things to try to do, too many trick arrows in the quiver. You know what I mean? And I think there's a lot that I did, as I completely agree with you, there's just like a lot to love in this finale, especially in the first half of it. But you and I talked about this last week where we were a little worried that adding Kingpin into the mix might distract from the Eleanor and Kate mix.

which is something we were really invested in seeing, you know, so. Yeah, I mean, I found the Eleanor resolution, I think, the least satisfying of anything in the show. And it was my concern, as excited as I was for Kingpin's arrival. And as glad as I am that Kingpin is here and that Vincent D'Onofrio is reprising the role, that trade-off, which we will talk about more as we go through Eleanor and Kingpin, we're obviously going to talk about, you know, Kingpin a lot over the course of the episode,

It just felt like one that was too easy to anticipate going wrong. And whether it's putting fewer pieces on the board in the first place or making the board a little bit bigger so that there are a couple more episodes or longer runways. And like on the one hand, I think that the middle episodes of the season, which were so tight and actually quite brisk, felt like perfect episodes. So I don't.

I'm glad that we got them in that form, and I don't necessarily want to mess with that calibration or how I'm not making the show, so it's not my decision to mess with them. I wouldn't want Marvel to mess with the calibration of that, but at the end of the day, as fun as it is to see Ivan and Thomas in the tracksuits and the Trusted Bro Vans and everything, as thrilling as it is for Vincent D'Onofrio's kingpin to be back in, I mean, Yelena was one of the absolute highlights of the show to me, and I probably wouldn't have...

I probably wouldn't trade Yelena's role in the show for anything, actually. But you start adding, adding, adding Kazi's history with Maya and the backstory that is fueling their interactions in the present. All of that. The bond that our two primary heroes share with each other, with Clint and Kate and their evolutionist partners. As you noted, the Nat backstory with both Clint and Yelena and what that leads to in the resolution there, that's just a lot. And so too many things are going to end up

like there's just not enough oxygen to fuel all of those fires effectively. And so the Eleanor thing just ends up like not, not, I think just not delivering. And that was one of the, that was one of the letdowns of the finale and something that we actually, I think you needed to see that pan out more fully because like Kate's relationship with not only literally Eleanor, but the idea of family and choice is so paramount inside of the show. I feel like that should have been a, like,

Like, it's not that... The Midnight Boys were talking about this, about how they would never send their mom to jail. I don't know if my mom murdered someone. I might, but like... But it still needs to be...

Is this what heroes do? Arrest their mothers on Christmas is a hysterical line of dialogue. It still needs to be a harder choice that we see Kate grapple with, I feel like. We need to feel the weight of that choice much more than we do. And Hayley is a tremendous act. In the lead up of her making it and to see the fallout of having made it.

Exactly. And Hayley is a tremendous actress, obviously. But like, so I'm not faulting the performance. I'm just faulting the lack of space for something that big. Because it feels like the transformative growing up moment for her as a character. Totally agree. I totally agree. I think that the stinger feels emblematic of...

the areas where the finale fell short ultimately. And this is nothing against the stinger itself or the delight of the fully realized Save the City, Rogers the Musical musical number. But we leave this show, whether it's what we're just talking about with Eleanor, everything that will break down with Kingpin and what the future might hold there,

and the Agent 19 reveal and the watch and how much more we're left wanting with that, on and on the list goes of possible stinger candidates that actually are deeply connected to the heart of the story and central core plot. And I think that the choice, the charm of the musical number aside to not actually spend a touch more time there setting up the

some of these key plot questions could be answered in the future strikes me as emblematic of the way in the back half of the finale at the very end there, those arcs fizzled a little bit. Let me suggest like one tiny tweak, one, you know, Friday morning quarterbacking suggestion for this, which is like, why not put Maya and Kingpin in a post-credit sting?

Like, airlift that encounter out of the episode and just make it the sting. I guess timeline, we're already at the Barton farm and it's Christmas, so to zoom back to the night of maybe doesn't make sense. But it's just like, that feels like a perfect is he dead kind of stinger. You know what I mean? I don't know. Anyway, point, I think the real issue here is

As we know that Marvel and Disney have decided to push back a bunch of their shows release date-wise. So I think they don't know what they're pitching to yet. Because WandaVision pitches to the Marvels, which is a movie we're not going to see forever. There are things I think they don't want to pitch to or sting to something when they feel less certain about when that thing might...

crop up. If that's true, I think that's a very astute observation. And if that's true, then it actually makes me... Because I think like... I don't even want to use the word concern. It feels too heavy. Again, I thought Hawkeye was a blast. Yeah. But if that's true, that would fuel any ember of concern that I do have coming out of this because...

when so much of the function of each project is not only to tell a contained story, but also to backdoor pilot X number of other projects, it's

It's important to actually know what those projects are going to be or how those connections are going to fan out. Of course, like I understand that there are so many moving parts and so much like intricate calculus that keeps the Marvel machine spinning eternally, generating all of these movies and shows and things that we love to consume and talk about all the time. But why? I mean, with Kingpin in particular, I think we can, you know, we'll talk about the possibilities of how that might

play out in Echo's spinoff. And so that one feels a little bit different because we do know we're getting an Echo show. But Laura and the watch, everything else, like, are these things going to come back into play or are they just little contained winks and nods? I think it's important in order to tell a cohesive story that does effectively not only function in a vacuum in the moment, but set the stage for what's to come to know at least a little bit about

what the intention on the what's to come front is. So, you know, I'm not a studio head. There are some realities there that I don't have to take into account, but... Balance of that equation, I both agree and disagree. The way in which I think Marvel does succeed is the way in which they're very flexible and responsive to how people are feeling about certain stories. So, like, the best example, I think, is Katherine Hahn as Agatha Harkness in WandaVision, where...

talking to Catherine Hahn at the end of that season, and I really believe this was the case at the time, she's like, basically they put her on ice at the end of that season, right? They put Agatha Harkness on ice at the end of WandaVision. And it's like, if we want to use her again, we can. But for right now, she's...

you know, Apple S saved into this spot over here. And if we want to use her again, we can. And then she's a runaway breakout hit from the show nominated for an Emmy, all this sort of stuff that they announced house of Harkness, which is not something that I think they were absolutely planning to do if that character hadn't been such a huge hit. So it's that flexibility of like, we'll tailor our plan to the entrance of the audience. Like,

The way in which Yelena has been such a hit, both in Black Widow and this show, I feel like is just going to make Marvel interested to use her more and more and more. You know, that they're responsive to what people like. The idea of maybe we'll see Kate and Yelena again together soon because they're so electric on screen together. Like all that sort of stuff. So I like that about them. But I agree with you, and this is a problem that goes all the way back to Age of Ultron. When you get too tied up in...

launching the next thing. You know what I mean? Like Age of Ultron launches a Thor story that we don't, that we don't really fully quite get with our Ragnarok because they wisely were like, maybe we shouldn't do that. Chris Hemsworth's like, I don't really want to do that. And they're like, great, we'll just reboot this character essentially, you know? And so I think that it's a balancing act that sometimes Marvel weighs too heavily the seeds that they're planting for the future. Yeah.

I think I'm just agreeing with you. You know, that's all. I'll continue to trust in Feige. I mean, hope it all works out okay. We have so many shows and movies coming.

Whatever it is, summer just amplifies that drive. It's the prime time season to level up your fitness routine. Peloton gets that. They've got programs that cater to every runner out there. Seriously, 457,000 members have worked out with their running programs. And especially in the summer, if it's super hot, you don't want to work out outside, stay indoors, hit the Peloton. So whether you're training for a marathon or just looking to improve your pace, they've got you covered with everything on the Peloton Tread, Tread Plus, or

or the Peloton app. It's like having your own personal coach with you or right at home in your living room. Call yourself a runner with Peloton at onepeloton.com slash running. All right, let's dive into the characters from the finale a bit more, Joe. Let's start before we get to Eleanor, before we get to Kingpin, before we get to Maya, Lara, et cetera. Start with our Hawkeyes. We got two of them now. Clinton, Kate, partners, found family.

How are you feeling about our duo? I will say that's something I loved about the, you know, before the Rogers the Musical reprise was the way the title card ended the series. I thought that was really brilliant. Steve Rogers doesn't get to give Kate the Hawkeye moniker in the MCU the way that he does in the comics. I thought he might fly down from the moon, you know? Where's Steve? Hashtag where's Steve?

Anyway, it's beautiful to see Kate and Clint working together. You know, love to see them in their matching outfits, all that sort of stuff. They had that real...

Without the sexual tension, Rey and Kylo lightsaber fight in the Last Jedi moment, sort of when they go slow-mo with their bows together. But, and I love all that stuff. And I love, I mean, you know, I think you predicted this, but this idea that like Kate is saving her, I saw you in the Battle of New York anecdote for the finale felt really strong. And I just love the healing and instruction that they can offer each other, right?

Again, I think I could have used even a little bit more space for that in this finale, but I love the vibe and I think it was a really tricky thing to do, a tricky prompt that they set for themselves to get us to care about Renner, get us to care about Clint, and make these two personalities mesh together, which I think they really landed. How about you? You know, it's not going to surprise you to hear that seeing Clint and Kate...

Holding hands and hearing Clint tell Kate that he's proud of her and seeing Kate and Lucky head to the Barton farm for the holidays. Our guy Lucky has his name. Kate has her moniker. It hit Joe. Yeah, I didn't get you. Bullseye. Bullseye right in the heart.

I loved it. I loved it. Of course, I would have taken more time with the two of them as well. I think that some of the things I would have liked more time with are specific to actually each of their individual arcs. I felt that their shared arc and this building toward a fully realized partnership was well done and really satisfying. And I think that, you know, to your point about how they're helping each other, like that was...

That was really well done. And that's obviously, you know, so fundamental to the fraction comic run, the idea that Kate is like constantly the one who's rescuing or assisting or bailing out Clint. And I think that, you know, there are moments where they're doing something new and sharing something new together or Clint is letting Kate

his life and into the fray a little bit more, you know, crafting the trick arrows together and that kind of sequence of like not only the invention and necessity of being a person in this universe who is not super powered and has to find your way. Like you have to figure out how to do this and how to fight and how to make it

work for you. Like, I really liked that stuff. But just the fact that they were doing it together on the heels of him, like, a year episodes ago, that's no more of this stuff. You know, okay, let's go make it together. Well, if we need more of it, we'll figure out a way how. The outfit, the outfits, the new matching outfits, like the LARPer hive just showed up strong here. Home for the holidays, the naming sequence,

it's not just Clint imparting wisdom to Kate. She is helping him grow and open up and, and,

make changes and adjustments and look inward. And that's something that he's doing on his own with everything with Natasha and Ronan, which we'll talk about more. But they are helping each other learn and mature and grow. And that's obviously the key to any true partnership. In terms of a couple of the moments where I think these themes came to the fore most potently, I was struck by, I'm curious if you agree,

The moment where Clint says, you know, you don't have to do this, this is before the party, before the holiday gathering, which, as you noted...

literally scheduled on Christmas Eve. Obscene. Eleanor. Social faux pas. What are you doing, Eleanor? Come on. The true supervillain act from Eleanor Bishop. But he says it's always inconvenient. It's lonely. You will get hurt. Heroes have to make some tough decisions. So if you're going to do this, I just want to know you're ready.

It was a subtle shift and a subtle evolution, but it felt to me a little bit different from his other speeches to Kate throughout the season where...

In this moment, he wasn't trying to talk her out of something or point out something that she was too young and inexperienced to understand. He was genuinely from a place of mutual respect and investment in each other, preparing her for what awaited and making sure that she had what she needed and was ready to take that next step. So that stood out to me. I think, and I know that they were really concerned with making sure that Kate didn't seem like

too reckless or too bratty or too immature or too, you know, all this sort of stuff that we were like rooting for her the whole time. And there are just moments, little moments, like the earnestness with which she's making the labels. And when she asks him about something and he's like too dangerous and she's like, okay, too dangerous. You know what I mean? Like it just like, there's, there's just like these beats that Haley played so well, um, that, that I just really loved. And, um,

Yeah. So great. So great. If I had a knit to pick, and you know I often do. Pull on one of the threads in the new outfits. That's what I was going to say. I would like a moratorium for a little bit on Hero gets their outfit in the finale of the Marvel Disney Plus show. Because this is the third time we've gotten... I don't think there's...

one in Loki. So yeah, this is the third time we've gotten Hiro gets their new outfit in the finale of the show. And like, then it just starts to feel like paint by numbers. You know what I mean? If you keep getting that over and over again, as much as I liked. We were always going to get the payoff on Kate's recurring branding issues. Yeah.

When would you prefer that the new outfits came into play? Earlier in the season? Not at all. You want to see them out there in just the full purple sweatpants and sweatshirts, the crew neck, the crew neck on the ice. I mean,

I mean, I think if, again, like it's, I don't make television, so it's silly to say this, but like, yeah, penultimate episode, Kate has the outfit on. She's like, come on, Clint. And Clint grumpily is like, I'm not going to wear this. You know, we never saw him say like, I'm not going to wear it. Well, he did sort of in concept. Anyway, I did love her amid the horror of what is unfolding.

The revelations about her mother, the imminent threat of mortal peril, her gasp of sheer jubilation when she saw that he wore it. Not only that, her like, her like, tearaway dress moment with Elena. Well, that was iconic. Did you plan that? Yes. No. Yes. Like, yeah. Unbelievable. She had to, you know, mock up a, I don't know when she found the time, but somewhere between labeling the arrows and, like,

curling her hair, she found time to construct a tearaway dress worthy of RuPaul's Drag Race so that she could reveal another fit underneath. Speaking of outer layers in that particular moment, not to get ahead to Yelena, but just while we're on it here. Strong, strong, strong Connor Roy. No, you will not take my outerwear at this party energy from Yelena Belova and I am here for it.

Oh my God. But like not even Kendall Lloyd would try to try to take that coat off of Yelena. It's a beautiful coat versus what Connor was wearing at the party. Anyway, succession spoilers, I suppose. Incredible stuff. On the Battle of New York, Kate origin story with Clint reveal that you mentioned. Again, it won't surprise you to hear that. I found that very heartwarming and moving. The entire quote is,

was lovely not only because of what it meant for Kate to share that with Clint, what it meant for Clint to hear it, what it means for both of their arcs and their shared arc together, but also I think because what it taps into, this just quintessential fantasy story idea that anybody can be a hero. So, you know, when Kate says...

But then I saw you fighting aliens with a stick and a string. This is like genius and important to be able to tap into something that comic book readers, MCU viewers for years,

This is one of the things that people mock about Hawkeye, right? Exactly. The idea of the guy who's just standing there with a stick and a string could be an Avenger. But this is important to turn that around and take something that could be fodder for making someone the butt of a joke and elevate it to the thing that we respect and admire about their impulse to try, right?

I saw you jump from that building even though you can't fly, Kate continues, even though you don't have superpowers. And I thought if he could do that, that I didn't have to be scared. You showed me that being a hero isn't just for people who can fly or shoot lasers out of their hands. It's for anyone who's brave enough to do what's right no matter the cost. I'm ready. I love this for so many reasons, Joe. The show's mission statement, right, in many ways. Establish Kate, but also invest us in Hawkeye.

as a character, both Hawkeyes, but the idea of Hawkeye almost, um,

The idea of being brave enough to make that choice, that connects to Yelena and the conversation with Yelena and Clint about Natasha and choice. It connects to Maya and Kazi and Maya saying, if you're just brave enough to choose, right? And again, that like, that elemental fantasy idea, you know, it makes me think of, of course, many, many, many, many, many stories, but it makes me think of Lord of the Rings. Never heard of it. Ever heard of it? Ever?

We can talk about Sam. I mean, there are a million. There are a million things from the movies and the books alike that we could mention. I mean, Frodo, Sam, all of it, right?

I always have loved that Elrond line from Fellowship, yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world. Small hands do them because they must while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. Like, this is why we love these stories. This is why we invest so deeply in these characters. I was so glad we got this moment. I just got emotional like a year in advance thinking about

covering Lord of the Rings with you. It's going to be so good. I mean, maybe we can get like Kleenex or something to sponsor for that run. I'm just going to be sobbing.

Yeah, but I think it's so interesting because, you know, the whole like Feige rehab plan that we talk about a lot in terms of like turning weaknesses into strengths. It's interesting because when you think about Ultron, this goes back to the conversation I had with Matt Fraction before the season began where we were talking about how Clint is used in Ultron. And I was like, it feels like it's counter a bit.

I meant more plot-wise, but to give him a family felt counter a bit to where he is in the comic and Fraction's like, no, I really love Hawkeye and Ultron because the whole point of Ultron, movie that I, Joanna Robinson, do not love, but like the whole point of Ultron is like a celebration of Clint's normalcy and a celebration of the fact that like

Clint gets up and runs back into the fight, even though he doesn't have superpowers. And so I think Ultron as a story overall maybe didn't fully successfully land, but that's the intention. That's what we didn't want it to do with that story, is celebrate the ordinariness of the bravery of the ordinary man fighting against gods and monsters. And I think this series puts a really nice underline on...

on that concept. She says it overtly, which you don't always need the point said overtly, but when it's phrased so well, a stick and a string. So good. It's really good. Just the delivery of that was perfect. Really good stuff, yeah. Man, I have always loved that Laura Clint moment in Ultron. Also not my favorite movie, but when they talk about

oh, you don't think they need me? And she says, no, I think they do. And that's even scarier. And then that, you know, logline of the fraction run that we've mentioned so many times, like this is what he's doing when he's not being an Avenger. Obviously here they are doing Avenging type of work, but still understanding their lives and the people who they spend their lives with is the key to really investing fully in who they are. We'll talk more about Clint

and the Ronan and Natasha reflections and what closure we did or didn't get there when we get to Clinton Yelena in a little bit. Let's hit that there. But before we move on to Eleanor, on the Clint-Kate front, what do you think the future holds here? What do you want the future to hold here? Does it feel like Clint is retiring and hanging it up? You know, we talked a lot at the beginning about how we thought this would function as...

A backward looking farewell to this era of Clint as Hawkeye and a onboarding and hello for Kate Bishop as Hawkeye. I think it was definitely the latter. I don't know if it was the former. It doesn't feel like Clint's going anywhere. You smartly observed a few weeks ago that that was seeming less and less likely to be the case. What's your read on it at the end? Well, I think also like because I think I did ask Fraction if this is a passing the torch question.

and he said a sharing of the torch story. And I actually think this was Fraction's idea, so I don't want to take credit for it, but I like the idea...

Again, I think Marvel, the MCU is going to be flexible on this point. And like, given that people have responded positively to the show, I think speaks better to Clint's chances of being involved in like a future movie. Do you know what I mean? Versus like they could just put him on the Barton farm. If this show didn't land, he's just on the farm and that's fine. Happily ever after for Clint as a dad on a farm.

But the show landed well, and Jerry Renner probably wants to work. And so, you know, they could incorporate him in the future. As for Kate, I would be obsessed with the idea of a Hawkeye season two,

that's Kate's adventures in California as they play out in the fraction comic. So like, you know, Kate, Kate wants to get away from New York. She's gone to the Barton. She's gone to the, exactly. She's gone to the Barton farm, but like, she's going to stay at the Barton farm. No, she's there for Christmas. Then what she got, like, she should go to California and live in an Airstream on the beach and solve crimes.

And West Coast Avenge if that's what ends up happening. So, yeah, that's the future that I want. And then obviously like everyone else in the entire planet with a pulse, I want more Kate and Yelena. Like Kate and Yelena all day every day. It's not a matter of wanting. It's a need. It's a need. Exactly. It's a deep, sincere need.

shared need. We need young Avengers. I know Jomie's here for the young Avengers push. We need a new Hawkeye, new Black Widow standalone story, whether that's a show or a movie, whether it's a TikTok, you know, you're bringing me into the TikTok of it all. I want it all. I want it everywhere and I want it constantly. They are the best.

I love that you mentioned, yeah, I started sending Mallory TikTok links last night. So I will slowly bring her into the fold. But yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and I want to stay street level, right? Like that's where I, you know, they can fight aliens and monsters if they want to. But I like the idea, like, give me a heist. As long as it's a pot of macaroni and cheese and...

Sriracha is just out of reach. Give me a heist show or like an enemies, you know, like the thing that, the thing that makes their dynamic so fun in this show is that they're fighting.

While sparking. You know what I mean? And that's what we love about Sylvie and Loki. That's what we love about Loki and everyone. Loki and Thor. Whatever. It's this idea of we're on the opposite side of something, but we like each other so much that when we're fighting, we're not really trying to hurt each other. You know what I mean? Stop making me like you. Yes.

I can't help it. You know what I mean? No truer words, Florence Pugh, then sorry, I can't help it. Like that she walks down a building. That was good. That was good. Just saying bye and then literally walking down the side of a skyscraper. And then Kate does the most insane thing that anyone has ever done. I feel like there should be some some anchorage.

ankle and leg damage, some lower limb damage for Kate Bishop after that. That was a hard landing. The death. I'm glad she's fine, but tough landing. The physics of that made no sense to me. Use a grappling hook arrow, my pal, and I can get on board. But this whole, let me wrap

a wire around this wire and that somehow how about the the airbag arrow you know pushing the landing I do appreciate that I love the this is supposed to be scary like that's a that was a great great line great line me but I'm like you're a person right as a person as a human being not a god not a superpowered being you can't fly you can't you can't wrap a string around another string and then throw yourself off a building and be fine it's not gonna work

- This episode is brought to you by Experian. I don't know if you've ever looked in your subscriptions on your phone and noticed that you had like four or five subscriptions. Maybe you didn't realize you were still paying for, or maybe you got some email or something and you're like, "I thought I canceled that." Well, this is what happens. These days anyone could be missing out on savings from subscriptions they've totally forgotten about. It's not just the ones you forgot to get rid of, it's the ones that they have better deals.

And that's where Experian comes in. It's like a personal assistant for your subscriptions. It can cancel over 200 plus subscriptions in categories like streaming services, meal kits, entertainment apps, and more. You could save an average of $270 per year

Plus, they'll even let you know if your provider offers you a better deal to stick around. Find out how much you could save by downloading the Experian app today. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed. $270 a year average. Estimated savings with one plus cancellation. Paid membership with connected payment accounts required. See Experian.com for details.

This episode is brought to you by Vitamin Water. Food, entertainment, sports teams. New York City is one of those places that oozes choice. It's got something for every taste. So it's fitting that Vitamin Water was born there. It's a product of its environment. Colorful, flavorful, anything but boring. Vitamin Water injects a daily dose of vibrancy into a watered-down life. So grab some Vitamin Water today, NYC style. Vitamin Water is a registered trademark of Glasso.

Speaking of Kate, yeah, we'll spend a couple minutes here on Kate and Eleanor.

Of course, our guy, Jack. Speaking of icons. Party God, Jack Duquesne, wearing a sword to a party. Come on. What an absolute lord. Legend. We talked in our opening big picture thoughts about Eleanor, but let's just dive in a little more specifically for a couple minutes. What fell flat here from Eleanor?

the jump in the opening scene between Kingpin and Eleanor to the ultimate exchange between Eleanor and Kate to Kate sending her own mother to jail. Was it that there wasn't enough story to tell regarding Eleanor and her role in all of this? Or more likely, and I think we agree here,

Was there just not enough room to tell that story effectively? Like, was this always the intention to have it resolved this way? I think that if Kingpin was going to be... I keep thinking about the balance with Kingpin and how we talked a couple weeks ago about, like, the risk of introducing him early. The balance between He Who Remains and Loki and Sylvie in the finale, as you noted, is just pitch perfect. So if there wasn't enough room here to...

satisfyingly conclude the Eleanor arc when she and her relationship with Kate was one of the primary areas of interest and examination of the entire season. Again, as happy as I am that we got Kingpin, I would have almost rather waited and just introduced Kingpin in the stinger, like not had him in the episode at all so that there was really enough time for the Kate and Eleanor sequences to play out. Or if this was going to be the structure of the finale, and you mentioned this a few weeks ago, um,

Right. As usual, don't make the fact that Eleanor is a villain and is embroiled in crime syndicates in the New York mob, a mystery that you have to reveal.

Just tell us that and let us see who her character is and what choices she is making and why. Kate can find that out later, but we as the audience should have had more time to really see how that worked. Like, ultimately, do we understand at the end of this really what Eleanor's role is? We know that she was paying off her husband Derek's

debt to Kingpin that that's how this all started, right? We can deduce in hindsight, obviously, that this is what Armand was referencing. We learned that she killed Armand. Tough thing to learn about your mother. And then I guess grabbed the butterscotch and brought it to Jack. Pretty weird. He just had it from other visits. Jack might have just had it. Yeah. I

I feel like he's just constantly stuffing his pockets with butterscotch. I like to think that she brought it as like a souvenir from her crime scene. That's my headcanon on this, at least. That's her like, her like Dexter serial killer souvenir. Okay. She framed Jack seemingly gladly and without much hesitation, even though they also seem to be... He's like a child. ...actually involved with each other, right? He's like the emotional maturity of a puppy. Yeah.

She's like, no problem. I love him so much. Here's the main problem. We already discussed this with Kate. I think it's the same problem, which is that the choices are too quick and too easy, made off screen. And when that happens, like the finale opens with Eleanor has already decided. I'm not conflicted about, you know, what's going on. I'm just, I'm going to quit. No conflict. My daughter's too close. She's in danger. I'm done. I'm out.

And so then... Can I quickly say? Yeah. That the payoff of her quitting in Kingman saying, and the bishop woman, she thinks that she can quit her job as if she works for Goldman Sachs. Tremendous. The bishop woman was quite a repeated phrase in this episode, but...

When the decisions are that quick, they feel small. You know what I mean? And we want these decisions to feel big and tough. And so we would like to see these characters and an excellent actress like Vera Farmiga grapple with this. Rather than just show up, her decision made, she's not wearing red anymore because she's made her decision and she's quit the company, you know? What's interesting, I mean, you'll hear in our conversation with Reese Thomas at the end of this episode, um...

That they initially had a different plan for how they were going to introduce Kingpin. Like, Bert and Bertie, the directors of the previous episode, talked about working with Vincent D'Onofrio as if they worked with him, not snapped a photo of him that was his reveal at the end of the episode. So there was initially more there. And we've talked off-pod about...

The dissonance between Eleanor walking into this very fancy, beautiful New York building and then the office that they're ultimately sitting in, which looks like it could be in the back of the car dealership or something like that. I thought that was a flashback at first to their origin story together. And then as soon as they start talking, you realize that's not true. But yeah, so something just feels cobbled together somehow and sort of remixed in a way that like deprives us of.

of maybe just more time understanding Eleanor's psychology and all this. But for her to like, for her to be so invested in this world that she is willing to murder Simon Callow, treasured actor of the British stage and screen, Simon Callow, murdered. Oh my God!

Stabbed, too. That's an intimate way to kill someone. A stabbing. A man who puts his initials on his own butterscotches. She killed him and then she's like, I'm done. I'm out. No stress. No worries. What do you think she was doing for Kingpin? Like,

Like, obviously, with Sloan Limited and Bishop Security, is she using Bishop Security's tech and reach to feed him intel? Well, as we observed in, like, the first or second episode, the tracksuits say, like, we've got eyes everywhere, bro. You know what I mean? So, like, Bishop Security is obviously, like, something...

Kingpin in the tracksuits can use to spy on anyone. As we noted, Kate is able to track Clint just by typing his cell phone number into something. You know what I mean? I think we can deduce like that stuff. I wish we better understood her role though, like their relationship and when we hear her call, we hear her call him a monster when she's talking to

Kate and we can glean how she feels about all of this and ultimately that, you know, Kate is her priority no matter what she had emphasized over the course of the season. And our question was whether that would prove to be true in this moment of truth. And it did. Um,

Yeah. What's her conflict? Yeah, exactly. Like what just what what all of that has looked like? What has she done actively versus kind of passively endorsing or facilitating? What is the day to day? What is the exact hierarchy and dynamic in that syndicate and her role? I mean, maybe we'll get those answers in time, but I wanted to get them here and I wanted Kate to get them here, too.

I, I, one thing I did enjoy, even in this condensed exchange where again, can't say it enough. Kate has her own mother arrested and sent to prison. I liked when I liked that Eleanor, one of the ways in which she was aligned with Kingpin was,

and opposed, more crucially, really, to Clint, is that she just keeps underestimating Kate, as she has throughout the entire season. You know, one of the through lines was us hearing her say time and time again, like, you're not a superhero. She's not a superhero. And so when she says here...

I know what it's like to have nothing and you can't handle it. And Kate says, how do you know what I can handle? First of all, it's a pretty good question. But Eleanor's response is really telling because she says, because I know you and I know that you think you can live your life without consequence, just like your father. But someone has to clean things up. Someone has to take responsibility. And there's truth fueling that.

But the irony is that Eleanor is ultimately touting something that she is failing to deliver on, the idea of consequence and responsibility in your family dynamic and in your own life, right? And again, the fact that she is underestimating the person who she is

not only claims, but genuinely seems to prize and love most in the world is one of the ways in which she has really failed, like really failed to truly understand this person right across from her and what is important to that person and why. And I think that that's like a rich idea that it would have been, it would have been interesting to see them explore more. And I,

It's such an interesting, like the promise of that character and her choices is so interesting. We get it seated, first of all, again, Vera Farmiga, tremendous actress, but it's seated in right from the jump. Her talking about how she wasn't born rich, like, you know, that like her feelings about how her husband has handled things.

all of that sort of stuff is, and like the decision she's, the moral compromises she is going to make to protect Kate. All of that is interesting. We just didn't get to see any of it. You know what I mean? We didn't get to see like the choice, again, if we had known from the start, then we would have seen that murder and we would have seen hopefully her first murder, I'm hoping. And we would have seen- No chance. We would have seen that it was like,

A tough decision. Killing Armand, hiring an assassin to kill Clint, framing your own fiance. That's an unfortunate arrangement. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. She sold her soul up the river a long time ago. Fair enough. Anyway, I just, I think, I think we both agree that just like with Eleanor, there was so much possibility here and rich potential for,

a great actress, a great premise, and then just sort of fumble the bag at the end. Yeah. And we spent a lot of time talking about how, you know, Eleanor would have this big choice to make this whole internal life and secret life that she has versus the family member. Ultimately, it was Kate, you know, she did make that choice, but then Kate had to make that choice too. And again, in terms of the kind of rushed

that this specifically played out. You think of something like the call from the detective, you know, at the beginning of the season that Kate receives. And it's like, well, what is going to ultimately happen here? And the way that it connects at the end is just, guess she called Detective Cottle back and he came and arrested her mom. That's the resolution there. Yeah, that feels like one of the biggest drop threads to me because it just felt like we introduced a character. Again, it's like a little bit of a comic book Easter egg to like name that character. Yeah.

After a character that's in the comics, but ultimately it just felt like something that was put in there and dropped. Can I call Jomie and Steve in for a second to settle a bet for us? Jomie and Steve? You guys there? You listening? On House of Midnight, right? Yeah. Made a bet about whether or not Eleanor would see some action in this finale. And my question is, does driving a car into Kingpin count as Eleanor?

Eleanor getting in on the action in the finale. Wow. Jomie and Steve. I would say yes. I would also say yes. How is it phrased? Was it getting in on the action or would we see her fight? I guess either way, driving a car into someone's house is a fight. I would say that's pretty actionable. It's a pretty rude thing to do. Yeah, driving someone into a storefront is probably, you know, that's pretty. Action items for her drive car into Kingpin. Can I just say? Check. I...

I don't have the exact tweet or phrasing here, but one of them.

of the mailbag questions that we got was like in essence i'm paraphrasing i've seen every fast in the furious movie and i don't understand how eleanor could have gotten behind the wheel of that car turned it on turned the headlights on and driven it into them without anyone realizing she was doing that it's probably a tesla and it's like dead silent in under certain speeds oh i mean it's you know an audi you know those electric cars they don't make noise to adam in the movies you know i'm saying so for this one we're silent

even if it's a silent Audi, she had to re-angle the car too. I didn't pay attention to that until I saw that tweet and then when I re-watched it again, I was like, oh yeah, she had to back that thing up and re-angle it. Do we really want to see Eleanor Bishop do a three-point turn into Kingpin? I want to see her parallel park because she could probably do it in a second. Yeah.

Yeah. When we say we want more time with the characters, Jomie, that's what we mean. We want to see her. I want to see her. Give us all of it. Every minute. I want to see her like flip open a little lever in the front console and then hit that Knox in order to like drive right into it. Did she crawl into the front seat? Did she get out and get back in? You know, I have so many questions. So many questions. Anyway, the point is, the real point is. The real point is that Jomie lost again. Yeah. This is why I don't gamble. Yeah.

While we're talking about Eleanor and Kate, any Jack thoughts that you want to share beyond this is one of the most instantly iconic and beloved performances that any of us can remember? There are some people in the finale where I might argue, did we really need them in the finale? Jack is absolutely not on that list because in theory, he could have just gone to jail and that's the end of Jack because he's not really like essential to the plot, but he's essential to the plot of my heart. Yes. A man who would wear a sword on his hip.

Incredible stuff. To a Christmas Eve party? As Clint noted, quite a flex. Yeah. Quite a flex from Jack. I feel like they felt like they needed to explain it. I'm here to tell you I didn't need that conversation between Kate and Clint about why he was wearing a sword. I was like, sure. Great. I really enjoyed everything from Jack in this episode. I loved him fighting with Armand VII. I was disturbed, but...

uh, riveted watching him just spring into action and start slicing off limbs and slicing open torsos. Couldn't wait. Couldn't wait to get into the, into the thick of it there. The, uh,

LARPer exchange the leisure activity reply instantly shoots up the power rankings. It's one of my favorite MC moments. That was so funny when he said he thought he was missing something. I mean, all of it was just a delight. Do you have any laments at all that we didn't get a more comics accurate swordsman story here or zero at all? Because Tony Dalton was just so charming in this role. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I agree. It was wonderful. Perfection. Perfection. I mean, and it's just, there's just so many characters in the show, be it Jack or Kazi, who we're about to talk about, or Grylls or whoever, that are just sort of like in-name comic book characters, but not really those comic book characters at all. And so that's, you know, I mean, it speaks to the, like MCU often does sideways adaptations of comic books, but this is, you know, it sort of speaks to this question of like,

can we spoil a Marvel TV show by talking about the comics? And I think the answer is no, because we don't know if they're going to straight adapt or not, you know? We did not know, heading into Hawkeye, that we would get a moment where Jack Duquesne popped onto the screen and said, in response to hearing Kate say, Jack, hello, sweetie. I mean, what an incredible moment. Hello, sweetie. The best. The Roman.

Running around the city, an Avenger has taken an outsized interest in our operations. And the Bishop woman, she thinks that she can quit her job as if she works for Goldman Sachs. What will we do about it? All right. Kingpin time. We chatted already today quite a bit about how he was deployed in the episode, the amount of time we saw him in the finale. Before we talk about the variant possibility and, of course, whether or not he is actually dead or still alive,

broadly, looking back now that you've seen the finale, how do you feel about the way that this was hinted at and the way that it was teased and introduced across the season, processing this still? So I have a couple of thoughts and feelings. Something that our producer TD said in our Slack chat immediately after watching the episode, no spoilers for No Way Home, but he said that

The way in which No Way Home treated some characters, you know, there's like villains we've seen before in that movie, characters we've seen before. In other words, like made us really excited for these old characters again. Yeah.

That the opposite felt true for the return of D'Onofrio's kingpin in this. And I have to agree with TD on that front. And, like, Van and Charles and Jomie and Steve were talking about this on Midnight Boys as well. But, like, Vincent D'Onofrio's kingpin is, for me, I agree with Van, like, top, top tier Marvel villain. Yeah. Love him in the Daredevil series, season one and season two, season three. And I just did not enjoy...

whatever this was. I'm a big D'Onofrio fan in general. Watch a lot of Law and Order Criminal Intent. You know, like, I'm here for it. But, like, I just, I didn't like it from the, I mean, we could talk about. What didn't you enjoy about it? Run us through it. First of all, the outfit. And I know that it's a comic book reference. Yes, Amazing Spider-Man Family Business 2013 comic with the Hawaiian shirt right on the cover. Amazing. What a look.

Drip King. It did not. Drip King. It did not look stylish and cool the way that like his outfits in Daredevil looked like classy and stylish and cool. And like the hat, especially the hat is like a real no for me. And then I don't know. I mean, I think D'Onofrio is a tremendous actor who makes unusual choices and nothing here felt like something.

deeper than skin skin surface level for me the Maya stuff the Eleanor stuff it all just felt like anyone could have done that and I'm like I'm not I'm not feeling the profundity of this character that I that I really really have enjoyed in the past and so I almost wish they hadn't done him at all if they were gonna do him like this that's that's sort of how I feel how do you feel

Interesting. I enjoyed seeing him. Despite all of my critiques of the balance of the episode, his performance as Kingpin in Daredevil is also one of my favorites. I just thought he was sensational. And so I think I'm just so excited that he's back. I have some...

questions about the tease-out nature of the reveal. Like, in the moment when we got the cheek pinch and everything and then all of these little hints that followed, it was thrilling. But then when it actually happens, I mean, starting with the screenshot at the end of episode five, but then everything here, I wished that we hadn't had quite as many breadcrumbs along the way. Like, I was trying to, like, wrap my mind around how I had thought about this as it was going. And I think I was, like...

okay, the Kingpin Hawkeye reveal is going to be like a grower, not a shower. You know, we're going to build toward this thing. And then it's like, that just didn't quite feel exactly right at the end. But I did like the emotion of,

The severity and ferocity, you know, we get these lines in the exchange with Kazi about reminding people that this is his city, but then you get the kind of quivering voice in his exchange with Maya. And, you know, I am... I liked the Hawaiian shirt and the outfit. I'm happy to disagree about it, but I thought it was a... I thought it was a... Much like Jack showing up to the party with the sword, a great flex and quite a choice. And I think one of the things I liked about it...

And in line with some of the other just displays of his strength, all of these different little connections and nods to the rendering in the comics, because also, of course, because it's literally the same performer, we have all of this connection to...

And then there are connections to Daredevil 2, you know, something like the arrow not piercing his chest and he's pulling it out. I'm just like, oh, right. We understand how this, you know, armor, this body armor is stitched into what he wears or, you know, Kate using the cuff link to set off the too dangerous arrow explosion. There's like a great scene.

payoff there because of the recurring presence of his father's cufflinks and then, you know, switching to Vanessa's cufflinks in the Daredevil series. So,

Most of my laments about the Kingpin stuff in the finale are the time it took away from other plot lines and characters and the way it threw off the balance and just wishing that maybe we had waited to have like the Maya Kingpin showdown until the Echo series and less about the substance of the thing itself. I don't necessarily, I guess, this might be part of it. It's a little bit of an amorphous thing. I don't mind that it felt a little bit different because for me,

for one, I think I just expect the Disney Plus MCU stuff to feel different from the Netflix stuff. Like, it almost has to, right? Yeah. And so I think I was just maybe ready for that or bracing for it. And then...

and you're going to be able to tease something here in a second, this question that has been kind of like sparking a lot of discussion on Twitter and among the fans of, well, is this the Netflix kingpin or could it be a variant? I think is a fun thing to talk about for a minute. Do you have any breadcrumbs? Do you have any cheek pinches or screenshots of your own here, Joe? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pony on up to the bar and look at this very fuzzy screenshot I have of, uh, uh, Reese Thomas will talk about this. I feel,

I feel, like, confident that people will have a definitive answer before this podcast episode is done. I will say that. Love it. Love it. I think another issue I'm having is, like, there's...

It's tied to the watch thing, which we'll get to. But there's so much lead up of like Clint's relationship with King. And I'm happy that Kate's the one who fights him. I have no issue with that. He obviously has like history with Maya. But the fact that he and Clint never share screen time despite all that buildup to whatever their past interactions have been. Definitely agree with this. Bizarre to me. And again, we'll talk about the watch thing. But like I also like to think about these series as like

It should be rewarding if you've seen the other things, but not essential to understanding the thing. You know what I mean? So if people haven't watched Daredevil on Netflix, so they don't know about the body armor and they don't know about the cufflinks and they don't know about, you know, Wilson Fisk at all, it felt a little too dependent on...

that background for a character being ported into a new universe. You know what I mean? Yeah. What did you think on that front specifically about the way that his strength and his abilities in many respects, physically, as a tactician, as an intimidator, the way that all of that played out in the episode? I mean, we see him rip a car door off with his bare hands, right? That was like an amazing chilling moment. Yeah.

when he shoots the second arrow, then he falls in the frame. You love a hat. What's happening here? I do love a hat. You are a scholar when it comes to all things heads, whether it is wigs or hats or braids. The second arrow. I will take, I will take, Kate,

Kingpin's dumb hat if it means I get Yelena's braid. That's fine. That's an equation I can balance. Life is full of compromises. Wonderful. So the first arrow hits him in the chest. He yanks it out. No problem. Unfazed, right? Like being pricked by a toothpick. Not even. The second arrow he grabs the cable arrow. He's like using it to hurl and whip Kate around. That was scary. Throwing Kate all over the place. Again, you know, to go back to Daredevil, we've seen him like hoist Matt Murdock across an apartment.

survives getting hit by a car. We already talked about the car and how fast could it be going from that distance, et cetera. Still, a

completely fine after getting hit by a car and rammed through a F.A.O. Schwartz, right? A Toy Store window. Back in the Toy Store, yeah. Survives the exploding too dangerous arrow with like a little bit of soot on him and a touch of a limp, but basically no damage beyond that. So what did you think overall about the way his...

how his strength was rendered here in terms of the information that we bring, as you said, not only from the Netflix show, but the comics, Spider-Verse, all the other places that we've seen this character. I thought, like, first of all, there was that whole rumor that they were going to make him, like,

larger than life um and i'm glad that they didn't and i mean vincent d'affrio is still like a big guy still like huge intimidating presence i need to re-watch the dirt and my need i mean i have the pleasure of getting to re-watch the daredevil uh seasons because i love seasons well i love i loved all of daredevil actually because my big electric fan anyway point being uh

He seemed a little bit more ungainly in this thing. Not that he was ever graceful. He's always supposed to be, like, brutish in his strength. There's something, like, a little ungainly about Vincent D'Onofrio, but you're right. It was so scary. Like, watching Kate be, like, flung around, you know, and, like...

And the pleasure of, like, watching her best him, like, that was really fun. But then there's other stuff, like him snapping the arrows in half and saying, mind your own business, right? And I'm like, please write Vincent D'Onofrio better lines than that. That's how I feel about that, you know? Can I share something with you that Adam...

said to me after we watched the episode. Yes. Because this connects to how Kingpin's abilities were rendered in this episode. Adam is a huge comics nerd, watched Daredevil, has read comics for years. He's very familiar with Kingpin. And he turned to me and was completely serious when he said this. And I asked him if I could share this on the podcast. He said that I could. And I thought

I thought of this last night when I was listening to Midnight Boys and they issued the midnight ban on mutant talk and then immediately broke it, which was one of my favorite Midnight Boys moments of all time. I loved it. Incredible. Adam said, I wonder if they're going to use Kingpin to introduce the mutants. Now, Kingpin is not a mutant and Adam knows that. Not a mutant.

But he does not possess the mutant gene, but he genuinely thought that the strength was so notable, that the fact that he incurred no injuries was so notable that there was a chance they could make a choice like this. I obviously do not agree that that is how it will play out, but I thought that was interesting just in terms of the caliber of what we saw from the character. But that's what I think is a little sloppy because like you, okay, in the ringer versus slack immediately after we watched this episode-

We were all like, dead, dead. And Mallory immediately was like, absolutely not dead. Right? Oh. 100% not dead. Yes. Definitely not dead. No chance. Yeah. And like, of course, if you don't see the body hit the floor, Reese Thomas in our interview says he has his own metric for how you know someone's dead. But like, for me, it's if you don't see the body hit the floor, you always have to question, is this person alive or not? The camera tilt up is obviously...

trying to make us question. But my reasoning as to why he had to be dead is like, you can't hit someone with a car and then explode an arrow and then shoot them and have them be fine after all of those. Now, fine, your mileage may vary. We can talk about that. But like, I feel like you can't have three fake out deaths on one character in the span of 15 minutes. Counterpoint, do we see him survive the...

arrows and the car and the explosion to ready us for the fact that he will be able to survive this gunshot wound. Possibly. I think that I feel certain, absolutely certain that he is alive for a few different reasons. One, as many, many, many people on this very podcast feed and the internet at large have mentioned in the last couple of days since the episode has aired, is

A very similar series of events plays out in the comics in 98's Daredevil 15, where Maya, after learning the truth about what happened to her father, confronts Kingpin, holds the gun up to his face. It is clear that the trigger has been pulled, but you don't immediately see the results, and then you learn later in assuming panels that he has lost his sight, which ends up being a temporary circumstance, but he is not dead. So I think something similar happens

feels likely here. And that again, maybe something like, even though those are different comics issues and different years and periods of the canon, something like the choice to, to put him in the family business outfit. It's like a little, Hey, we're, we're looking to what happened in the comics here in a few different respects to kind of prime us for that. Right. Yeah. No. And I mean, uh, I think Jomie is the one who dropped that panel into the Slack like night of like to let us know that this is the comic book reference, but, um, yeah,

There is... And then I rewatched the scene just because like... Because as I think TD pointed out, like there's a... You hear the shot and then you hear a thud. Right. So it's like... I thought it was two gunshots at first, but it's clearly subtitled as gunshot singular and you see one flash of light. So yeah, I think that second sound is the body hitting, right? And then there's a thud. So I rewatched to listen to the thud. You can drop...

and still be alive. That's all true. But in that rewatch that night of, I noticed, you know, I noticed that he says, like, family doesn't always see eye to eye. And if, like, that's the whole thing about, like, him being blinded, I don't know. I mean, fine. Sure. Fine. Death doesn't matter. Death is a construct. I don't know. I don't know.

I think that it's unfortunate that maybe the thing people are talking about after this episode is whether Kingpin's dead instead of how we might see Kingpin used in the MCU moving forward. I just feel so sure that this is a fake out. Like, we're getting an Echo spinoff, right? I mean, the fact that that show exists and...

I'm going to say one thing here. We're barely going to talk about Spider-Man No Way Home because we recognize that that's not something you can watch at home. If you haven't seen it at the theater, we don't want to spoil it. I'm going to say one thing here. So hit the fast forward button twice. This will only last 30 seconds. I promise. Go.

And Matt Murdock being introduced to the MCU in Spider-Man, like the daredevil assances upon us. These characters are here, right? So Wilson Fisk will be a part of the MCU moving forward. It would just be absurd to introduce him just for this and to not use him. I think that would be a massive, massive fuck you to fans who have been waiting for this for so long. I just cannot believe that would happen. So fresh off Succession, I am out of the...

Is he alive or is he dead? Right. Discourse game. However, I'm absolutely sure you're right. I completely, I'm sure you're right. I still think, I think it would be wild to kill him after teasing him and, you know, all the stuff, all the promise of other things to come. I also just think it's wild to

To run him over with a car and blow him up and shoot him all in the same episode and for have that, like, none of that to... It's... Anyway. We can roll on from here. It's fine. I'm not a huge fan of this. Maya. Maya. How excited are you for the standalone Echo show based on everything we got from Maya and Hawkeye? And relatedly, after the just surging highs of...

Episode three. I mean, we first see Maya at the end of episode two, but episode three is really our true introduction. And we talked at length here on this very podcast about how much we enjoyed it. Did you feel after that like Maya was a...

in the show in the best possible way? Or did you feel at all that they were holding back because of what needs to be saved ultimately for the spinoff show? Let me zoom back to Kingpin plus Maya for a second and say, I think this is the same problem as we were discussing with Kate sending your mom to jail or Eleanor's decision to get out of the family business or whatever it is.

Maya's decision to shoot Kingpin, maybe not kill him, but shoot him. Again, that's a decision we didn't get to see her really grapple with. We didn't get to see her really process her affection for this man who helped raise her.

And the decision, she had already decided to pull the trigger when she got there. You know what I mean? And so the fact that we don't get to spend time in that decision for her, again, just doesn't make it feel as weighty as I want it to feel. Follow-up question for you. If you were to head to 30 Rock, possibly maim...

crime boss or knife I know what you're gonna ask I'm excited your lover question mark I don't know we'll talk about that yeah do you first flat iron your hair and secondly how bold is your lip color that you apply when you when you head out the door

Oh, boy. I mean, she looked great. She looked great, but... She looked fabulous. It makes sense for everyone else to be gussied up, but then I'm like, why did Maya get gussied? The best theory we have is that if she's trying to entice Kazi to go with her, that she wants to look her best as she does this. But again, this whole Kazi-Maya romance question mark feels, if that's indeed what it was, felt unexplored.

And then there's another element, which is Kazi's line where he says, like, it was supposed to be mine. It was never supposed to be yours. Felt kind of tied to that conversation they had in episode four, I think it was, when he was like, hey, it's...

the boss wouldn't like you running after the Ronin. And she's like, who's in charge here, me or you? And there's this little moment with Kazi, like seems resentful of the fact that she was, you know, put in charge after her father died. So if there's like ambition for Kazi and, and, and a war inside himself of his own ambition and his genuine, I believe affection for Maya. Right. And a direct hand. Yeah.

in What Unfolded with William. This is such rich, good stuff with, like, good performers that we care about. Save it for the show. Save it for the show about her. Do the hints and the little teases of this history and this long, you know, prolonged past with these characters just make you more excited for the show? Or are you left here feeling like, okay, we just didn't get this in the way that we needed to here? I mean, I...

I don't think those things are mutually exclusive, I guess, because the...

After episode three, you know, I'm like, Alakalox, Maya, like, this is just so tremendously good and compelling that I cannot wait to spend more time with this character. And I leave the show feeling exactly the same way. I am so excited for the Echo show and really, really, really eager to learn more about Maya and watch this next phase of her journey and hopefully also within that get a lot of flashbacks and more time with William and in the past. But,

But I think that what you're saying about the, like, show-don't-tell, almost, aspect of the Maya Kingpin, Maya Kazi outcomes in the finale is something that I felt as well because, you know, you hear Kingpin tell Maya that he loves her and she...

Says, you know, she replies in kind, but we know ultimately what choice she is making, right? And so the thing we're left wondering is like, how sincere is this for him? But then when you hear his voice kind of quivering as he's saying to Kazi that she has turned on them, it's like, I did get the sense that the affection that he feels for her is sincere, but also there's the,

a threat because this is in this laundry list of threats to his empire, right? So how much of this is this unmooring feeling of everything crumbling and this need to, um,

Put the, what's the word for wheels in motion? Buttresses. Oh, buttresses. Yeah. Put the buttresses in place again. And how much of it is the real feeling of like a letdown and a sense of despair about their relationship? Similarly with Maya and Kazi, you know, that I don't want to,

kill you. I want to leave this behind together. I'm so eager. I am genuinely so, I wish we had gotten it more here, but I remain so eager to learn more about their time together. We see Kazi in these family photos. We saw young Kazi in the flashback. Like we know how long these people have been in each other's lives, but like you said, what is exactly the nature of their relationship? And I think any number of answers there would be really interesting, right? But I

I wish we had gotten more of it. I look forward to getting more of it in the future. I wish we had gotten it more here. And I think both of those things can be true at once. Yeah. I mean, I am still excited for an Echo series. I still think Alaka Cox is like an entire star. I think she's incredible. I think I was more excited after episode three. I'm still excited. But I think, I honestly think if they had given us Echo in episode three and maybe that's it. Like, at least,

I still would have been so amped for an Echo show and leave this Kazian Kingpin stuff and the revelation about her father and leave all of that for her own show. Like I, you know, but I don't know what they have planned for her show. They, you know, I should trust in Marvel probably. And like, we don't know what, what extensions of the, of the Kingpin mythos might show up in that show. There might be like a ton of really cool, fun stuff that they're planning to do there. But like, this feels like a, the big story for her show.

And I think it should have been centered, not peripheral. She doesn't even, as one of our listeners pointed out, she doesn't even interact with the Hawkeyes at all in the finale. And so it just feels peripheral somehow. Shout out to my guy, Kazi, really quickly for catching an arrow. Ridiculous. This is my quarter flipping. The Kazi arrow catch. Ridiculous. He's not Loki.

Who we've previously seen catch a Clint arrow. And by the way, that was Clint's design to ensnare Loki in his own hubris, catching it, thinking he had bested Clint, and then it explodes in his face. Kazi should not be able to catch that arrow. I did enjoy the, before the catch, the payoff of the talk of, you know, splitting the arrow, which he does in that moment. That was fun. Kazi, here's what I'm going to say. I think Kazi's alive. Speaking of people who might be alive still, I certainly, we saw him, you know,

suffer a wound. But I believe that he will return in the Echo series. Certainly possible that we could just see him in flashbacks. That would be fun too. But to the point about the Maya kingpin of it all and how that could play out in the future, I think that when

Kazi says, you know, leave Maya. He's coming for you. Obviously, we then do see them interact after that. But still, that feels like the promise of what the plot engine of the show will be. And then I think, you know, hearing Kazi say, like, I can't walk in both worlds, calling back to the William Maya, just...

beautiful, touching sequence in episode three, you have to learn to jump between two worlds, like that continued mission statement of who Maya is, who Echo is, and, you know, will become. Even just something like the hand on the cheek, you know, it makes you think of William and the...

the palm print on Maya's face too. So there was, there's, I just, Maya's just such an interesting character and the performance is so good. I, again, I could have had six hours just of that, but we will one day. There's a lot of dead, not dead characters in this episode, but let me just say of all of them, like, I think you and I would both agree that Kazi, too hot to die. Too hot to die. She looks great. Bring her back. You know, really rocking that neck tat. Yeah.

Yelena. Speaking of too hot to die, Yelena Belova. Yelena and Clint. Yelena and Kate. Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova. Just astonishing. A highlight from the second she appeared. A highlight every second thereafter. Scene stealer.

Ate the macaroni and almost ate everybody's lunch, honestly, because she was that good. I mean, just flawless. I love her. I am so, so, so excited to see Yelena more and to see Yelena and Kate together more across the rest of Phase 4 and beyond in the MCU. What an absolute joy of a performance this is. The Midnight Boys were talking about, like, you know, who, like, best character introduction of Phase 4, et cetera, and, like, you know, putting Yelena at the top of the list. I think she has to be at the top of

most people's lists. But I would put Kate up there with her. Like, I think this introduction of Kate Bishop is so strong. And the two of them together is just freaking all I want to watch. It's magical. They don't have superpowers, but this is magical. It really is. It's great. Let's talk about Yelena and Kate for another second here before we hit Yelena and Clint. Like,

Is there anything we want to add here? We already talked about the kind of shows we want to see them in. Is there anything else that you want to discuss? There's a lot of decent action in this finale. A lot of stunt coordination. But Yelena and Kate's stunt doubles fight through the office. This is great stuff. Just, you know, put those two women in wigs and move the camera back.

And I thought that was great. Them fighting through the offices was like a real hot, like the whole episode could have been like die hard, but it's Kate and Yelena, like Nakatomi Plaza, Nakatomi Plaza. So yeah, yeah.

I, yeah, I don't know. I don't have anything profound to say here because I just think no wrong choices. What do you think of Van's idea from Midnight Boys about Yelena carrying on Kate's training from here and teaching her some of those Black Widow skills? Sure. Great. Would watch. Come to California. Come out to the coast. Have a few laughs. Like that, like Kate, you know, and like Yelena's got that whole like

Love of America, I'm just discovering. You know, like, cross-country road trip, Kate and Yelena. I would watch them...

file their taxes. Me too. I would watch it. So, yeah. How about Yelena and Clint? Did that showdown on the ice live up to the expectations that you had about this inevitable looming confrontation, not only looming over the course of this series, but since the Val Yelena Black Widow stinger? How'd you feel about the whistle? How'd you feel about the whistle, Mel? I liked the whistle. I know you did. I'm sorry.

I liked it. I know. I will say, I agree. Van and Charles talked about this. Like, I agree that while the whistle serves the function of kind of hitting pause, right? And everyone catches their breath and can think a little bit more clearly and talk, right?

And Clint can kind of make his breakthrough in that moment and it serves that function. And also it just shows Yelena that Clint is somebody who knew Nat this deeply and understood these really intimate truths about her life. Like all of that tracks make sense. It doesn't necessarily mean that he couldn't have still been responsible for her death or that that specific aspect would have changed in Yelena's mind. I think that's a very fair point, but yeah,

because of the way that Natasha has been ever-present for both of those characters in this series, I thought ultimately that the little moment where the whistle just crystallizes and solidifies their respective ties to her and their roots with her, especially in an episode this packed, it actually worked as effective shorthand for me in a way that some of the other stuff that felt hurried didn't.

and in terms of their actual conversations and the substance of what they're saying, like, I thought a lot of that was from Yelena's perspective. I have some questions about Clint and, like, what level of grappling he and the other characters ultimately did with the things that he has done. I think with Natasha...

And Clint's history with Natasha, that was actually well handled because in the process of trying to convince Yelena, he ultimately is convincing himself as well when he says things like, she made a choice. I couldn't stop her, right? And, you know, we're going to have to find a way to live with that. He's talking to himself just as much as he's talking to Yelena. And so I really liked that, just as I loved the moment when

On the heels of the whistle, Yelena realizes that Nat has talked to Clint about her and says, what did she say? And I thought that was just so sweet and touching because she just misses this person so much. And it also ports us back to those moments in Black Widow before their reconciliation where we saw how wounded Yelena was to think that maybe she didn't mean as much to Natasha as Natasha meant to her. That, you know, bullshit, you just didn't want your...

to tag along while you save the world with the cool kids idea, right? And they broke through that in such a powerful way in that movie. And to return to that idea here, I really liked. Clint grappling with the Ronin stuff, I thought, didn't happen quite as fulfillingly, but I enjoyed the Natasha moment here. What about you? Okay, so this is not a spoiler for No Way Home. I'll just say this. I think something that recurred in our discussion of No Way Home is that

There are things that didn't work like logically for me, but worked emotionally for me. And I think this is one of those moments where like, honestly, I think Yelena is too smart and curious about,

to have even, like, fallen for this whole, like, Clint killed Natasha thing without interrogating it. I agree with this. I'm really glad you just said this because especially on the heels of Black Widow and breaking out of this... I mean, that was literal, right, mind-control chemical subjugation, but...

this phase of your life where you're letting somebody else use you as a weapon. And especially in a show like this, where we hear like Clint and Maya and other characters engage with that idea of like somebody using you as a weapon. It D it does feel weird that Yelena is, is in that phase of her life still though. Again, I guess we get the moment where it's like, Anna tells her, Hey,

People will pay you to do this stuff post-split. I'm still really eager to learn more about the Val of it all and what the relationship here is. If she's like, this is just a job for money, that's one thing. But for her to be like, this is an emotional vengeance thing for me, she is Val's word only, right, that Clint did this. And then she finds out that, like, Eleanor hired, you know, like, she is curious enough to poke into, on Kate's behalf, like, some of the, why have I been hired to do this? But not curious enough to...

is there's, you know, is there something funky going on behind the scenes here? You know, when she's running down the side of the building and she gets to the window where Quint is, she pulls the trigger. She takes it. She doesn't ask him. Yeah, exactly. That is a better shot.

Clint Barton is dead before Elena and Clint ever have a conversation about what happened. Exactly. Exactly. That stuck out to me on rewatch too, where I'm like, oh, she wasn't like, he wasn't even going to get a chance to have this conversation with her if she had made that shot. And so, so logically it doesn't make sense to me. But when she says stuff like,

you got so much time with her. You know, like that, that really hit me, you know, and Florence Pugh is an incredible actress and Renner is really, you know, he was really good in that scene. And so, you know, emotionally it works for me. Logically, it doesn't, it doesn't clear, but, but I'm okay with that. Speaking of logic. Yeah. We have

We have so much else to get to today, but we must spend one moment. We must spend one moment. Actually, two moments, because we're going to spend one moment and Jomie's going to spend one moment. We must talk about the watch. And the ultimate reveal here, which was...

I just, I mean, I get, here's the only way I can wrap my head around this. First of all, learning that the watch is Laura's and that Laura was agent 19, that Laura is mockingbird. All of that is like fine, right? That we and other people and many other people have spent a lot of time talking about that, but the watch was such a thing. And it was literally just

hand it over as an afterthought in the final moments of the show and i genuinely can't tell if this is just there to wink at the fact to tell us that there's more backstory for lara and clint than what we knew to this point you know that some of that comics canon is present here um

But are we going to see any of it? Like, I have no issue with making Laura Agent 19. I think, do we really need this acknowledgement of the fact that there is extra backstory if we're not actually going to see that backstory or see that part of her life? Like, I can't totally shake the fact that they felt like a need to justify the fact that Clint has a wife and a family and that this character exists, which I just think is...

So my hope is that we will learn more about this in the future and that this is setting up Laura's involvement in some sort of S.H.I.E.L.D. adjacent or S.H.I.E.L.D.-related story in the future, whether it's Secret Invasion or something else, because...

I don't know. It's bizarre. I'm happy to have more excuses to watch Linda Cardellini do things in the MCU. That's obviously not the issue. But yeah, it does feel like this idea that we've talked about again and again with Laura Barton where we're like, I hate the phrase just a wife and mother. Get just out of that sentence. You know what I mean? But also, this goes back to what I was saying about Kingpin where I just feel like

The fact that people are going to have to Google, I mean, I had to Google, a lot of us Googled Agent 19. I was like, I'm pretty sure Agent 19 is probably Mockingbird, but let me just go ahead and Google Agent 19 Shield to find that out. But think about people who haven't even engaged in the Mockingbird speculation at all, who are just watching the show and they're like, what is this? What the hell is, what does this mean? So you need an explainer. You need some, you know, comicbook.com or whatever to write you an explainer about what the payoff of this watch that was like the McGarrett,

of most of the series means and we don't... And we still don't know why, you know, Kingpin was after it. We don't know why... Well, this is the thing. Yeah. Why that was a threat. I asked Reese about this. I...

With much love, I'm so happy he talked to us. He did not give me a satisfactory answer. And so, like... Right. Why were the tracksuits after this? Why did Clint say on the rooftop when they were going into Maya's apartment? It would put her in peril? Yeah, like that if this was found, like, that the person we now know as Laura would be in peril in some way. Like, what would the... How does... Obviously, the watch connects to her identity, but...

What does that mean? What are the stakes and costs of that? And one of our listeners pointed out that if Nat leaked all the S.H.I.E.L.D. documents...

at the end of Winter Soldier, like, in theory, Laura's identity would already be out there unless it's, like, all part of that whole, like, Nick Fury off the books. Kept it off the books. And they do say in Ultron that it's specifically kept off of the books from S.H.I.E.L.D., so I guess that's one possible explanation. But presumably her former identity as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. would be a part of that in some way, if not this new, you know, presumed, like, alias and, uh...

safe house life. And again, then there's the like, if you're really trying to stay off the grid, then don't send the kids to a Broadway show with one of the most famous people in the world. I just, it's really weird. So why is her watch in Avengers Compound? Like, we have so many, it's deeply unsatisfying to me. Now I'd like to turn the mic over to Adrian Palicki's number one fan, Jomie. Jomie and Jenneron. Jomie, how are you feeling? Not great. I...

I feel sad in this Chili's tonight. It's not fun. It's not fun watching, you know, spending seven years, seven from 2013. I was still in the high senior year of high school all the way to 2020 and

You know, living my life as an adult, spent seven years live tweeting this show, being with fans, and for Kevin Feige to look me in the face and say it doesn't matter. It's tough! It's tough! And I think, like, there's a part of it that, like, maybe Mockingbird is a moniker that's passed on, like, 007, you know, because...

I assume she's been on that farm for a long time. And sharing the moniker is a part of this very show in this very story. Exactly. That would make sense. Exactly. So there's always a chance that, you know, AIDS is a Shield could come back. But it's been a long time. And we don't even get crumbs.

We get at daredevils out here living their best life with Kingpin in the show. We have rumors of, you know, Kevin Feige wants to bring some more of the Netflix people back, but the OG is left stranded. It's tough. It's tough. I don't know what else to tell you guys. My heart hurts. Sorry. It's pain. Show me. I'm sorry. I think it's really interesting for in the same episode for the series to possibly embrace the Netflix continuity issue.

and reject the ABC continuity at the same time. I don't know how interested people are in all the process background stuff, but the relationship that Kevin Feige has to these TV shows that he wasn't in control of, the Netflix shows and the ABC shows...

Agent Carter and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is so complicated. And I think a source of frustration for Kevin Feige in terms of, like, he did not like this idea of this world that he was busy building, like, buildings.

letting Jeff Loeb, who was running Marvel TV at the time, like play, like play with his toys, play with Coulson, et cetera. So like initially, right. Agents of shield was running right at the beginning was running in like lockstep continuity with the MCU. Like you had Nick Fury show up, Maria Hill, all that sort of stuff. And then it quickly diverged. Right. And that's because I just think Feige like did not want, uh,

you know, a show that he wasn't in control of, like swimming in the same pool as his characters. So it's,

It's so dicey and complicated. I feel for you, Jomie. And I'm sorry. The multiverse exists. All you got to do is bring Coulson in for a little bit. Bring Daisy in for a little bit. That's all I'm asking for. I don't need a whole... Agents of Sword is still on the table, Kevin, if you're listening. We will see Phil Coulson in the MCU again. I need it. Absolutely. And not him back in time, the age Phil Coulson. I want old Clark Gregg.

showing up. Like, what's up guys? You don't want the tin tin hair on Colson that we got on Captain Marvel? What's up guys? It's been crazy. We had this whole thing going on, but we need to talk about that on back. That's what the people need. Amazing. Okay. So that's my, that's my watch stance. I'm not happy about it. I think we're aligned. Joe, take us into your interview with Reese.

Reese was so kind to us at the beginning of the season. Come back again here when he can speak a bit more freely. Answered a lot of our burning questions, a lot of stuff that we talked about. I did a round of are they alive or dead roulette. We talked about fan theories. We talked about all kinds of stuff. Plus, as I mentioned, all that trick arrow, what might have been, we get into. So let's go now to our conversation with Reese Thomas.

Well, let me start with the question that I think is foremost on everyone's mind, which is the decision to include Kingpin, which I know you guys have talked about a little. But I think the big question everyone's asking after the finale is, are we meant to think of this as the same Kingpin we've seen Vincent D'Onofrio play before on Netflix? It's funny. It's such dangerous territory, I think, when I comment on anything beyond my show. Because I don't speak with any authority. Yeah.

I think that Vincent, I felt like I saw something that Vincent said it was the same character. Look, all I can say is when I spoke to Vincent about the character and about, you know, how we handle him in the show, it was, we were talking about him as though it was the same character. That's, maybe that answers it. That's a great answer. It was interesting. I was reading an interview with the, with the Burt's and they sort of talked about what,

working with him as if they had filmed at least one scene with him, was there a version, like, is that the case? And was there a version of the season where he cropped up earlier than just here in the finale? Um, no, no, there was a version where he cropped, cropped up differently at the end of episode five, um, which, which is, uh, what I handled, but, um,

But yeah, we sort of made some adjustments to sort of what that was. And so, yeah, I ended up changing, but yeah. All right. This is my hopefully last potentially sticky Kingpin question. I don't think it's funny. It's all right. I'm used to it now. It's ever, ever a minefield. Well, so I'm going to issue just sort of like a blanket, no way home, Spider-Man, no way home, spoiler warning for folks who might be listening and haven't seen that movie yet. Skip ahead a little bit, but yeah,

Given the character who pops up in Spider-Man No Way Home, was the timing of all of this...

sort of carefully coordinated so that they would that we would get matt murdoch in spider-man and kingpin here sort of back to back and how tricky would a coordinated nation like that be to pull off that again it's beyond my picker and i think it probably was coordinated but um by powers either and i all all i knew was what we needed to do in our show um and sort of how but uh but

But no, I think there were sort of bigger brains than mine above that were working out how this would all unfold. I haven't actually seen Spider-Man yet, so... Did I just spoil Spider-Man? No, of course not. I've been getting hounded with questions as though I've been in some sort of war room. So, yeah, unfortunately, the world gets spoiled for me now.

Well, let me ask you about something very specific to your show and take us to safer ground, which is, you know, people are kind of losing their mind over the...

the Kate and Yelena, Florence and Hayley chemistry. Obviously, you know, both Hayley Steinfeld and Florence Pugh are the kind of actresses who could have chemistry with like peeling paint on a wall. They're incredibly charismatic actresses. Did you anticipate sort of how delightful it would be to put them together and how the fans have reacted to the two of them together? No, I mean, obviously...

Yes, like you said, they're both very charismatic actors. And so I think you hope that it's going to work out really well. But no, then you see it happen. And I knew coming into doing that elevator scene and the fight, I knew that moment where they got to spend time together was always going to be a fun part of that whole sequence of things. But

But then, yeah, you get there and you do it and it's better than you thought it was going to be. And they're having fun. And yeah, so it's been great. And it's cool just, again, when you see fans take them under their wing as well that way. It's really fun. I want to ask you about the difference between incorporating a character like Yelena, who both has...

previous history in the MCU and is pitching forward probably to something else in the MCU versus handling a character like, I don't know, possibly Kazi or someone like that who is very contained to the world of your show. What are the conversations in terms of writing a character like that? Are there... Do you have to have larger conversations around...

I don't know, a piece on the chessboard that's part of a bigger game than just your show? No, I mean, again, like I said, I think I've said this before, they, I think for your own protection, they silo you off a little bit in your own show, you know, which I think is helpful in that, you know, I only, I basically...

I only need to know, and I only know as much sort of as my, as the characters that I'm working with know. And so, yeah, I saw, you know, I was, I was allowed to see a cut of Black Widow, um,

you know, quite early on in the process, um, just to understand the character and, and who we were bringing in. Um, but in terms of sort of, again, like mapping bigger plans and things, they, yeah, they, they neatly kind of keep, keep you away from that stuff. It's, um, it's mommy and daddy speaking. So you can, well, yeah, no, I mean, I didn't, I was, I mean, I certainly wasn't fishing for like, what else is Yelena going to do? Spoilers. And, um, you know, I was just wondering if the, uh,

you know, if you, if you write a line or have her do a thing, do you need to check with the higher, higher powers that be that this would feel in line with what she would do? Do you know what I mean? No, no, for sure. It's, it's, it's, um,

It is. And sometimes there might be a line that we're told to add. Again, sometimes there was a line that may appear that someone had written into that I would kind of be like, I don't know about that line. It feels a little weird. And then, yeah, sort of dummy me. I would find out that, oh, that's actually a reference to something that you haven't seen yet, whatever it is. So, yeah, that definitely happens.

happens and you know we have to be careful because you know part of the way I like to work is you know especially when you sort of I think balancing comedy and and drama uh you know and sort of trying to find that line is like you know I like to you know you rehearse when you get there with with the actors and you got the scenes and and you know sometimes through that rehearsal process there's certain lines kind of come out weirdly they don't want you know kind of land and you want you sort of start like massaging them and rewriting them a little bit and

which is something I'm used to doing. And I think in this instance, I sort of had to be a bit more sort of controlled in doing that. Not that I heavily rewrite anything that I ever do, but I just think sometimes you just want to find a natural way to do it. But I was sort of reminded, I remember early on, I sort of did that because the scene was feeling a little bit like

to, um, to written. And, uh, and the, I, so I went in and I worked with Jeremy and Haley and sort of just brush it out. And then I was sort of told like, Oh no, you know, you need, they need to say this and need to say that you can't, you can't just pull these things out. And so that, you know, that was definitely a sort of a different side of the process that I had sort of, um, you know, was, was not used to, but, but kind of came to learn. When you're talking about collaboration on the show, another, I imagine collaborative, uh, relationship is, um,

between you and the VFX department, especially in a big set piece like this with all the trick arrows. So I was wondering when you're doing something like that, when you're putting together this idea of all these trick arrows, is there a conversation where you come up with your dream list of trick arrows and the VFX department goes, okay, that's cool. We can do these five. Or do you know, are there trick arrows that are taken off the table? That trick arrow conversation, that was one that was literally, it was happening

continually and on the side, like I would sort of grab to again, I have to fully credit the Greg Steele, who's our VFX supervisor, who is a just a wonderful human being and so patient and

and so creative too. And so, yeah, and we would be shooting something else and he'd come over and be like, all right, I'm going to go over this trick arrow. And sometimes he'd have, you know, new ideas, like what about this? And, you know, and like the guy gang is like Frozen. That was definitely, that was a Greg idea. And so it would just be this constant back and forth of just like, what about this? And what about that? And a little bit of it was like early on when I started it, I think my imagination was,

I think I was thinking about it too realistically. Like I was like, well, how would an arrow do that? You know, and you sort of try and limit yourselves to like trying to figure out. And again, if that's the education you go through coming into the MCU is that

Their reality is different. And so, yeah, they would come up with crazier things and be like, wait, what? And how would that work? And they go, well, just do this. And it's like, I don't know how exactly it works, but it's like a bunch of little bees. I remember there was an era that was going to be a bunch of little tiny bees basically was going to come out and sting everyone. A beer? Yeah. And I was saying, I was like, hang on, what are they? And they were like, well, they're nanobots.

They're nanorobots. It's stock stuff. I'm like, what? It was like, oh, okay. So it was this funny, yeah. And then the previous team at Third Floor as well, I mean, that whole sequence of Rockefeller Center was like a thing that we were working on for a long time. Just keep going back. Because, you know, I mean, I think the thing that I was always trying to just hone in on was, you know, was more like just the geography of like moving someone. We have to get them from up there.

and they've got to get down here, and this is where, and where is so-and-so? It was more like an editorial thing in my brain of like, okay, where is he when this is happening? Does he know that this is happening? Why would they go there? But I'm constantly trying to figure out that logic. And then the other layer within this fanciful trick arrow come

conversations on the side of like, once they get the ice, we can just have fun. It's just going to be, you know, some crazy things. And, um, yeah. And of course there was like a list, a much longer list and things to try. And there's a lot, there's things that ended up on the editor room floor and things that there's some people were like, yeah, no, I don't know how we do that one. Uh,

But they did a lot. I mean, again, I remember that airbag one that's sort of Kate's last era where they kind of just, that thing goes in your plates. I was like, it was just like, I don't know, that would be really fun, like little punctuation to the end. And I was like, how do you do that? And I remember the second unit were kind of like, all right, yeah, I think we know what you mean. And again, you have to remember-

A lot of this is imagination at that point. We were going so fast that some of it had been previs, and a lot of it hadn't because we were literally shooting ahead of where some of the previous guys could go. Some of the ice rink sequence, we were creating it. We were just creating and shooting just this imaginary thing that we thought, okay, well, I think that's how it works, and then they're going to go like that.

And so they would just go off and then, yeah, I'd look at the second unit footage and be like, okay, does it look like an airbag? And they're like, we think so, maybe. And they're just like, this is a bunch of guys just getting yanked up on the road. They don't know what they're reacting to. Yeah, it was pretty funny. Well, since you brought up the logistics of who knows where who is at what given time, I wasn't going to ask this question because it seems a little nitpicky, but now that you said it, I'm going to ask you. Oh, this is where I got it wrong. Okay. No, no,

No, no, no. You didn't get it wrong. My question is, we have theories about this. My question is, Yelena sort of runs down the side of the building and then she just kind of peaces out for a little while until it's her time to shine on the ice. My co-host Mallory thinks that maybe Yelena went to go get a snack because she is forever, you know, she thought maybe street meat was on Yelena's agenda before she got to Clint. Do you have any thoughts or feelings about where Yelena was in those minutes? It's probably that. No, actually, this is something that I got hung up on.

because I had the same thing. She runs inside the building. And so I actually, and we shot it. I don't know if we did shoot it or not, but no, I mean, what, what ostensibly she does is she goes, she doesn't know that Clint's jumped out the window. So she, so I had a, I definitely boarded it. I actually previous, I think where she goes back up the, she runs back inside the building, goes up and, and basically gets, gets to the elevator, right. As, and, and, and finds the TSM guys up there. Like,

like all, all in various, you know, they're all been destroyed and beaten up. And, and, and they, they, they come to the thing and she sees Clint in the tree from the room, from the window and is basically about to shoot him. She has a shot on him and then the tree goes down. Um, so that was like a whole little sequence that, that was in there. And, but I, again, I felt it was important because I also was like, well, where does she go with this whole time? Uh, and, uh,

And they, you know, again, Marvel, who know their audiences and know that maybe the pace of these sequences may be a little better than ours, they were just like, we don't need to explain that. It's like, and it was like a lot of extra stuff to happen. Yeah, it's true. Ultimately, once Clint is in that tree, he needed to go down. Yeah.

Okay, speaking of the tree, first of all, I love the – I just read your interview on Marvel.com where you're talking about how you filmed part of that with branches you took out of a dumpster after the fact. Amazing. But also I have to ask on behalf of our producer, Steve, who's on this call, is the owl in the tree a reference to Rocky the owl that was –

from the rock. Very much so. Yeah. How did that, how did that come together? It was no, it happened around the time that we were sort of getting going and that story was there. And so it was kind of like, Oh, that's funny. And, and secondarily to that, my daughter's favorite little stuffed animal is an owl that looks exactly like the owl that ended up in the show as well. So there was, it was like a dual twofold thing of like, once the idea of the owl and the Christmas tree came up and then I

And then I sort of told my daughter about it and then and and I said well maybe we might put one in the tree when Clint's in the tree and and so then it kind of happened. And it was silly and I kept it was like oh no is it silly? Is it too much? But you know and that's the tricky thing of the sequences is like it's like you want the action but then I felt like I was always trying to find those moments that you could kind of alleviate some of the drama a little bit. And so the owl was like one

one of those things to put on the menu and it stayed. I love that. Um, speaking of animals in the show, I have to ask this on behalf of my cohost, Mallory, which is, um, has lucky in anything other than, uh, pizza or any other junk food that we've seen him consume on, like, is there a healthy kibble on the Barton farm? Like, will he now get a well-rounded diet? Uh,

I think he's going to get a better diet. Yeah. I think he's been, he's it's yeah. Kate, Kate sort of, yeah. Yet to learn how to take care of him properly. And so, um, yeah, I think, I think now that he's on the farm, there's, there's, you know, he can run around outside. There's better prospects for him, uh, you know, regular meals. That's true. Things are looking up. Um, on the, on the, on the Barton farm, uh, beat there's this, you know, there's this moment in, um,

I think it's episode four when Clint indicates that there's like real danger if...

Laura's watch is, is discovered. So what, what risk does it pose for Laura for her identity becomes known? Is this like, is there someone in particular after her? Is this something we will learn in the future? Like what, what are we meant to think about that specific danger with the watch? Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's probably for future time. Um, I mean, again, it's another thing like the Ronin suit that sort of connects these other worlds, um,

to this, you know, ostensibly ordinary family that's trying to mind their own business. Yeah, but again, in terms of what that means and where that goes, I can't speak to that. Okay. There's two instances of...

in the series, which is, you know, is a salty word in Russian. And I'm wondering if there, are there any rules about swears in foreign languages on a Marvel Disney Plus show? Or is it like... That's a really good question. I guess I didn't worry about that. I didn't question it. That was actually something that Florence, you know, I think just knew from her character and from the movie. And...

And so it wasn't scripted, but she was just like, well, that's what I would say. And so we did it. And I take no responsibility at those moments. It's kind of like, all right, that feels right. Let's just say it. And someone else will worry about it and tell us that we couldn't do that later down the line. I love it. The...

As with any Marvel Disney Plus show, there were plenty of fan theories flying around. It's like our favorite thing to do when we talk about Marvel TV. Are you the kind of person who tracks that kind of thing at all? And if so, were there any that you were particularly excited by or nervous about people going too far with or anything like that?

Oh, interesting. I mean, I try, I genuinely try not to, I sort of learned early, like after the first episode of like, okay, this is a wormhole if I follow all of this stuff. Right, right. Yeah, I knew it's more, it's funny, a lot of the theories were kind of

You know, yes, there was obviously like the Kingpin stuff early on that some people, you know, were immediately on it. So, you know, so you can sort of worry that that kind of starts taking hold and sort of is going to somehow spoil by the end of the show. You know, there's obviously, you know, hopes of other crossovers and things and that, yeah. I don't know. I feel like the main thing I learned was also just

the people weirdly, they get really mad. Like they start an episode and they've got a specific thing in their minds about what they think is supposed to happen. And then when it doesn't happen, they get super mad about it.

As though, as though like we made a promise. Right. Right. And which is, again, it's a, it's like, I get it. I mean, TV shows function that way or film movies function that way sometimes, but it was, yes, it was kind of, it was a, it was a funny thing. I mean, people obviously are very mad about Kingpin and, and just sort of how that unfolded. And it,

it's just it's it's it's funny you're like okay you know what aspect do you feel like people are mad about in terms of kingpin and how it unfolded well they you know we we reveal him late in the show and and then he has that dramatic scene with with with maya and you don't know what happens uh you know so it's an you know it's one of those off-camera moments that could mean anything um which you know to me is it's that's the fun way to do it uh but uh

but people got really upset because they're just like, what? It was more, they also, some, some, someone got mad about, they were just like, they were mad about how Kate, you know,

they felt like she bested him in the toy store. And I was just like, that wouldn't happen. He, no one's taking him down. You made him look like a punk. It's just, it's really funny. Like, uh, an arrow literally exploded in his face and he got up and walked away from it. So, um, I think, I think he's doing fine. Um, yeah. All right. Let me, let me, let me do a quick segment that I was going to save to the end, but I'm going to do it for you right now, which is, uh, I'm going to call it, are they alive roulette? And it goes like this. Okay. Can,

Kingpin? Question mark. That's what you're saying? Yes, question mark. Question mark. Yeah. But it's exciting. I mean, that's the thing. It's exciting. That's what's wonderful about the MCU. It's a question mark and that's the best type of question mark. Who knows? Kazi.

I would, I'm going to say, what's really funny is like, I was constantly tracking in the drafts that would come out, like, am I alive or dead? Am I alive or dead? Because, I mean, there was someone who was alive, someone who was dead, and he was just like, please, and he was constantly, like, until the day we shot that scene, he was just like, please, and I was just like, I'm sorry, but no, I think he's alive. He thinks he's alive. Okay. I mean, again, we didn't see him. As my daughter told me the other day, she said,

we were watching something else and, and, uh, you know, someone was doing some play and she's like, what's happening? And I was like, I think he's dying. And she said, no, he's not dying. Do you know how I know? Cause he's not coughing. They always cough when they die. Okay. All right. The telltale cough. All right. Um,

We lost track of Ivan in the fight. Is Ivan alive or dead? I would say he got, yeah, he just got really badly injured. He was on that, he was walking to that floor when Clint let off those explosives. Yeah. That would have been in the Yelena scene that I talked about.

We would have paid him off that. Yeah. You've seen Ivan groaning on the floor or something like that. Uh, last but definitely not least. And this is my personal fan theory. Derek Bishop, alive or dead. Oh, that's a good one. Uh, he's dead. He's dead. Okay. I didn't see him cough. I didn't see him cough. So I wasn't sure, but okay. Yeah. It was a long, it was a long scene of him, you know, under a taxi cab, probably or something. Um,

Do you have a favorite? I know you said you weren't tracking this stuff too closely, but do you have a favorite Easter egg or reference that you put in there that people haven't noticed that you're like, why didn't they see that we did this? I honestly don't have a good answer. There's probably something. There's definitely something. Yeah, I guess I haven't been tracking it closely enough. I mean, again, there's like to me a lot of the fun. Well, here's one thing.

I went down, it didn't make it in, so no one's missing it. But I did go down a path of trying to make Winter Friends from Matt Fraction run. And so we actually started, we had some concepts and I worked on a script with Matt and we were going to do, and it was just going to be, I wanted a moment where Lucky was watching it on TV just by himself and that no one else would see it except for Lucky.

And, but yes, it, we ended up sort of not, not going through with it, but that, that, that was one that would have been a fun little really deep dive for anyone, but of the fans of the comics. I mean, I, that, that sounds amazing. There's so much you have to pull off in this finale. You've got so many resolutions that you have to sort of take off here. You've got the Caden Eleanor confrontation, you've,

Maya with Kazi, Maya with Kingpin, Clint and Kate, the watch of it all, everything like that. Um, you know,

How do you make sure that you're giving the time that you want to give to all of these things in one episode where you're also toppling the 30 rock tree onto an ice rink and doing all these tricks? It was hard. You know what I mean? Yeah. No, it was really hard. And I don't, you know, I don't know if we got it right, right. It was, it was the constant process of, you know, I mean, from the get-go, like we,

this episode's script went through many, many different iterations and, you know, where the focus would kind of move. And then, you know, and then you go out and shoot it. At a certain point, you have to shoot something and go out and shoot it. And then you're in the hands of editorial then. Like, okay, let's try. And, you know, again, my hat's off to Tim Roach, my editor on that last episode, because, yeah, cross-cutting, you know, just figuring out

that's what we really worked on was just like when these resolutions happen and how do you you know essentially it's like yeah the audience needs to be tracking everything they need to feel satisfied and again you know there's definitely like would i have liked you know more time with with you know elaine and clint like even more like yeah probably like it would have been you know like that was a beautiful scene and um the you know the maya the

Kazi thing and that like we it's like obviously their story is not at the full forefront of the series but you have to close it somehow so it was like kind of giving that just enough that you know it was no it was really it was pretty hard and we yeah it took quite a bit of time to sort of massage it into place and yeah rewriting scenes and

And yeah, where, where are people's emotions at, at that point? Yeah, it was, it was, it was a thing for sure. I wanted to ask you about Echo. Cause I think it's interesting that she shows up in this finale. First of all, she did her hair and put on a bold lip before she went down to 30 rock. Yeah. She got ready for battle. Right. And, uh, but she doesn't interact with either of the Hawkeyes in this finale. And I think that's interesting. How important in terms of sort of launching her story forward. Cause you know, I know I, I,

I hear, I promise I was listening to you when you were like, we're allowed to do our own thing. That's what we're doing here. But we know that there's going to be an Echo show, right? So how important is it for her to be meaningfully involved in this finale, given that Marvel wants to sort of pitch her forward? You know what I mean? No, I think it's very important. And, and, and hers is a story that, you know, it was kind of, it was a, there's an emotional core there and, and there's an emotional connection, obviously for, for Clinton and, and, you know, that connection to his past and, and sort of,

you know figuring that out and and um you know there was a moment we had a moment uh with clint and and and maya sort of exchanging a look um you know that sort of was again kind of almost like a nod of forgiveness sort of you know you could have and maybe a proof you know whatever and um

you know, which would have been nice. But again, it felt like another resolution, you know, it was, it was almost just like, it was like too many characters having to acknowledge each other. And it just felt like a layer too far. Yeah. It's like Clint's really, it was like, yes. What you realize coming to five is like, well, a lot of people are mad at Clint and, and he's going to try and somehow he's going to try and make it through. And he sort of, it's like, he's making a list and checking it twice and sort of dealing with it all. So yeah. So yeah,

So yes, I get that connection didn't so it wasn't there, but, but, but yes, she's also, I think what actually ended up happening by not doing that as well as though. Yeah. And then letting her go off to deal with King things that she comes, it's, she's a, her independence as a character kind of, I think emerges out of, out of that more as well. It's not, she's not just need that, that thing with Clint. She's, you know, and I think that's what wonderful about the way that a lot of

plays is that she has this kind of strength and this individuality and that she's not like, you know, it's just like she stands her ground with all these guys. She stands her ground with Kingpin, you know, in a way. And there's a kind of a focus that that's really interesting. I want to talk. I mean, this is a show called Hawkeye. So I want to make sure I would talk to you about Clint and Kate and this and their whole like season journey. So let's start with Clint. Like, what do you feel like is the

the most important lesson that he learns in this season that takes him to, from where he starts at the beginning of the season to where he, where he winds up at the end of the season.

again, I think it's, it's an interesting one because it's not like an exact, you know, it's not like you start the show with like, Oh, it doesn't have to do this. It's, it's, it is an emotional, you know, it is an emotional journey of closure. And, and I mean, it's not closure because it's not like you can close the door on, on having been the Ronin. But, um, but I think again, I, to me, the way I always looked at it was, I think I said this before that,

I found it interesting that essentially it was about this identity of Hawkeye, you know, that, that, that I think Clint, that was the identity that other people maybe gave him, you know, that became a convenient calling card, but, but yes, because of his background, because of what he did, then did his rune in coming into the show, I felt like, you know, Clint Hawkeye is kind of the last thing that he actually maybe it,

has come to terms with. Like he doesn't, he's like, he has almost like a fear that is he more, am I Hawkeye or am I Ronan? Like who, who is, who is the real Clint and what do I deserve to be? And, and that discomfort with that sort of lack of self-worth or that discomfort with the, the,

you know, the, the fan fandom that Kate brings to him. That was why I found it interesting about the dynamic. Like she sees him as the thing that everybody thinks, you know, like the heroic side, the poster on the wall version. And, and he's a guy that's wrestling with like, that's not, I don't, I don't deserve that. And, and so kind of watching him come to terms with that and sort of recognizing what it means through her eyes and helping her and, and,

you know, um, and the messiness of her life and, and kind of helping her wrestle with that as well. Um, it sort of, again, it's not like it's a neat resolution, but it, it, it kind of

I don't know. I think it's more of a, I'm getting comfortable with it. Is that, you know, when you go back to the premiere, there's that moment in the, in the restaurant, you know, where the waiter says like the, you know, the meals on us, thank you for saving our city. And he's just extremely uncomfortable there. Is that, is that, that, that discomfort that you're talking about with like being called a hero? And again, I'm not, you know, so I talked to Jeremy about this, but

And I don't know, again, Jeremy's obviously got his own relationship with the character. And, but, but to me, when I started thinking about this character, when I, early on, when he, when I was even just kind of getting excited by the idea of possibly being involved and I started really taking a dive on the character, that was the thing that felt like the hook was just that, you know, and I was identified in Fraction as well. It was just like that kind of, that guy that just doesn't,

feel like the person people say he is. And, you know, he's like the, he's like this sort of old hometown, you know, quarterback that, that who's past is behind him that, that, you know, people buy him drinks when he goes to the bar, but he feels worthless inside. Cause he's not that guy, you know? That was what felt interesting to me. What about Kate? I mean, I, you know, for me, my interpretation is that, you know, she gets to learn some

harsher truths about what it is, the cost of being a hero and, and, you know, especially like, you know, in the truth that she learns about her mom and stuff like that. But, you know, what, what do you see as Kate's emotional arc, emotional journey through the, through the show? I mean, it's, yeah, it's, it's maturing. I think it's, it's, you know, the reality is,

she has a sort of recklessness to her at the beginning, you know, that she's young and she's rich and that entitlement maybe that's there and you know, there's an assumption that things are, you know, go a certain way and again, not that it's completely closed off. It's not like she's, I was also wanting to be careful that she didn't come across as this spoiled kid that, you know, had no sense of the world and that there was a scrappiness to her but

But yeah, it's kind of that transition from sort of, you know, the innocence of speculation or the innocence of ambition meeting reality. And, you know, I think...

again coming to see Clint not as a superhero but as a human um as a real person that that that's kind of her journey and then of course she comes to see her mother not just as her mother as a real person as well with her own messiness and and and it's it's kind of a little bit again it is about you know it's like that conversation I've said too sort of about um branding you know it's a little bit like I think we all project versions of people and and you know and

Kate has blinders at the beginning. Like she sees that argument with Armand, with her, between her mom and Armand and, and comes, she never, she never thinks for once that her mom might, there might be something fishy, but it's like, she immediately goes off on that track of following Armand. And then her prejudice against Jack, because of his romantic involvement with her mom, it just brings everything to the fore. And she's just, she's just off on that track. And, and so I think again, just learning to look at the subtleties and, and to look at people, you know, sort of below that, that, that, that,

that judgment is what I think is an interesting journey that she goes on. I'm so glad you brought up Jack. This is my last question for you because he has emerged as like the mascot of this podcast. We love Jack Duquesne. We love Tony Dalton. My question, I guess, is that, you know, I had, I had seen what Tony Dalton could do on Better Call Saul. You know, I was already impressed with him. This is a different flavor of that sort of similar thing.

charm but very scary stuff that he does on on better call Saul um did he did the character Jack Duquesne or or the way that you thought about how you might use him change it all once you saw what Tony was doing with him or were you just like Tony nailed exactly what I wanted for this character this is what I always imagined you know no what was interesting is like when I came on

you know, they, they, so, so Jonathan and those guys already had kind of a, you know, the, the Jack Duquesne was going to be part of things. And he was kind of written as this, this just eccentric kind of thought that, that was just sort of almost so he was just very like detached from reality in some ways. And, and, and so, and it's like, I could understand, I sort of knew what the comedic value of it was, but,

But, you know, at the same time, it's like, you know, if you need him to be a red herring and you need him to be a believable fiancé to Eleanor, you know, like, there's a nuance there that we have to try and find to sort of ground all that stuff. And so, yeah, so it's kind of trying to think of a person that could kind of handle that, that you would project. Again, you as a viewer would project a certain...

uh, you know, you don't, you believe him as a bad guy. Cause if Kate seems a bad guy, the audience needs to see him as a bad guy too. It can't just be clear that because it would just make Kate seem like an idiot if, and, um, and so I have to credit, um, uh, uh, two writers, Brian Gatewood and, and, uh, Tanaka, um, with, with suggesting, uh, looking at Tony, um,

Cause, uh, yeah, they were there. They just, again, my eyes hadn't gone there yet. And they're like, check them out. Like, it's like, that's the, I think he's the guy. Like, I think he could do it. He's really funny and, and, uh, and good. And, and then, yeah, and then Tony came in and just, again, it's a weird character to try and land. And, uh, and he, it was funny. Sometimes he'd look at me and just kind of go like, is this really what I'm like? Like he would just kind of

again, he's just very funny because he's so open to just doing whatever you tell him to do. And, and sometimes you could tell, like, I would ask him to do something crazy. I said like, you know, like the, the dialogue with the, the kid at the party when he asked him if his, you know, he says, you know, I remember when you pee your pants in the Hamptons or whatever, which was something I just threw out as like, I was essentially just went over, I went, I went to Tony and I said, look, you just need to really like kind of,

like just be childish with this kid like just embarrass him somehow and then I went to the kid and I told the kids you need to like try and whatever he says like just try and come back at him as well like and and then just kind of let them go at each other so Tony the

the Peter pants thing. So anyway, the thing, he always had fun with it and I enjoyed, it was just this amusing thing where it was like, okay, we'll just, we're going to go, we're going to go crazy and we'll go down the same with the blood on the tie at the end. It was like a funny, just cause I remember the scene was just like explaining Lopping and that they were going to become friends. And it just felt not like it felt Jack would not sit and listen to that to me. I was like, he's not, he's not listening to what Lopping is. And so, yeah, I was just like, I was like, just, just, I was like, just,

be absentmindedly that, you know, looking at your time and then just, yeah, like reveal it. Just, just yeah. Bowls. And cause balls is something that I would frequently say as a, uh, uh, expletive. And yeah, it is. He was great. I love Tony so much. He was, and he did such a great job. Again, it was a difficult character and he had so much fun with it. Well, thank you so much for the chat for coming at the beginning and here at the end to talk to me about, about this show. Um, we've had so much fun with it. It's great.

It all happened. It's true. Yeah. Thanks so much. And good luck. Are you, I mean, you probably can't tell me if you have any other like Marvel plans in the future. What's, can you tell me anything that's on your docket at all, Reese, that people can? I mean, for my really super niche fans, I mean, my immediate plans are I'm going to go and do season four of Documentary Now.

So that's, that's all for all five of you that watch it. That's me. Oh my God. The company, the company, uh, album recording episode is one of the best things that's ever happened. So it's good. Yeah. So we, uh, that felt, it was funny. We started talking about that, like while I was sort of in the midst of this and it felt like such a,

a fun, it's such a polar opposite to Marvel and a fun kind of place to go dip back into. So luckily we managed to get the band back together and, um, yeah, we're going to go do that. All right. Well, I will, I will keep my eyes peeled for documentary now and anything else you might have coming up. Thanks so much, Reese. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks guys.

All right, now that Reese has pulled back the curtain on some Hawkeye secrets, I mean, you'd think we'd be done talking about Hawkeye, but oh no, not us. You would be wrong. Not us. We went long. So you're getting a twofer. Mel. Yes.

What's happening next? So glad you asked. We will be returning to hand out Sweetie Superlatives, our 12 awards for this entire season of Hawkeye. We will be diving in to the mailbag questions with Jomia Denneron. And we will be leaning into the hype, putting on our take helmets.

arming ourselves in Beskar and lore to chat about the book of Boba Fett with Ben Lindbergh, who will be sharing his recommendations for what to watch and read so that you are ready for the Boba premiere next week. Thank you to my partner, Joanna, always just wanted to say that. Thank you to Hawkeye EP and director Reese Thomas for joining us today. And of course,

Thank you to our kingpin of content, Steve Allman, for producing this episode. Our LARP lords, Arjuna Ramgopal and T.D. St. Matthew Daniel for their additional production work on this episode. And the meme swordsman himself, Jomia Deneron, for his work on the social for this episode. Remember to follow The Ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow The Ringerverse across our social feeds.

Head back this weekend for our Hawkeye season review and our Book of Boba Fett primer. Head back on Monday for the House of Midnight Matrix Resurrections pod. And head back on Wednesday and Friday for the Midnight Boys and House of R Boba premiere pods. It's a lot of content. Busy time on the Ringerverse feed. Happy holidays to everyone. Happy holidays.

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You might say all kinds of stuff when things go wrong, but these are the words you really need to remember. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. They've got options to fit your unique insurance needs, meaning you can talk to your agent to choose the coverage you need, have coverage options to protect the things you value most, file a claim right on the State Farm mobile app, and even reach a real person when you need to talk to someone. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.