Spoilers

Clint realises that Kate might have good cause for suspicion of Jack…

Listening is not the same as understanding. If episode 3 showed us both Kate and Clint learning they couldn’t simply operate alone, then episode 4 follows them as they ignore that lesson. In part, at least.

What follows is an extremely awkward family meeting for Kate in which we all learn something, although what the audience learns is not what Kate learns.

I’m a little stuck on Clint’s reaction to Kate’s mother finding him doing investigation shenanigans with her daughter who’s pretty much young enough to be his daughter. I can’t help but think that in real life it would have been an awkward meeting for very different reasons to the ones explored in this episode, and it was interesting to see Clint simply sit there and try to say nothing, as if he was the child waiting to be allowed to get down from the table.

Suffice to say that with almost no changes the two of them are pretty much back to charting their own paths without really paying attention to those they’re supposed to be on a team with.

Kate chastises Clint for being a loner but then completely ignores his advice and his requests because she thinks she knows better while Clint effectively ignores the help he knows she can give.

He, at least, has an excuse: he makes a promise to her mother that he will keep her safe and we can see him trying, in a hamfisted tough love way, to get her off the scene – especially when Yelena Romanoff arrives on the scene.

Before we get to the three-way showdown at the end of the episode let’s talk a bit about two other things.

Firstly, I want to talk about the plotting in the show. This episode moves us on and you can almost feel the pieces slotting into place but at the same time it is suffering from being one of those shows where you know they’re also setting up stories for elsewhere (like Echo’s solo outing, the ongoing activities of Yelena Romanov and the return of a certain Kingpin). It can leave you feeling a little frustrated because rather than focusing on Clint’s story it feels like he’s doing the things he’s doing to ensure we see the rest of the MCU being moved around ready for the next story. It does him a disservice.

It is extra frustrating when, in the core scene in this week’s episode, we see Jeremy Renner delivering a gut punch of a performance when finally forced to admit who he is and what he’s done, together with the impact that’s had on not only his life but the lives of those he loves. I loved this scene and it felt right – both because it was instructive for Kate about the cost her idol has paid for the life he’s led but also because we got to see what’s under that armour Clint wears around his heart. It’s not that I want melodrama – but I do want to see more of this because it’s this scene that lends weight to everything else that happens.

Too often in superhero stories we have a smash bang of violence without any human emotion to give us the weight violence actually has in people’s lives.

We got some of that in this episode but not enough and as I say, part of that is very much because for much of this episode it felt like Clint wasn’t the actual hero of the story.

The second thing I want to talk about are the incidentals. There are many incidentals in this episode and all of them were worth their time on screen. From a LARPer talking about how she made her kit (as an avid LARPer myself I’ve been witness to this exact conversation many times), to seeing a boomerang on the back of a door to two people talking in German. The secondary characters in the show have work to do and lives to lead and it’s lovely to see their details attended to. It makes this show feel like it’s taking place in a living and breathing world.

But back to the finale. Emotionally frustrating not because of decisions made by characters but because it’s all so jumbled those decisions come too quickly and don’t feel like they have any kind of build-up.

Having said that, I’m kind of glad for this confusion now in episode 4 because it feels like all the major players are on the screen. Which means we are definitely going to get time to explore what they want, who they’re working for and why they’re active. So perhaps we can forgive the Piccadilly Circus nature of this episode because it means we won’t be rushing into the last episode like we did with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Verdict: This is a solid mid-season entry to the series. Very much moving the deck chairs around to ensure the final act is ready to go it nevertheless had some fun moments. I’ve two questions though. Firstly, will Elspeth get her bag back and just who does that Rolex belong to?

Rating? 7 LARP costumes out of 10

Stewart Hotston