Spoilers

 

Everyone is descending on the Bishop Christmas party…

Christmas has arrived, new suits have been created and the big villain has been revealed – which leaves episode 6 to tie up the many, many loose ends.

For the most part Hawkeye manages to do that – even if it means gliding over some of the more contrived elements and strange decisions of its cast members to achieve it.

It is an enjoyable finale and, perhaps, the MCU show with the closest sensibility to what the unfamiliar may think of when they think of comics. I don’t mean grand, inconsequential violence but the silliness of falling into a giant Christmas tree or sliding across an ice rink loosing arrows at conveniently placed ‘steam’ outlets. In terms of tropes it is the tropiest of episodes – from people surviving explosions while others die from seemingly minor stomach wounds, from ridiculous spoiled rich brats to police officers dressing in superhero costumes because that’s ‘more effective’. From the hero losing the fight but winning the argument to a big man chest barging a bad guy. It’s all here and, just about, it all works.

The highlight of the episode for me was not the reappearance of one of my favourite villains, nor the fight against the Tracksuit Mafia at the end of the episode. My absolute favourite element of this episode was how the team weaved in the LARPers who have featured right through the show.

In a call back to the Warriors Three from Thor, this bunch of secondary characters have been shown as much, if not more, love than some of the main protagonists. I particularly loved their segue from LARPers to sidekicks to whatever it is they become in the end with a bunch of superb outfits. I could hear my fellow roleplayers up and down the land looking at their kit and rethinking our own – not least because it looked great but also because it was so lovely to see them doing cool stuff on screen. I would watch a show about them solving crime.

My only criticism of that? These were professional emergency service workers with long experience and training of crowd control, so the decision to get kitted up, even if it made them look like ‘heroes’ didn’t really work. Also, how on earth did they make that kit in less than twenty-four hours? I mean, I get kit made for me and I have some inkling of how long it takes to create stuff like that and it’s not days, it’s weeks. Nice kit though.

Looking back on the season now it feels the least consequential of the MCU TV shows. It raised some serious issues and then almost completely ignored them in favour of a structure which was unashamedly a Christmas Movie in shape. With call backs to Christmas on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life and a host of other seasonal films, the rules it played by were ones which meant the story was more important than the people in it; that there were beats to hit regardless of how daft that would make the characters’ decisions look.

Don’t get me wrong – as I say above, I enjoyed it and there is one shocking moment I didn’t expect, but I will forget about this show by the time I’ve finished watching an episode of literally anything else.

My other highlight was the menace the big villain brought to the screen. Disney’s direct creative control of the MCU has meant it has struggled to explore serious issues or even tones that aren’t family friendly. Our villain here brought every ounce of terrifying gravity to the screen I’d hoped for and I dream we see more of it because it brought a sense of real stakes to the story which had been absent even with Yelena trying to kill Barton.

My final issue was that Yelena didn’t ever feel like she was going to effectively deal with Barton. She was a rubbish assassin. Again, an example of a character in service to the plot instead of the other way around.

Still, I laughed a lot at this episode – whether it was a perfect use of the phrase ‘we’re all going to die’, or a truck that was way too small or a fight in a lift, it carried me along and brought a lot of joy.

In the end, the show wanted to be a Christmas Movie. It kind of worked in a Home Alone sort of way. However, with the issues it brought up there was an attempt to be something more, something where darkness ends in light and in that it failed.

Not bad but not anywhere close to A Muppet Christmas Carol.

Rating? 7 trick arrows out of 10.

Stewart Hotston