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Hawkeye Revealed Its Game-Changing Big Bad!

Jeremy renner and Hailee Steinfeld in 'Hawkeye'

Hawkeye is, surprisingly, one of the best Marvel Disney+ shows yet—surprising for many because they didn’t like the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s version of Clint Barton (or Jeremy Renner for that matter, with good reason), but in Hawkeye, he’s helping to train Kate Bishop and bring her into the superhero world. It is a fantastic show and, at the end of its most recent episode, we got a huge reveal for not only the finale but the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole.

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A lot of the Disney+ shows have been setting up the future for Marvel’s Phase 4, which is fine since we had a sort of fresh slate to work off of after Avengers: Endgame, but there is something about this reveal in particular that really has me excited (and also changes everything).

**Spoilers for Hawkeye episode 5, “Ronin,” lie ahead.**

Yelena Belova showed up to take down Clint Barton, and we knew that she got her assignment from Val, because that was what happened at the end of Black Widow. But what we didn’t know was who alerted Val about everything. Lucky for us, the Kingpin connection in Hawkeye that we all assumed was going to be through Echo is through Yelena and who brought her to Kate and Clint in the first place.

After Yelena talks to Kate, she goes searching for her own leads as to why she’s after Clint, only to discover that it leads her to Eleanor Bishop. Why is this important? Because Eleanor Bishop is meeting with Wilson Fisk himself, who, if we’re to go off of what Clint said to Maya, also hired Ronin to work for him.

The thing about this reveal is that we all need to know just how far Kingpin’s reach goes. If it connects to Val, that means that he isn’t just a Hell’s Kitchen villain, and good! Maybe I’ll get my wish and get to see Vincent D’Onofrio squaring off against Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in the future.

But it all just feels like so much is opening up for the future of the MCU. After the Avengers defeated Thanos, there was the question of what was coming next, and while Kang is still around and we have the looming threat of the multiverse breaking in Multiverse of Madness, it seems as if many of the “big bads” of the future of the MCU are on the ground level and rooted in our superheroes that are more human than god.

Bringing Wilson Fisk into this fold means that his network of “bad guys” can grow and is clearly big enough that he’s connected back to Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, so who knows where his power stops? I’m just so excited to see Vincent D’Onofrio back in his suit and ready to take on the MCU once again.

(image: Marvel Entertainment)

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Author
Rachel Leishman
Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She's been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff's biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she's your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh.

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