Hawkeye is shaping up to be one of my favorite MCU shows so far. And that’s saying something cause I’m a Bucky, Wanda, and Loki fan.

Hawkeye episode 3 has given everything we ever needed and some more. And the show as a whole is doing a great job at creating the story of the crime scene in New York City, something we barely have seen so far in this version of the MCU. But before I go any further with our reactions and thoughts about episode 3, make sure to listen to all of it in full by clicking play on the podcast list below.

So let’s start off by talking about Echo and her past. I like villains that are motivated by good reason and I would say she is one of them. I don’t know how involved in her father’s business she was prior to his death, but I think it gives her even more depth to see that she was essentially the sweetheart of the Tracksuit Mafia. But we can’t talk about Echo without bringing up Uncle, who I think we can all say is Kingpin. Unless you are too scared to confirm it until you see him, but that voice is too distinguishable. One thing I can say that I was semi-right about was that Echo is going after Ronan on her terms, not so much Kingpins. She wants revenge, and we see that is even causing a slight rift between the Tracksuit Mafia and herself. They may work for her, but as the show has made clear, there’s someone above her that they all know would not be happy with her taking her own path and causing unneeded trouble. Did someone say Kingpin again? And will this rift cause issues? Oh, yea I’m calling it now.

As promised, we did say we would give a little of a rundown on who exactly the Swordsman is. So he has a sort of interesting history in the way that he is never quite a good guy but also never a full bad guy. His story begins in a circus where he meets a young Clint Barton, prior to him being Hawkeye. It is possible in the MCU this relationship is mirrored by Jack’s relationship with Kate. He then goes on to get himself into trouble and nearly kills young Clint. Past that, he is involved in crime and tries to be part of the Avengers. His story overlaps several known characters, such as Captain America, Scarlet Witch, and Black Widow. Interestingly enough, he also has a run-in with Kang, yet that story is a little bonkers and would definitely never make it to the big screen. Overall, he isn’t a very stand-out kind of character with the exception of how involved in the crime world he is. And of course, he runs into money problems that leave him broke, something we see being played out in Hawkeye. But due to his nature of skirting the good and bad line, there’s not really a way to tell what direction he will go in Hawkeye. My thought is he isn’t truly a bad guy, and as we said in the podcast, he is far too obvious to be a main antagonist.

As there’s the running theory based on what the watch from the Avengers compound is, I think the appearance of Pym tech is pretty important moving forward. In this episode, Hawkeye himself even highlights how it doesn’t seem to be a good thing that things from Avengers compound are being sold on black markets. If the watches themselves are what the villains are after and we now have Pym tech (aka the thing that makes the watches go back or forwards in time) are making appearances, we should probably be worried about what that means.

Yelena, my beloved. She did not make an appearance yet this episode, although she’s coming. I mainly know this because there’s literally only three more episodes and she has to appear in one of them. Once again, she is not working or involved with Echo and this episode made that fairly clear. Echo appears to have her own problems.

As I spoke about in this podcast episode, my money is lowkey on Kate’s mom being a villain of some sort. She seems just the right kind of sketchy to have me keeping my eye on her. She has just as much access to swords as Jack does and I wouldn’t be surprised if Jack’s uncle let her into his home under the guise that she would be apologizing about their previous argument. Ironically, Jack would have much more to lose if his uncle died, even if they didn’t always like each other. Kate’s mom on the other hand? She’s a successful rich woman who would do anything to keep that power. That’s not typically the type of character that creates a feeling of safety and heroism.

Now with three episodes left and Spider-Man: No Way Home around the corner it is so important to keep up with content. I know I say this every week, but if you really don’t want spoilers seriously do your best to keep up. We will be throwing our own content at you at warp speed, with podcasts for episodes 4 and 5, along with Spider-Man predictions and reactions all coming within the next two weeks. And I think this time I really can say that Marvel is about to blow your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Hawkeye Episode 3”, Andrew Kolondra Jr., Vanderbilt Hustler