Main cast: Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton/Hawkeye), Hailee Steinfeld (Kate Bishop), Vera Farmiga (Eleanor Bishop), Tony Dalton (Jack Duquesne), Fra Fee (Kazi), Brian d’Arcy James (Derek Bishop), Aleks Paunovic (Ivan), Piotr Adamczyk (Tomas), Linda Cardellini (Laura Barton), and Simon Callow (Armand III)
Director: Rhys Thomas
It’s pretty clear from the opening credit animations that we are going to be focusing on Kate Bishop being Hawkeye, not Clint Barton. Of course, with Hawkeye being as useful and memorable as a third thumb in the grand scheme of things, I’m not sure why anyone wants to make a show out of that character. Who cares about someone with a bow when there are flying superheroes and powerful magic-users in the same setting?
Also, with the main star now being a woman, once again it’s back to the woke school of creating horribly uninteresting female characters. Kate, because she has a vagina, is automatically the best at everything, without needing to put any effort into reaching that level of expertise. She has a witty and sarcastic retort for every occasion, and does not have to be held accountable for any mistake she may do during the course of things. Kate Bishop, in other words, is basically every “strong female lead character” in movies and books these days, created out of a template that is decided and designed by committee. They are all the same character, and are boring as hell as a result.
Kate has always had a thing for Clint Barton ever since he saved her without him really knowing it, and she saw him in action during the Battle of New York, and it’s so cool. Sure, her father died during that day, but hey, nothing is holding her power of the sassy back. Hence, during the present day, she is constantly quipping to her friends as she does her best impersonation of a gender-bent Hawkeye. I don’t know why she doesn’t instead try to dry hump alien spacecrafts to be Captain Marvel, as her powers are cooler than Hawkeye’s, but I guess Captain Marvel already formed her own Supremes in her upcoming movie, so Hawkeye it has to be.
Anyway, her story begins when her mother gets engaged to Jack Duquesne, and Kate discovers that he is not a very nice guy at all. Shocker, I know. Jack and his uncle Armand III are auctioning off Avengers stuff scavenged from the destruction after you know what, and Kate ends up, in the grand tradition of strong sassy modern day Marvel heroines, getting a hold of Clint’s Ronin armor and wears it to become better than Clint at what he does. That’s the power of having a vagina and a lot of sassy quips, people! Clint shows up, and is like, sorry for being a white man, I’m going to now do what little that is necessary to let Kate become a Strong Independent Sassy Heroine.
So, again, we have a new sassy heroine that never really earns her powers—in the current year, she deserves to have everything handed to her because she is a woman.
Has anyone ever dared to point out how such portrayal actually works against the concept of a strong woman itself?
Hailee Steinfeld is pretty insufferable here, as she is just channeling “CW superheroine”, but I’m not sure if that’s her fault entirely, as Kate is written to be that way. She is out-acted by Vera Farmiga, Tony Dalton, and Simon Callow in every scene they share, and that’s unfortunate. Meanwhile, in the scant scenes he’s in, Jeremy Renner looks like he was done with the Hawkeye gig five years ago and he’s just here to make sure that his contract is fulfilled and he never has to wear that dumb-looking costume again after this.
Never Meet Your Heroes is all about introducing yet another formulaic strong action heroine archetype, when there are already a few of them in the MCU already. I don’t know why we need another one, but hey, at this point Kevin Feige has clearly lost the plot —giving credence to rumors that the actual architect of the MCU in its first few years was Jon Favreau.
Do we need this show? Disney thinks so, at least to fill the slots of its streaming service. If this first episode is anything to go by, though, Kate is in danger of being as irrelevant to the greater scheme of things as Clint Barton.
