Why You Can Trust CNET Hawkeye finale recap: Ending and post-credits scene, explained
New York City's Kingpin of crime Wilson Fisk enters the Disney Plus Marvel Cinematic Universe show for its sixth and final episode.
The Hawkeyes look dapper for the series finale.
With the criminal mastermind revealed last week, episode 6 of Marvel Cinematic Universe series Hawkeye hit Disney Plus on Wednesday. The season finale seems like the perfect time to have Avenger Clint Barton and his apprentice Kate Bishop (Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld) go up against shadowy baddy Wilson Fisk, New York City's Kingpin of crime (Vincent D'Onofrio).
The revelation of Fisk's involvement came from Black Widow assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), who was hired to kill Clint by Kate's mom, Eleanor Bishop (Vera Farmiga). Yelena took the contract under the mistaken belief that Clint was responsible for the death of her sister Natasha Romanoff in Avengers: Endgame.
Separately, Tracksuit Mafia leader Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) had a vendetta against Clint for killing her father as the masked vigilante Ronin. However, it seems like her conviction was shaken by the possibility that Fisk may have been responsible for that.
All roads lead to Kingpin, so let's jump into an underworld of SPOILERS for the season finale, entitled "So This Is Christmas."
Bishops in debt
It turns out that the Bishop family owed Fisk a pile of money when Kate's dad was killed in the Battle of New York back in 2012. With the debt long paid, Eleanor wants out of the arrangement -- she let her ditzy fiance, Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), take the fall for Fisk's front company and killed Jack's uncle Armand.
However, Kate's investigation into the criminal doings has put her in danger, and Eleanor wants out. It's a tough situation Eleanor is in, but Fisk fans likely had one thought after this scene: "She's dead."
Kate and Clint see a video of the meeting, and he promises to help her, before acknowledging her as his partner. At last.
Wilson Fisk gets an arrow to the chest, but it doesn't faze him.
Kingpin unleashed
Fisk realizes Maya has turned on him as well, so he tasks her underling Kazi (Fra Fee) with taking care of her, Eleanor and Clint.
"The people need to be reminded that this city belongs to me," Kingpin says, with his signature dramatic midsentence breaths.
Kingpin has excellent fashion sense in the comics as well.
Before his appearance in this show, our last encounter with Fisk was in Netflix's canceled Daredevil. We saw him being dragged off to prison in that show's finale, which took place before Thanos' genocidal Snap in Avengers: Infinity War.
He's also wearing a rather flamboyant red and white shirt – this is the same outfit he wore in the 2014 graphic novel Spider-Man: Family Business. This is about Peter Parker's maybe-sister Teresa and has little in common with this show.
It's a nice shirt, though, and seems like it'd hide some of the blood when Fisk gets all murderous. He was probably planning to go to a tropical-themed Christmas party after dealing with Eleanor.
Fisk confronts Eleanor outside Rockefeller Center, but Kate stops him with an arrow to the (presumably body-armored) chest, and Eleanor flippin' rams him into iconic toy store FAO Schwarz. Kate and Kingpin throw down among the toys, until she blows him up with an explosive arrow.
Maya Lopez prepares to bring justice to Fisk.
Echo alone
After Fisk gets his much deserved beatdown, Maya tries to convince her childhood friend Kazi to escape the Tracksuit Mafia life, but he asserts that it's the only life he knows and forces her to kill him. Rough.
Before getting the heck out of dodge and into her own Disney Plus show, she tracks down a wounded Fisk and confronts him about her father's death. She seemingly shoots him in the face, but it cuts away before we see if he's dead or alive.
They had a similar encounter in the comics.
Fisk is almost certainly not dead – Maya did the same in a 2001 Daredevil comic, and left the baddy blind. He eventually got better, though. It's unclear if he'll suffer the same fate in the MCU, but it'd be silly to re-introduce a beloved character and kill him off immediately.
The trickiest of arrows
Much like episode 3, Clint and Kate use a bunch of trick arrows to make fools of the Tracksuit Mafia in their battle at Rockefeller Center.
- Smoke arrow: Fills Kazi's sniper's perch with purple smoke, forcing him to leave.
- Acid arrow: Melts through the trunk of the Rockefeller Christmas tree so Clint can get to the ground.
- Electromagnetic arrow: Pulls the Tracksuits' guns out of their hands.
- Flash arrow: Temporarily blinds a bunch of the Tracksuits.
- Needle arrow: Fires nasty barbs in every direction, incapacitating a group of goons.
- Freeze arrow: Traps one of the Tracksuits' legs in ice. I hope that doesn't result in him losing that limb.
- Drone arrow: Grabs a guy by the leg and pulls him up and away from the fight.
- Electric harness arrow: Pins a Tracksuit's limbs and shocks him into unconsciousness.
- Tranquilizer arrow: Fires a bunch of sedative darts, knocking out targets.
- Pepper spray arrow: Disorientates a bunch of Tracksuits.
- Air bag arrow: Bounces a group of Tracksuits in the air, probably leaving them with all kinds of injuries after they hit the hard of Rockefeller Center surfaces.
- Pym arrow: Shrinks a van of Tracksuits to toy size, but Clint doesn't have a way to bring them back to normal size. Rendered moot when an owl drags the tiny gangsters away in their little vehicle. Dark.
- Explosive arrow: Clint blows up a bunch of Tracksuits without even looking. Badass.
- Grapple arrow: Kate tries to use it on Fisk, but he uses it to drag her toward him.
- Net arrow: Kate uses it to trap Fisk in the toy store and stop him from going after Eleanor during their battle.
- Too Dangerous arrow: Among the arrows that Kate uses to blow Fisk up in FAO Schwarz.
Yelena Belova has a moment of realization with Clint.
Battle with Black Widow
After tussling with super best frenemy Kate, Yelena confronts Clint on the Rockefeller Center ice rink. She won't accept that Natasha sacrificed herself rather than Clint killing her but is ultimately convinced when he uses her and Natasha's secret whistle.
He reveals that Natasha told him about events of the Black Widow movie's opening flashback – as her and Yelena's undercover family escaped the US – and how Yelena's safety was always her top priority. With the hatchet buried, she walks away from Clint.
It's unclear where Yelena will show up next, but it'd be cool if she, Kate, Wanda Maximoff's sons (assuming she finds them) and Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel teamed up to form the Young Avengers.
Ex-Agent of Shield
With Fisk defeated, Maya in the wind, Eleanor in jail and Yelena off Clint's tail, the Hawkeyes and the newly named Lucky the Pizza Dog return to the Barton house on Christmas Day.
Clint returns the Rolex to his wife Laura, and she turns it around to reveal a Shield logo -- confirming that she used to work with the supersecret agency. She also held the Agent 19 designation, which is used by Bobbi Morse (aka Mockingbird) in the comics.
Bobbi appeared in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a Marvel TV show whose place in the MCU is a little shaky at this point, but Laura being Agent 19 doesn't erase Bobbi from the canon. Hawkeye and Bobbi were married in the comics, so the number is likely just a reference to that.
With the watch returned to Laura, Kate and Clint burn the Ronin suit on the barbecue, ending its dark legacy for good and potentially stinking up the garden for a while. She suggests a bunch of bad aliases she could adopt -- Lady Hawk, Hawk Eve, Hawk Shot, Lady Arrow -- until Clint suggests simply "Hawkeye."
Mid-credits musical number
We don't get any major plot revelations in the mid-credits sequence, just a full rendition of Save the City from Rogers: The Musical, which Clint and his kids attended in the first episode.
It retells the story of the 2012 Avengers in fabulous form, with added Ant-Man. (He wasn't part of the team at that point in the timeline, but he did travel back there in Endgame.)
Observations, WTF questions and Easter eggs
- A bunch of the cast shared messages via the show's official Twitter ahead of the finale hitting Disney Plus, including Vincent D'Onofrio. It's a nice reminder that he's much less scary than his character.
- The infiltration of a fancy party loosely resembles the fourth and fifth issues of Matt Fraction and David Aja's iconic 2012 Hawkeye comics run, which sees Clint and Kate hunting an incriminating tape in Madripoor (the crime-ridden island also seen in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier). The most economical way to dive into this run (or go on a massive superhero reading binge) is via Marvel Unlimited, which gets you access to a massive library of Marvel's back catalog.
- Clint's encounter with a cute owl in the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is presumably a reference to Rocky, a saw-whet owl discovered in the real-life tree in 2020. She was rescued, rehabilitated and set free – hopefully the same thing happened to her MCU counterpart (after she ate the tiny Tracksuit Mafia goons).
- When Kate takes aim from the upper story of FAO Schwarz, she steps on a walking piano. You might remember Tom Hanks and the late Robert Loggia dancing on one in the 1988 movie Big, but that was at the store's original Fifth Avenue location (which was magnificent).
- How will Val react to Yelena's failure to complete the contract? Or will Yelena confront Val for lying about Clint killing Natasha? She'll almost certainly plead ignorance in the latter scenario, the sneaky snake.
- Eleanor tries to weasel out of her crimes right until she's hauled away in cuffs.
- Jack is quite the swashbuckler. I'm glad he survived, and I hope we see him again.
That's it for Disney Plus Marvel in 2021, but Star Wars fans can look forward to The Book of Boba Fett on Wednesday, Dec. 29. The release dates for Marvel's 2022 shows are unclear, but it seems likely Ms. Marvel will be the next to hit the streaming service come the summer.
