[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Disney+ series Hawkeye, Season 1 episode 3, “Echoes.”]
She’s in danger. She’s connected to a vigilante on whom some very, very dangerous criminals want revenge. She’s in over her head, not that she’d admit it. But so far, despite the various perils and setbacks, Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) just seems like she’s having a fantastic time.
That continues in “Echoes,” when Kate’s given the opportunity to not only use her hero’s bow, but Clint’s (Jeremy Renner) trick arrows, too. Fun! We also get backstory on Echo (Alaqua Cox), who has a good reason for wanting to go after Ronin. Here’s how it happens.
To start, Echo’s name is Maya Lopez. She’s deaf, and growing up, she was very close to her father (played by Zahn McClarnon). Unfortunately, her dad was part of the tracksuit mafia, and one night, Ronin stormed their headquarters and killed him. That’s why Echo wanted to find Kate—she wants revenge for her father’s death.
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In the present she interrogates Clint, asking him what happened to Ronin. “He’s dead,” Clint tells her. Who killed him? “Black Widow,” he answers; that is, in a manner of speaking, true. But Maya doesn’t believe him, and a fight starts. Clint manages to break free and handles many of the goons, and he also frees Kate to help. They steal a car to get away, which is good. But his hearing aid is smashed in the process, which is bad.
They’re pursued by four cars of mafia members plus Maya, and while Clint drives, Kate has to take them on. “We’re out of regular arrows,” Clint notes, so Kate, excitedly, realizes she’s about to get to use trick arrows. This results in an amusing chase sequence with various assorted unconventional arrows taking down the cars; a Play-Doh arrow, a plunger arrow, an exploding arrow, an arrow that pulls in everything around it (and they were in a Christmas tree lot at the time), etc. Finally, the last of them is vanquished with a Pym-tech arrow Clint shoots at a regular arrow, which makes it grow to about a billion times its normal size. “That was amazing!” Kate exclaims.
Free from their attackers, they make it back to Kate’s apartment, where he rests up and she walks Lucky. (“Dog’s been cooped up all day,” they both note.) There’s an emotional sequence where Clint’s youngest calls him and, because he doesn’t have his hearing aids, Clint can’t hear him; Kate writes down what he says, and that his son says it’s okay if Clint can’t be home for Christmas. Clint promises he will be, and after they hang up, he thanks Kate for helping him.
While Maya continues planning to go after Clint, he and Kate go to get his hearing aid fixed. As they wait, they get breakfast, and they have a talk about the cost of being a hero. Kate says that when she put on the Ronin suit, she felt like she’d “become who she was supposed to be,” but Clint counters with some sage advice: “It comes with a cost, and some things you’ll lose forever.” He could be talking about any number of friends or precious moments he lost with his family, but his grave tone and expression suggest he’s referring to Natasha (Scarlett Johansson).
He gets his hearing aid back, and they go for a walk and talk about the tracksuit mafia. Clint says they all—Maya included—answer to someone at the top. Kate seems to suspect that’s Jack (Tony Dalton), and while Clint notes her evidence isn’t exactly airtight, she insists they just need more. So, they sneak into her mom’s penthouse to hack their criminal database. They look up one of the guys named Kazi and find out he’s an employee of something called “Sloan Ltd.” When Kate tries to look up Jack, she gets herself locked out of the system; meanwhile Clint wanders off and finds himself with the Ronin sword at his neck. “Don’t move,” Jack says. So that’s… suspicious, maybe.
Hawkeye, Wednesdays, Disney+