Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), has always been the everyman hero of the Avengers, and I expected that there would be no difficulty building a miniseries around the character. However, the real star of "Hawkeye" is actually Hailee Steinfeld, who plays newcomer Kate Bishop. She's a young superhero wannabe who stumbles into a bad situation and gets way in over her head. The two cross paths in New York City during the holiday season, and have to team up to recover some stolen property, defeat the bad guys, and sort out Kate's complicated family issues, in order to get Clint back to his loved ones in time for Christmas. It's a very light, very fun show with no shortage of humor and irreverence.
Of all the Disney+ MCU series so far, "Hawkeye" feels the most off-the-cuff, and that's mostly in a good way. Everything's kept at a very street level, very human scale. Enemies include professional assassins, a badass deaf mercenary played by Alaqua Cox, dudebro Russians from the local Tracksuit Mafia, and a few higher difficulty foes whose identities I will not spoil, but no world-ending or even national crisis level events loom. This allows for elements as silly as Kate being saved by an adorable stray dog who loves pizza, Clint encountering a LARPer enclave, and a grand finale endangering the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. It was a canny decision to play up the lighthearted Christmas aesthetics, which help "Hawkeye" to stand out from all the other Marvel shows.
I don't feel that the Clint Barton character has needed much of an upgrade, as some have suggested, but it's nice to see him get more of the spotlight, and just enjoy watching his day-to-day struggle to be a superhero while also being a dad, husband, and non-super-powered human being. The show does a fantastic job of adding backstory for the Barton without dwelling on his past. Early on, it's revealed he has to use hearing aids due to being in the middle of too many explosions. His relationship with his unflinching wife Laura (Linda Cardellini) is fascinating. Kate Bishop, however, completely takes over the show and I kind of love her for it. Her superhero growing pains are a lot of fun, and her relationship with her security tech mogul mother, played by Vera Farmiga, is awfully relatable. Hailee Steinfeld is such a great addition to the MCU roster. I hope to see more of her and Renner soon.
Now, the second season of "The Witcher" strikes me as an improvement over the first, if only because it's stopped the annoying game of jumping around the timeline, and the major characters get to spend more time interacting. Well, Geralt and Ciri do, while Yennefer spends the first half of the season off on her own adventure. She's lost her magic after the events of the first season, and getting it back may pit her against her former allies. Meanwhile, Geralt and Ciri cool their heels in the Witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen with Geralt's old mentor, Vesemir (Kim Bodnia), where Ciri decides to train as a Witcher. Other significant players include Fringilla (Mimi M. Khayisa), Yennefer's rival who is allied with Nilfgaard, and an elven sorceress, Francesca (Mecia Simson). Jaskier the bard also shows up eventually, though I have no idea how his timeline makes any sense.
The politics of the "Witcher" universe are a little less murky this time around. I'm still not clear on how any of the kingdoms relate to each other geographically, but at least the various factions are better defined. The oppressed elf population gets a lot of screen time this year, and the ongoing subplots involving Francesca and Fringilla at least kept my attention, even if both characters still need a lot of work. The main characters fare better, especially as Geralt and Ciri get to do some father-daughter bonding, and Ciri finally gets to be more active and self-actualized. I was a little disappointed with the new insights into Witcher lore, however. The comfortable winter digs at Kaer Morhen run contrary to Geralt's childhood of misery and abuse hinted at in the first season. Kim Bodnia, who you might remember as Villanelle's handler from "Killing Eve," is positively cuddly here.
"The Witcher" is still far from a prestige production, preferring B-movie style action, creature battles, and gore. However, it does a decent job of getting the momentum rolling for the next phase of the show that it's building up to. Its tone is more focused on straightforward adventuring now - campy "Xena" style antics are kept to a minimum, and the production design leans toward the creepy and horrific. I miss some of the humor and sexual misadventures, but I'm sure this will be better for the show in the long run. It's not one of my favorites, but remains diverting enough that I'll probably stick around for the long haul. I don't expect the show will continue to improve much, but it's improved enough to keep me happy.
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