Kate Bishop Archives - Page 2 Of 5

September 13, 2021

“Hawkeye” 1st Trailer Throws Some Holiday Cheer Our Way

As the only two members of the original Avengers line-up without either superhuman strength, durability, or flight, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye tended to get sidelined in most of the Avengers movies where the enemies were usually a little too big or overpowered to be taken down by an arrow or a well-aimed high-kick. In Black Widow’s case, the MCU got around this problem by finding a place for her in the comparatively grittier, more grounded Captain America franchise, and then when she finally got her own movie earlier this year they just…removed the problem entirely and retroactively gave her superhuman abilities even though that went against her whole character.

But Hawkeye never got the chance to be a major supporting player in anyone else’s franchise, and he never got a solo movie. Following the release of Black Widow, he is in fact the only remaining member of the original six Avengers not to have their own solo film (with the caveat that Hulk technically has one; not with Mark Ruffalo in the lead role, but the MCU has increasingly treated it as canon anyway). That’s not going to change anytime soon, I don’t think – but that’s okay, because Hawkeye’s getting the full Disney+ treatment.

And now that we have our first teaser trailer for the Hawkeye series, I have…well, a lot of thoughts, but the thing that really stood out to me from the trailer is that Hawkeye isn’t suddenly getting a power upgrade just because he’s the star of the show now. He’s a really good shot with a bow…that’s it. There’s plenty of cool stuff Marvel can do with that powerset alone (go watch all of Legolas’ scenes in The Lord Of The Rings if you don’t believe me), while still acknowledging Hawkeye’s obvious weaknesses.

Frankly, those weaknesses are a big part of what makes the character even halfway interesting, because he can’t rely on his own strength and agility to save him in a fight, like most of the other Avengers. He’s dependent on his bow and arrow, and without it he’s just a relatively average middle-aged guy. Even with it, the bow is only truly effective as a long-distance weapon – Hawkeye has some training with swords thanks to his work as Ronin, but he’s probably not gonna last long in a duel: something he learned the hard way when he fought Black Widow on Vormir, in a last-ditch effort to stop her from throwing herself off that hateful cliff.

And while a lot of Avengers purposefully put distance between themselves and their loved ones because they can’t balance their personal commitments with their duty to the world, Hawkeye is one of the few who’s always been adamant that he can’t abandon his wife and kids, and that he’d rather give up his place on the Avengers team than do so. That gives him another crucial weakness, but it’s also theoretically one of his greatest strengths because he’s so human. His empathy and capacity for understanding are admirable qualities that never really found an outlet in the movies, and I hope Hawkeye does a better job in that regard.

The series picks up probably about a year after Endgame, during the middle of the Christmas season, and the trailer and other marketing heavily leans into the holiday spirit. I’m talking snow flurrying over the title-cards, a genius Christmas-themed tagline (“This Holiday Season The Best Gifts Come With A Bow”), and a Rockefeller Center action set-piece, all set to “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year”. Marvel’s closest thing to a Christmas movie is probably Iron Man 3 (one of those “if it’s set at Christmas but doesn’t actually have anything to do with Christmas, is it a Christmas movie?” movies), so this is kind of a surprise.

Now, Hawkeye is set to premiere in November and run through December, so this is obviously just a case of good timing on one level: but thematically, I think sticking the most empathetic Avenger into the season of giving and caring makes sense and could lead to some interesting and emotional character moments, not only between Hawkeye and his family (whom he takes into the city to go see Rogers: The Musical, a Broadway retelling of Captain America’s life that features Hawkeye as a backup dancer – awkward), but also between him and his young protégé, Kate Bishop.

Kate Bishop’s arrival in the MCU is an important milestone, bringing us one step closer to the formation of a Young Avengers team. Just like in the comics, it appears she’s run away from home to follow in Hawkeye’s footsteps, which includes honing her skills as an archer and donning a version of his purple uniform. In the comics, Bishop also emulates the super-spy Mockingbird, but we have no idea if Marvel plans to bring that character back after her appearance in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., or if she would be played by Adrianne Palicki again.

Regardless, introducing Bishop here is logical, and it’s a good business move: Hawkeye has some fans, but Oscar-nominee and bestselling popstar Hailee Steinfeld brings with her an entire fanbase. She and the other women of Hawkeye, including Alaqua Cox as Echo and Vera Farmiga as Eleanor Bishop (both very briefly visible in the trailer), not to mention Florence Pugh as returning fan-favorite Yelena Belova, are the main reason we will be watching.

And none of these characters, at least as far as we know, have superpowers. That’s not to say there won’t be any, or that they couldn’t be handled well, but I do appreciate having a corner of the MCU where the “street-level” heroes don’t necessarily have to fight literal gods and monsters all the time. There’s just something so wonderfully relatable about Hawkeye attempting to zipline across Rockefeller Center and falling into the Christmas tree that not only harkens back to the lighthearted tone of the Matt Fraction comics that defined this character, but is also necessary in a franchise where heroes are too often invulnerable and untouchable.

Trailer Rating: 9/10

March 22, 2021

“Echo” Hawkeye Spinoff Coming To Disney+!

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye is probably the least interesting part of the upcoming Hawkeye Disney+ series…which I imagine really sucks for Renner’s hardcore fans, but is great for those of us who are only going to be watching Hawkeye for the amazing women involved: Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, Vera Farmiga as Eleanor Bishop, and Alaqua Cox as the antiheroine Echo.

And despite being a complete newcomer to the acting scene, it’s Alaqua Cox’s Echo who’s apparently first in line for her very own Disney+ spinoff coming out of Hawkeye, a series that hasn’t even finished filming yet. Variety reports that, while the spinoff is still in the early stages of pre-production, Etan and Emily Cohen have come onboard to write the series scripts. This news, if true, would make Echo the first Marvel character introduced on Disney+ to get her own solo spinoff, further enriching this vast corner of the MCU, and hopefully proving once and for all that the Disney+ series’ aren’t just supposed to act as extended prologues and epilogues to other movies – they are their own thing, and should be viewed as such.

It’s been hard to convince some fans of that latter point, particularly when dealing with a universe where the occasionally eyeroll-inducing need for “interconnectedness” drove viewers away from Marvel’s previous TV collaborations with ABC (which hosted the long-running and criminally underrated Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and Netflix (which only just recently relinquished the rights to Marvel’s Defenders content, including beloved heroes like Daredevil and Jessica Jones), after those TV series’ struck out on their own and forged new ground…in the process becoming less essential viewing for the MCU overall. That’s a pattern we saw repeated after WandaVision‘s finale, which proved to be controversial in part because fans felt cheated when the series didn’t halt in its tracks to introduce the Multiverse, or reveal villains like Mephisto and Nightmare, or reinstate Fox versions of the X-Men (though, to be fair, Evan Peters should have been playing Peter Maximoff), despite laying the groundwork for at least two other Marvel films and another Disney+ series.

The news that Echo specifically is getting a spinoff is exciting for several reasons. The character – whose codename comes from her ability to expertly replicate or “echo” any opponent’s fighting style and techniques – is a deaf Native American antiheroine named Maya Lopez, who rises through the ranks of the criminal underworld to become a widely-feared and respected warrior. While operating in Japan and fighting a faction of HYDRA, she adopted the alias of “Ronin”, the same name we saw Hawkeye himself randomly pick up in Avengers: Endgame, during his five years as a vigilante/serial killer. The Hawkeye series will hopefully explain away all the mysteries surrounding the Ronin identity, including whom it belonged to first in the MCU canon, but Echo’s story doesn’t have to end there.

In the comics, Maya Lopez goes on to help and hinder the Avengers at various points, even playing a critical role in the Secret Invasion storyline which will be adapted for Disney+ in the near future. She’s had complex relationships with many of Marvel’s grittier street-level characters, including Daredevil, Moon Knight, and the Kingpin – who mentored her throughout her childhood, after first murdering her father. Maya later turned on Kingpin and left him temporarily blinded, but he’s honestly the least of the villains she’s battled while wielding her signature nunchuks, from Madame Hydra to the Skrull Queen Veranke – the former of whom at least deserves to be brought back into the MCU, with Mallory Jansen reprising the role she so brilliantly originated on Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. In one storyline, Echo even hosted the cosmic power of the Phoenix Force within her during an underwater battle with Namor.

Echo’s role in Hawkeye is still unknown, though I remain confident in my theory that she’ll be revealed to be one of the last remaining Red Room cadets trained by Taskmaster, positioning her at an intersection between the storylines of Hawkeye and Black Widow and making her the literal “echo” of one of Widow’s greatest failures, still reverberating through current MCU history. Having her own spinoff series, though, vastly expands the number of stories that could be told with the character – from undercover work as a ninja in Japan, to fighting alongside Daredevil on the streets of New York City, all while helping to increase onscreen visibility for the Indigenous and disabled communities.

But what do you think? Are you excited to see Alaqua Cox as Echo? Do you have any theories about her spinoff? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

December 3, 2020

“Hawkeye” Casts Florence Pugh, Vera Farmiga, Several More!

With the Marvel Hawkeye Disney+ series having just started filming in New York City, official casting announcements were inevitable. The Hollywood trades proved to be a bit slow when it came to confirming that Hailee Steinfeld was, in fact, the series’ co-star (something that was reported by The Illuminerdi several months ago, and proven yesterday in behind-the-scenes footage from the Hawkeye set), and they weren’t even the first to break the news that Black Widow actress Florence Pugh will be reprising her role as Yelena Belova (can we say reprising if she hasn’t even had the chance to appear in Black Widow yet?) in Hawkeye, but they – specifically Variety – have now announced some exclusives of their own: including casting for Kate Bishop’s mother, the villains Swordsman and Clown, the antiheroine Echo, and her father.

The biggest news is, of course, the Florence Pugh casting. Pugh, hot off an Oscar nomination and a string of other successes, will eventually debut in Marvel’s Black Widow as Yelena Belova, a suspicious assassin who reconnects with Natasha Romanoff, her “sister” and former Red Room classmate, in order to take down the shadowy Russian government organization that created her. Belova’s fate after Black Widow is still unknown, with many wondering if she’ll betray Romanoff at some point during the movie and have to go into hiding, reappearing after the Widow’s death in Avengers: Endgame; or perhaps she’ll become the founding member of the Thunderbolts team, a group of semi-reformed villains working undercover for a variety of different reasons…but whatever the case, we can be pretty assured she survives Black Widow, something that was previously in question. With COVID-19 continuing to delay the release of the Widow’s solo movie, more and more unintentional spoilers for the film are inevitable.

As for what Belova will be doing in the Hawkeye series, that’s a bit more mysterious – although it’s been rumored she’ll don the Ronin mantle that Hawkeye himself briefly wore during the events of Avengers: Endgame, while he was going on a murder spree throughout Asia. If Belova is coming back out of the shadows after Endgame, it would make sense for her to wear a disguise at first: though whatever crimes she commits while wearing said disguise would inevitably have consequences for the person who wore it before her. We’ve all been wondering how Hawkeye gets re-involved with the superhero business after retiring and settling down with his family – an ongoing fight between him and Belova to finally rid himself of the guilt and shame of the Ronin disguise and the damage it’s done to him…that would be just the thing, in my opinion, and it would be a great thematic throughline for the series.

But there could be another catch. The character of Echo, who will be played by newcomer Alaqua Cox (and when I say newcomer, I mean “does-not-even-have-an-IMDb-profile-yet” newcomer), is one of Marvel’s most interesting villains, with her own claim to the title of Ronin, and a possible connection to the Red Room – or at least people associated with the Red Room. Echo, a deaf Native-American woman born with the name Maya Lopez, takes the Ronin moniker in the comics while working undercover in Japan. She quickly becomes a prestigious crime-lord, but her moral code is complicated, and she sometimes offers her help to the Avengers as well. But one potentially crucial detail about her is that her superpowers are identical to those of the villain Taskmaster: the main antagonist of Black Widow. Both characters possess photographic reflexes, which allow them to flawlessly mimic the movements and fighting style of any opponent. From the Black Widow trailers, it’s become clear that photographic reflexes are also taught to all the Red Room cadets, including Natasha Romanoff herself, and Yelena Belova. In the MCU, it would make sense for Echo to be one of the last batch of Black Widows raised in the Red Room, or an apprentice of either Taskmaster or Belova, gone rogue after the events of Black Widow (which presumably ends with Natasha destroying the Red Room completely). Not only would it streamline the series, but it’s a choice that would make Echo even more significant: as the living legacy (or, one could say, an “echo”) of both Hawkeye and Natasha’s worst mistakes, but with her own unique identity and agenda. It also allows for Natasha to still be a part of the story after her death.

Echo’s father has also been cast, with Zahn McClarnon (most notable for roles in Westworld, Fargo, and Doctor Sleep) taking on the role. His character – named Willie “Crazy Horse” Lincoln in the comics, William Lopez in the show – is most notable for being murdered by agents of his former employer, Kingpin, and leaving the marking of a bloody handprint on his daughter’s face before he died: a marking she would adopt as her symbol. Hopefully he has more to do in the show, but no other details have been given on his role.

Two other villains are now confirmed, although there have long been rumors that they would show up. Fra Fee will portray Clown, a serial killer from the pages of the Hawkeye comics who comes from a circus and doesn’t really have any overarching agenda besides senselessly murdering people. I suspect that his tragic circus backstory will be retconned to tie in with Hawkeye’s own tragic circus backstory (it would be pretty bizarre to have two in one show, otherwise), but I don’t expect him to stick around long, or pose much of a threat. He’s minor antagonist material at best.

Swordsman, on the other hand, might have more to do. Set to be played by Better Call Saul‘s Tony Dalton, the character is getting a small name change – from Jacques Duquesne to Jack Duquesne – but his backstory should remain much the same. In the comics, Duquesne mentors the young Clint Barton at the circus where Barton grows up: before one day betraying him while attempting to flee with stolen money, and almost killing him in the process. Barton becomes Hawkeye and the two don’t really interact much beyond that. In the MCU, it’s possible that Barton will purposefully seek out the Swordsman for his help, or the two will be enemies. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see this part of Hawkeye’s history, which has heretofore never been referenced in the movies.

And finally, we have Vera Farmiga – who will be playing Eleanor Bishop, the mother of Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop. Farmiga, the Oscar-nominated star of the Conjuring horror franchise, is a high-profile actress for such a small role…except that Eleanor Bishop isn’t your average movie-mom character, and she may be one of the series’ major antagonists. In the comics, Mrs. Bishop fakes her own death shortly after the birth of her daughter, and then proceeds to live a life of crime, as the mastermind behind the villainous Madame Masque (who, as you might remember, is rumored to appear in Hawkeye). The comics distinguish Bishop and Masque as two separate characters – but I think the Hawkeye series will make them one and the same for increased dramatic effect when the masque finally comes off. Eleanor Bishop might not have a very strong connection to Clint Barton, but it’s worth pointing out that Kate Bishop is supposed to be the co-lead of this show – and as such, she should have her own circle of supporting characters and villains.

So what do you think of the casting, and of my speculation? Which character are you most excited to see? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

December 2, 2020

Hailee Steinfeld Confirmed As Kate Bishop In “Hawkeye” In Set Videos!

Marvel Studios has a reputation for strict secrecy, and they’ve always been good at keeping things hidden from the public and press, even if it means lying and spreading misinformation to cover their tracks. The casting of Kate Bishop, however, has been one of the studio’s worst-kept secrets in recent months, as literally every clue has pointed towards singer and Oscar-nominated actress Hailee Steinfeld being the top choice for the coveted role – but nothing official from the major Hollywood trades has leaked to confirm or deny these rumors since September of last year, when Steinfeld was said to be “in early talks” to play the vigilante archer. This summer, The Illuminerdi was able to confirm that Steinfeld had officially landed the role, and they have now been proven correct. Hailee Steinfeld was spotted today in full Kate Bishop costume, filming the Hawkeye Disney+ series in New York City.

The question of whether Steinfeld could even play Bishop was always a tricky one, because of her pre-existing commitment to film another season of Dickinson on Apple TV. But it appears that her schedule has now cleared up thanks to the constant shuffling of production start dates, or something else has happened behind the scenes. Either way, video footage distributed online by multiple scoopers today (including Charles Murphy at Murphy’s Multiverse, whom I believe to have been the first to do so) clearly shows Steinfeld alongside Hawkeye star Jeremy Renner, racing through a subway station – accompanied by none other than Lucky the Pizza Dog, Hawkeye’s canine companion from the popular Matt Fraction Hawkeye comics, here making his first MCU appearance.

In the comics, as some of you will already know, Kate Bishop is a young adult crime-fighter who takes after Hawkeye and ends up becoming his apprentice and accomplice, taking on villains like Madame Masque, who has also been rumored to show up in the Hawkeye series. Later, she becomes a founding member and leader of the Young Avengers, a team that is currently being assembled across the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in both movies and TV. While the MCU’s version of Hawkeye is still very different from his portrayal in the comics (and you could make a convincing argument for why Renner has been miscast all along), MCU Kate Bishop already looks nearly perfect, and she’s equipped with her trusty bow. The overcoat she’s wearing appears to just be part of her outfit: unlike the heavy tarps often worn by MCU actors to hide their costumes. She’s definitely wearing something purple underneath the coat, although another behind-the-scenes photo seems to show that it’s an oversized sweater rather than a version of her actual superhero suit.

But no matter what, Steinfeld is clearly a great choice to portray this important character. She’s been in the running for so long, and the conversation around her casting has become so intense, with people picking apart her social media posts looking for hints, that it would have been absolutely bizarre if someone else had come in at the last minute and claimed the role instead of her. That’s not to say there aren’t other actresses who could have done so, but Steinfeld is – no questions asked – extremely talented in multiple different fields, with a strong film and TV resume, and a successful music career. No word yet on whether she’ll do any singing for Hawkeye, but I wouldn’t be opposed. Every good series needs a theme song, right?

Of course, the Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. fan in me can’t help but wonder if Kate Bishop’s other mentor and role model from the comics, Mockingbird, will make an appearance in the Hawkeye series. Mockingbird was portrayed by Adrianne Palicki all-too-briefly on Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. before parting ways with the other agents and going rogue, and Palicki has expressed interest in reprising the role in Hawkeye (or even replacing Hawkeye completely, which sounds…okay by me, honestly?). Fingers crossed she gets to return!

So how do you feel about this casting? Is Hailee Steinfeld the Kate Bishop you had in mind, or were you hoping for someone else? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!