Hawkeye didn’t skimp on action, with its relatively grounded heroes getting involved in some great chases, fights, and general bow-based mayhem. The vehicular romp in the third episode was the high point, while the finale delivered on its promise of showing Clint Barton and Kate Bishop pulling out all the stops.
But it seems that the last installment may have had too much action to fit into the episode, after director Rhys Thomas revealed in an interview with Metro that audiences missed out on an awesome-sounding Yelena Belova stealth sequence.
“The Kazi and Clint fight in the office, there was going to be a much longer sequence where Clint was going to take down all of the TSM [Tracksuit Mafia] in a sort of almost Ronin-like way, that you’d sort of see this stealthy side, and it was going to be a much longer sequence, that we ended up just truncating and Yelena was going to come up in the office as well… that was just a moving target of both script and logistics and stunt coordination and visual effects, all of this planning. It was a lot, for sure.”
Florence Pugh stole the show in Black Widow, and continued her hilarious and deadly winning streak here. We did get to see her in action quite a bit when she was taking on Kate, Clint, and Echo at various points, but it’d have been great for her to dispatch some goons in a ninja-like masterclass of tactical stealth action.
Fortunately, I suspect we’ll see more Yelena sooner rather than later. Kevin Feige will be aware of how quickly audiences have taken her to their hearts, and I’d expect her to be involved in any future Avengers team. But in the meantime, how about a short Kate and Yelena odd couple show about girls with superhero skills living it up in New York City?
Hawkeye is available in full on Disney Plus.