Figured it was about time to give a little commentary on the finale of Hawkeye, so here goes. I came into this series super hyped and was maybe my #1 most anticipated Disney+ MCU series in the first round of them. I then really dug the Die Hard/Christmas vibe of the trailers, along with their casting choices, so I was all in. However, after a stellar prologue look-back start in the MCU, I found episodes 1 - 5 of the series to be completely all over the place, not exactly knowing what the heck this show wanted to be. There was things I was digging like the car chase scene, Kate and Hawkeye's banter, the overall esthetic of the show, and everything Christmas about the show, which all at least kept me into the show to some level. With that said, I quickly found I was already at episode 6, and up until that point, I found that nothing had really happened in the show outside of Kate and Hawkeye slapping around a gang of worthless, harmless baffoons. The show kept hinting at stuff and telling us there were stakes to be had, but I never felt that way.
This all brings me to the finale, which consequently had A LOT riding on it due to everything mentioned above. I said on here the last episode would truly make or break the show for me. I was really hopeful it would turn things around. Well.... the last episode completely broke it for me. Outside of a few moments of fun in the episode, I found pretty much everything else to be quite bad. The action was slow, badly choreographed and planned (how does the police in Rockefeller Center not show up for 20 minutes after shots being fired???), nearly none of the big teases payed off even remotely (seriously, the watch????), and worst of all, I felt the show slaughtered what was maybe the best villain in all the MCU, which is the Kingpin. At what point did our intelligent, methodical, brutal Kingpin of the Daredevil series turn into a harmless leader of idiots chasing after a watch for seemingly no reason, only to be beat by a teenager after only one episode of screen time????? Yes, this Kingpin got beat twice by Daredevil (S1 and S3) on Netflix, but outside of the last episodes, he was kicking arse and taking names for 95% of the show. He felt seemingly unstoppable and beat everyone to a pulp both physically and mentally, not to mention the horrors he made The Punisher do in prison. What was unstoppable about this guy, other than his slight showing of physical strength and the offensiveness to the eyes of that Hawaiian shirt??? John Campea called this Kingpin the WalMart version of Kingpin and I couldn't agree more. Such a waste. Hopefully we see more of him in future projects where his perception gets changed by around.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Feel free to disagree. I ultimately thought the show had the potential to at least turn things around into an overall favorable light in the last episode, but instead, the show landed with a thud. As much as I hate to say it, it ended dead last in my MCU Disney+ series rankings when I was guessing it would be #1.