Hawkeye Ep. 4: Guilt is a powerful emotion

I should’ve seen this coming.

Marvel hasn’t missed in the fourth episode of any of their Disney+ shows. WandaVision. Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Loki. Even What-If…? Each ranks as one of if not the best episode of their respective shows. How did I not pick up ahead of Ep. 4 of Hawkeye that it was bound to be amazing?

Whatever the reason for my blindness, it doesn’t matter. Hawkeye’s fourth episode was amazing, probably the best of the show so far. It was funny. It was heartwarming. It was sad. It was tense. It was all sorts of emotional. And, you know, there was some other cool stuff as well.

So let’s not waste any more time beating around the bush and get right into it.

(SPOILER ALERT)

Biggest Takeaway: Clint’s guilt is giving me all the emotions

From a storytelling perspective, it definitely made sense that Natasha would be the one to sacrifice herself for the soul stone instead of Clint.

As she said on top of the mountain on Vormir, this was the moment she’d been waiting for over the last five years, the opportunity to bring everybody back and finally wipe her ledger clean of all the red she’d accumulated over the years as a Black Widow assassin. And while Natasha would be missed by her Avengers family in her death, Clint had a wife and kids that needed him to be there upon blipping back into existence.

It was the right call. Try telling that to Clint, though, because he still doesn’t feel that to be the case, and it’s heartbreaking to watch play out.

He thought so highly of Natasha, how she emerged from hell that was the Red Room and the Black Widow program to do so much good as an Avenger and put in so much work to keep things steady during those five years.

“She was the best there was.”

Compare that arc to Clint’s, who was a noble hero for quite some time before tumbling into a life of cold-blooded murder (not unlike the work of a Widow).

They traded places from when they first met. Clint didn’t feel like he deserved to be redeemed, that he was heading in the wrong direction while Nat was going down the right one. And yet still, he wasn’t the one to give up his life…