Hawkeye review: Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld star in a Christmas-set buddy romp

After the millennium-spanning cosmic drama of the recent Eternals film, Hawkeye on Disney+ is a welcome blast of fresh air. Jeremy Renner returns as the bow and arrow totting title character/Clint Barton who has to team up with a young upstart named Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) to defeat a threat from his past while making it home in time to be with his family for Christmas.

Set two years after the events of Avengers: Endgame, the new series finds Hawkeye still in mourning over the loss of his close friend Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, who sacrificed herself so Hawkeye could live and be there for his family. Beaten down and relying on a hearing aid, the first episode includes a sure-fire memeable sequence of Clint taking his kids to see the Avengers musical on Broadway. It’s a hilariously meta moment that forces Clint to reconcile his former life as a world-saving Avenger with his current day-to-day civilian life as a father.

The show also introduced viewers to Kate Bishop, a young woman who lost her father in the destruction of New York (as seen in the initial Avengers film), while Hawkeye was able to save her and her mother. Now a master archer of her own, Kate discovers the Ronin costume Clint wore during his unhinged stint as a costumed killer and decides to give it a spin on the town. Seeing the Ronin costume out and about spurs Clint off the couch and out of retirement to uncover just what’s going on with the suit, which eventually leads to Clint and Kate meeting and teaming up to protect the city from a dangerous group from Clint’s past.

The 6-episode series created by Mad Men‘s Jonathan Igla has a refreshingly laid-back tone we haven’t seen from the run of Disney+ MCU shows yet. In many ways, Hawkeye feels like a PG-rated version of Lethal Weapon; there’s great chemistry between Clint’s jaded and tired Hawkeye and Kate Bishop’s young upstart energy.

Based on the hilarious and heartfelt Matt Faction and David Aja comics run, Hawkeye is a nice palette cleanser after some of the stuffier MCU films and shows we’ve seen in recent years. While it will likely end up widening its scope to tie into the larger MCU before the series wraps up, the first two episodes prove that giving these Marvel characters the chance to take a beat and exist in their own little world can be as rewarding as any galaxy-threatening cosmic threat.

The first two episodes of Hawkeye are streaming now on Disney+.