Hawkeye turning into a Supervillain:
Hawkeye is sort of an underrated character in the MCU, but the comics and the animated shows have really used him much better. He is the wise-cracking Avenger in Marvel’s Avengers Assemble animated series. The MCU has kept him a bit grounded and gritty. But the comics are now turning him into an outright supervillain.
As the vigilante Ronin, he had almost turned into a villain, but we’d consider that more along the lines of an Anti-hero. But what he does now certainly crosses a line that even an anti-hero would think twice before crossing. The Hood has been Hawkeye’s nemesis in recent times. In the latest issue Hawkeye: Freefall #6, Bullseye (who had taken up Hawkeye’s Ronin identity and started calling himself The Hood) recently broke into Clint’s apartment and killed his friend.
This angered Clint a lot. First, he took down The Hood. Then he dressed himself up as Bullseye and committed a bank robbery at the Alethea Bank to steal the wealth of the Hood and frame Bullseye for it. Then, he takes the stolen 3 Million and pays it to Count Nefaria in order to use a demon to take the Hood’s magical cloak. It turns out to be quite a lethal move as the Hood is left incapacitated without his cloak, and turned into a worthless crook without his wealth.
In hindsight, Hawkeye gave The Hood a taste of his own medicine. But, taking someone’s identity and framing him for a crime is something that heroes don’t prefer to do. It is unethical, which is why we cannot call Hawkeye a hero anymore. Even in the MCU, we might see Clint taking his dark approach as Ronin in one of the flashback episodes of the upcoming series. That actually might change our views upon Hawkeye. Let’s see how things go.
Hawkeye arrives next year in the fall.
