The following article contains spoilers for Hawkeye and Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Hawkeye’s finale left more lasting consequences in the MCU than perhaps any other Disney Plus series so far, with only Loki coming somewhere near Clint Barton’s solo debut and even that’s largely down to the former’s multiversal nature.
All of this is thanks to an action-packed episode that also happened to leave a big, big question mark as Marvel moves forward, pun fully intended. As things currently stand in Hawkeye world: Clint is enjoying the holidays with his family as part of his semi-retirement; Kate Bishop is officially her childhood hero’s apprentice; Eleanor Bishop is going to jail; Jack Duquesne is eccentrically charming as usual; and, most crucially, Maya Lopez got her hands dirty by finishing off the man who betrayed her father, Kazi and Wilson Fisk.
Overall, it’s been a fantastic week to be a Daredevil fan, or at least it would be if Maya hadn’t shot her uncle dead after stabbing Kazi, nevertheless, in movies, and especially Marvel, the rules dictate that unless the audience sees a body a character can’t really be considered dead. In Kingpin’s case, it’s quite plausible for him to try to fight off Maya in a last-ditch effort to avoid being killed by a bullet in the head, and instead take a body shot so that his armor could still save him.
In Daredevil, one of the most interesting moments in the show comes when Matt gets his suit from Melvin Potter, which happens to be made from the very same material that protects Kingpin in his black or white suits. This is what makes fighting Kingpin so hard for Matt at first, and though Kingpin now has a wider taste in colors to go along his signature cane from the comics in the MCU, Hawkeye also reveals he’s wearing similar armor.
This is obvious from Kingpin’s fight with Kate, where the latter is unable to put an arrow in Fisk’s body even when firing point blank at him. Suffice to say, Kingpin making it out of this one makes sense both from a practical standpoint and as something that the character who killed his own father would do, and yet when digging up comic book background there’s also some pretty interesting source material to borrow from.
As it turns out, in one of Echo’s comic book appearances, her origin story sees her fall out of favor with the Kingpin only to have a similar faceoff against where she shoots her uncle but instead of killing him only it ends up leaving him blind. Even though Marvel Studios hasn’t yet clarified that these Daredevil and Kingpin are the same from the MCU, it would still make for the very same ironic and bitter that it was in the comics for Fisk.
Kingpin and Hawkeye’s fights in Daredevil had a certain sense of brutality that often seems absent in the MCU, and somehow Hawkeye has managed to give off similar vibes due to the fact that it’s a show that’s not dealing with Sam Wilson’s trifecta of androids, aliens, and wizards. Imagining future fights between a now-hampered Kingpin and Daredevil inside the MCU would be the icing on the cake these characters need, and that’s without throwing Spider-Man into the mix
All things said, Maya and Kingpin’s final scene in Hawkeye could very well be the opening frames of the Echo series, although, since that won’t be coming too soon it could deny the possibility of D’Onofrio appearing in She-Hulk, depending on where that show sits in the Marvel timeline. As of now, Hawkeye would appear to take place shortly after Spider-Man: No Way Home which makes the fallout from the series even more interesting.
Hawkeye’s biggest achievements are introducing two new female characters with plenty of potentials like Kate Bishop and Echo, rescuing Clint Barton’s identity to solve his branding problems as an Avenger, and bringing Wilson Fisk back as if not a single day had passed since Matt got him arrested. If these are the same character, that part of the story alone deserves to be explored with whatever plot gymnastics Marvel Studios can come up with.
When it comes to real world arguments, it would be highly anti-climatic on Marvel’s behalf to bring Kingpin and Daredevil back only to kill Matt’s biggest enemy, and with D’Onofrio being fond of a role he’s fantastic at, everything point Hawkeye just playing misdirection. If not, then one hour of D’Onofrio’s Kingpin was still definitely worth the wait.
