Hawkeye's Villain Twist Subverted The MCU's Oldest Bad Guy Obsession
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Hawkeye season 1.
Kate Bishop's mother Eleanor is one of the primary antagonists in Disney+'s Hawkeye, breaking and subverting a long-held pattern of villainous paternal figures in the MCU in favor of a new maternal threat. In the past, the franchise has frequently pitted its heroes against their wicked fathers, with their mothers often being dead or absent. However, though there are many examples of epic daddy issues throughout the MCU, this is the first time it has introduced a mother as a central foe.
Eleanor Bishop, played by Vera Farmiga, lost her husband in the events of The Avengers in 2012, leaving her to raise their daughter, Kate, on her own. She supports Kate in her pursuit of archery while running Bishop Security in New York City. Early on in Hawkeye, Eleanor is hinted to have mysterious and powerful connections. These links to criminal operations are confirmed when the assassin Yelena Belova tells Kate that her mother hired her to kill Clint Barton. Kate is also devastated to discover that Eleanor has been working closely with Kingpin, a notorious and dangerous crime lord. In the Hawkeye season 1 finale, Kate turns her mother in and Eleanor is arrested.
Making Kate's mother the villain is a novel approach for Marvel, as their films have repeatedly centered around paternal conflicts over the years. Going all the way back to the first MCU movie, Iron Man sees Tony Stark struggle with the legacy left by his father and combat the malevolent machinations of his closest remaining father figure, Obadiah Stane. This theme of tortured paternal relationships and domineering fathers is used over and over again in many different contexts. In the Thor trilogy, both Thor and Loki have complex and often contentious relationships with their father, Odin. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.'s Peter Quill is initially overjoyed to reconnect with his long-lost father Ego only to find out that he is an evil living embodiment of a planet who was directly responsible for his mother's death. Paternal dynamics are also at the forefront of Ant-Man, as Hank and Hope Pym work to mend their strained relationship following the loss of Hope's mother, and Scott Lang does his best to be a good father to his daughter Cassie.
Perhaps the most fateful and tragic father/child relationships are those of Thanos with his adopted daughters, Nebula and Gamora. While he mercilessly tortures and uses the former, Thanos tearfully sacrifices the latter in order to obtain the Soul Stone, which results in the catastrophic climax of Avengers: Infinity War. Most recently, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings pits father against son and daughter, once again mining complex family drama from a very familiar source. The MCU's persistent penchant for paternal discord makes it all the more noticeable that the franchise has never taken issue with the other parent.
Part of this is naturally due to the lower number of female heroes and villains in comparison to their male counterparts. Only two MCU films to date (Thor: Ragnarok and Ant-Man and the Wasp) have featured primary female antagonists. Additionally, the death of a protagonist's mother is often used as a pivotal point in their heroic journey, which doesn't leave much room for maternal arcs. Interestingly, Kate Bishop's origins in the Hawkeye comics also follow this pattern. In the comics, Kate's father Derek is the villain with large-scale criminal ties, while Eleanor is believed to be dead. This means that the MCU adaptation made a deliberate decision to alter and subvert the established narrative, consciously retooling (or at least regendering) its well-worn conceit.
Eleanor's villainous turn is a refreshing if still conventionally familiar move for Marvel. While it's nothing new for a hero to play the protagonist to a parental antagonist, Eleanor and Kate certainly provide the story with a twist. Though Hawkeye is over, hopefully this won't be the last we see of the Bishop family's complicated dynamics.