Hawkeye Episode 3: Maya's Uncle Is a Major Marvel Villain
Warning: this story contains spoilers for Hawkeye Episode 3, "Echoes." Marvel's Hawkeye is saying "Uncle." After capturing Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) to end Episode 2, "Hide and Seek," Wednesday's "Echoes" introduces Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Enter Echo: the deaf fighter and boss behind the Tracksuit Mafia at the center of an expanding criminal conspiracy. She wants answers about Ronin, the masked ninja who killed her father when wiping out the Tracksuits at Fat Man Auto Repair (hint!) in between the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
In a flashback to 2007, William Lopez (Zahn McClarnon) signs to a young Maya (Darnell Besaw) about learning to jump "between two worlds" just by watching. It's at a karate academy where Maya finds her strength before meeting her unseen "Uncle," a man of size who chuckles as he gently brushes her cheek.
17 years later, Clint and Kate escape the tracksuit-garbed gangsters seeking answers about Ronin's identity. Maya's right-hand man, Kazi (Fra Fee), warns her against her stop-at-nothing pursuit of Ronin — the scourge of the criminal underworld who Clint claims was killed by Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).
"I just hope Uncle won't find out," Kazi signs to Maya. "He wouldn't be happy."
When Kate requests intel about the bad blood between the Tracksuits and the masked murderer Ronin, Clint tells Kate, "They started small, but grew. Or at least the guy at the top, he'll do anything to grow the operation."
"There's someone above Maya," Clint warns, "someone you don't wanna mess with."
This unnamed and so-far-unseen major player in the criminal underworld is potentially Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), the Kingpin of Crime in Marvel's Daredevil. In the Marvel comic books, where Maya operates as both Echo and Ronin after the death of her mob enforcer father, Maya is Fisk's adoptive daughter-turned-enemy.
"Well, Maya Lopez is cool. She's such a badass in the comics and we wanted to make sure that that was portrayed as well," Hawkeye executive producer Trinh Tran told ComicBook when asked about rumors D'Onofrio would reprise his Daredevil role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. "I can't go into details in terms of like how she's integrated into, you know, the story. I don't want to spoil anything."
New episodes of Marvel's Hawkeye premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.
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