MCU Fans Have Already Given Their Hearts To The Real ‘Hawkeye’ Star (And, Possibly, A New Villain)

Hawkeye (for the holidays) premiered two episodes on this pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday, and the show’s surprisingly (to me) engaging. Hailee Steinfeld rocks her Kate Bishop role while wearing a suit and roasting Clint Barton for needing a good rebranding. For his part, Hawkeye only wants to go home and retire again, so he is overall miserable, but he should be able to pass the bow and arrow on soon. And not only will his successor be worthy, but she’ll also enjoy what she’s doing.

Yep, Kate grew up in the shadow of the Avengers’ global introduction during the Attack on New York, and fans are (of course) looking forward to seeing Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova come for Hawkeye after Valentina blamed him for Natasha’s death. However, the premiere episodes revealed a few other new MCU characters, and one of them could capture the hardest of hearts. That would be Lucky, a.k.a. “Pizza Dog.” He is one of the goodest of boys, and because of that, he got his own poster.

Lucky, of course, took a fancy to Kate, and he’s got quite an action-packed history in the comics. Dating back to 2012, the comics painted him as a dog (previously named Arrow) owned by a Tracksuit Gang member. He lost an eye while saving Hawkeye’s butt, and Clint changed his name to Lucky. And as Marvel has previously demonstrated with Goose from Captain Marvel, Alligator Loki (from Loki, obv), and Morris from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Kevin Feige sure knows how to do mascots well.

Everyone is ready to throw down for Lucky’s continued safety, too.

Another little gut punch happened along the way: the “Thanos was right” message scrawled as bathroom graffiti.

And then there was the villainous reveal at the end, which will undoubtedly see followup in the coming weeks. Echo will get her own Disney+ MCU show, but in the meantime, she’s coming for Hawkeye. She’s the orphaned daughter of Kingpin/William Fisk and a previous adversary of Daredevil/Matt Murdock. The decision to introduce her as the head of the Tracksuit Gang (before she later switches sides and becomes heroic) is a telling one, so watch out for next week, Hawkeye and Kate.

And where is Yelena? We’re waiting for her, too.

Hawkeye debuts new episodes on Wednesdays.