Once upon a time, superhero movies were cautious about their level of violence as they were marketed with children in mind, where your favorite hero could go six rounds with a villain and come out the other side without a scratch. However, in the last two decades, the likes of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy, and many of the MCU movies have seen the violence levels increase. When it comes to the Disney+ series Hawkeye, Marvel has pushed the boundaries again with what turned out to be their bloodiest project yet.
With the final episode of Hawkeye having arrived on the platform, the overall kill count has surpassed all previous entries in the MCU including the likes of Iron Man and Captain America for on-screen deaths. Considering Hawkeye is one of the more grounded series of the MCU, it is probably not surprising that so many people meet their maker on the end of one of the arrows fired by Clint Barton or Kate Bishop, especially when factoring in Barton’s Ronin past. So how does the count stack up across the series?
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Following the death of Armand Duquesne in the first episode, it wasn’t until episode three when the bodies really star to stack up after Clint and Kate have to fight their way out of a situation with the tracksuit mafia that sees a number of thugs taken down before a van explosion disposes of a few more. Episode three also contains a flashback to Clint’s Ronin days, which contains a number of further deaths at the hands of the vigilante. However, the arrival of the final episode really ramps up the numbers as the protagonists take down dozens of Tracksuits who are under orders from Kingpin to kill Barton as well as Kate and Eleanor Bishop. With multiple stand-offs, and the shooting of Kingpin himself – although we are pretty sure that the crime boss will have survived Maya Lopez’s attempt to kill him – the final body count stands somewhere around 50-55.
The MCU set an early pace for the fatalities that they were willing to put on screen with Iron Man back in 2008, which saw Tony Stark killing off around 35 in one go as he escaped the Ten Rings, and Bucky Barnes’ as the Winter Soldier had taken out around 45 people on-screen, so high death counts are nothing new to Marvel’s ongoing narrative, but seeing as most of the Winter Soldier’s time was spent as a villain during his killing days, Hawkeye is certainly well above the other MCU characters for taking out people rather than robots, aliens and numerous monsters that met their end during Infinity War and Endgame.
With many of the MCU movies and series dealing more with magic and sorcery, it could well be a while before we see a human body count as high as Hawkeye again, but with a lot of new projects on the way from Marvel, there is always room to grow even as the bad guy population dwindles.
