Hawkeye: 16 Burning Questions Heading Into The Final 2 Episodes

As fast as an arrow fwip!-ing across a room, Disney+'s Hawkeye is already two-thirds of the way through its six-episode run. What questions do you want answered during the final two episodes, premiering Dec. 15 and 22?

At its core, the latest live-action MCU series has been about the meeting and unplanned partnership between veteran Avenger Clint Barton (played by Jeremy Renner) and highly skilled mentee Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), set in motion by the 22-year-old's knee-jerk donning of the Ronin suit while unexpectedly clashing with the Tracksuit Mafia.

Since that fateful night, the Tracksuits — led by Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), who blames Ronin for her father's years-ago murder — have dogged Clint and Kate, while the two archers have come to realize that a Rolex watch pinched from the Avengers compound is changing hands, putting at risk the welfare of... well, someone Clint used to work with. All the while, Kate's mother Eleanor and soon-to-be stepdad Jack have kept us and the heroes guessing as to their own agendas.

What are Eleanor and/or Jack up to? Why exactly is the Rolex so important? And will the heroes get some LARPer assistance in the season-ending showdown? Those are but a few of the questions we have, heading into Episodes 5 and 6.

Review our Qs below and chime in with your current theories!Want scoop on Hawkeye, or for any other show? Email InsideLine@tvline.com and your question may be answered via Matt's Inside Line.

Kate's mom seemed squeaky clean for but a hot minute, until midway through Episode 1 when Armand III III told Kate he had done everything in his power to dissuade nephew Jack from marrying Kate's "prize of a mother." Not long after, Kate overheard Armand having words with her mom, huffing, "I should've known that this empire of yours would be built on a lie!" That night, Armand was found dead.

More recently, Eleanor rubbed Natasha's death in Clint's face upon meeting her daughter's new Avenger friend, before pointedly asking him to "forget this case" that he and Kate have been working on. When Clint wouldn't agree to that, Eleanor left an "urgent" message for someone to call her back.

In the series' cold open, we saw the Battle of New York blast a hole in the side of young Kate's New York City penthouse — not long after Derek and wife Eleanor had been overheard by their daughter arguing over finances. Derek apparently perished in the further destruction that followed, but... who's to say that Eleanor, if as secretly cutthroat as some speculate, didn't seize an opportunity for mariticide amid chaos?

Or, is there any scenario where Derek is alive, and somehow faked his death to "protect" Kate, as promised, in the midst of a veritable "hurricane"? (As some have noted, the show significantly "de-aged" Bryan D'Arcy James for that brief Episode 1 appearance, leading to speculation that he'll eventually resurface looking his actual age.)

Jack Duquesne has parried both verbally and literally with his fiancee Eleanor's daughter, proving himself to be a bit of a secret-keeper in the latter scenario. What's more, he was with Armand III for that black market auction of Avenger trophies, determined to get his hands on the Ronin's one-of-a-kind sword — even bidding money he admitted he didn't quite yet have.

He also has a very twirlable mustache.

More recently, Jack was revealed to be the CEO of Sloan LTD, the front for Tracksuits. But is this master Swordsman but a red herring, and perhaps even oblivious to what Eleanor might be up to? At least for now?

Ha, just kidding! It's never Mephisto. Move along...

OK, now we're talking.

Perhaps the series' most overt tease is that the man Maya grew up calling "Uncle," and was barely glimpsed in the karate class scene above, will be revealed to be Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin, and that Daredevil's Vincent D'Onofrio will reprise the villainous role.

In that same episode, Clint noted to Kate that the man in charge of the Tracksuits, someone "above Maya," is someone "you don't want to mess with." Add in the fact that D'Onofrio has seemed to been teasing an encore via social media, and it's more a question of when and not if Kingpin shows up (and if, as one rumor has it, this time the crime boss will be comic-accurate oversized, using CGI).

During the flashbacks to Maya's origin story, we saw her witness the Ronin kill her Tracksuit boss father, William. And while we were meant to see the encounter from Maya's POV, it was arguably conspicuous that Clint's face was never confirmed, for viewers, to in fact be under that hood at the time.

Since Maya/Echo is due for her own spinoff series, it could be that a correction of what she grew up thinking to be true is in order, that someone else was sent in to masquerade as the Ronin, and kill her dad.

In Marvel comics lore, Tracksuits member Kazimierz "Kazi" Kazimierczak wore white face paint, using the moniker Clown. (He also killed Grills, who in the comics was a neighbor of Clint's and not a LARPer, which raises a much darker question about Kazi's small-screen future.)

Watch our video Q&A with Fra Fee, who plays Kazi, above.

Who knew that a vintage Rolex 6694 Oyster (our best guess!) would be at the heart of Hawkeye's biggest mystery? The original target of the Tracksuits' crashing of the premiere's black market auction, the watch was snatched by one of Maya's goons in the chaos that followed.

A few episodes later, Laura Barton got her husband thinking that Avengers compound finds other than Ronin's suit and sword had been stolen and were circulating — specifically nudging him about a mysterious Rolex.

That watch, Clint later explained to Kate as she sneaked into what turned out to be Maya's apartment, "belongs to someone I used to work with," someone who has "been out of the game a long time, but their identity is still attached to that watch." And if the Tracksuits scrutinize the watch and put two and two together, it will blow its onetime wearer's cover, and thus "Goodbye, friend," Clint shared.

The predominant speculation is that, because of Clint's avoidance of any pronouns above, the watch connects to his wife Laura's heretofore unexplored past (to be pondered next). Maybe they met as spies?

But the more one speculates about the watch... the hinkier its eventual relevance feels. Why would a man's watch blow Laura's cover? Why would said watch have been at the Avengers compound, so many years later? (And even if Laura is revealed to be Mockingbird, doesn't S.H.I.E.L.D. have its own storage rooms for former assets' belongings?)

Now, more about Laura....

It was one thing for Laura to have been versed in Clint's past with "those idiots," the Tracksuit Mafia. But for her, not him, to first suspect that something as damning as the Rolex might have also been stolen from the Avengers compound and be changing hands — and bust out fluent German along the way! — has raised questions about Mrs. CB-1's backstory.

In Marvel lore, Clint was at one time married to Barbara "Bobbi" Morse, a S.H.I.E.L.D. spy codenamed Mockingbird. (On Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Adrianne Palicki played Bobbi, though she was never called Mockingbird on-screen — not that the ABC series was ever paid attention to much when it came to MCU continuity.)

Will Laura be revealed to have her own espionage past — one that the Rolex threatens to (somehow) expose?

Some are speculating that Eleanor's "urgent" phone call, after learning Clint won't let go of the case he and Kate are working on, set in motion Yelena's appearance on that rooftop in Episode 4. But does anyone else think that Yelena simply showed up there on her own volition, after getting "tipped" to her sister's killer in the Black Widow movie? And that her arrival in New York merely coincided with the watch retrieval?

But if Eleanor did play a role in Yelena catching up to Clint, could her phone call have perhaps been to Valentina Allegra de Fontaine? (In fact, there's a wild theory out there about which character, already mentioned on Hawkeye, is actually Val, but... we leave that for you to Google/ponder.)

Picture this: After the heroes emerge victorious in the season finale's big showdown, one left-for-dead adversary suddenly rises up and charges at Clint, Die Hard-style!... only to get KO'd by a quick-thinking Kate and a quarter that she packed in her quiver.

Widely circulated episodic photos ("stills") show Clint and Kate at the wrong end of a turkey shoot, standing in the center of the rink at Rockefeller Center with bows drawn. Is this final showdown simply about Rolex custody? Or will something larger be at play?

As noted earlier, though positioned thus far as an adversary for Clint and Kate, Maya/Echo is bound for her own series. So some sort of unarguably heroic turn for the gang leader needs to happen in the final two episodes. And Kate did seem to see something in Maya, that she spared her an arrow shot in Episode 4's rooftop rumble....

Whether sanctioned by Clint or (most certainly) not, we can see Grills, Wendy et al — clad in their new garb –  at least serving up some sort of distraction during the finale showdown. Let's just hope that if actually drawn into the fight, they know not to pull their punches sword thrusts!

We have to get the Soul Stone,

And you can't leave your family all alone.

Now as we lay me down to rest,

Know we'll always have Budapest....

Will Hawkeye finish strong enough to land in the Top 2 of the four (or five, if you include What If...?) MCU series that Disney+ has premiered thus far?

Share your current ranking in the Comments below!