Wait, Did Hawkeye's Finale Just Kill Off a Major Marvel Villain?
Hawkeye episode 6 spoilers follow.
As anyone who's watched Daredevil already knows, the Kingpin is a cruel, cruel man indeed. But it turns out now that Hawkeye is even crueler, or Hawkeye the show, at least. Because just after Vincent D'Onofrio finally returned to reprise his iconic Marvel role, Hawkeye's final episode just seemed to kill the Kingpin off completely.
But would Marvel really do that? Would they really kill off this beloved character right after they messed up his big reveal just one week prior? Like Kingpin's greatest adversary, the Man Without fear, it's time we pored through the evidence, Daredevil-style.
Hawkeye episode six opens with Kingpin and Eleanor Bishop in a fraught business meeting where Kate's mother tells him that she's leaving behind this life of crime, saying: "My daughter is home now and she’s getting too close. That’s where I draw the line."
Kingpin isn't exactly used to people saying no to him, especially to his face, which probably explains why said face starts to twitch as the meeting comes to an end.
Soon after, Kingpin's bad day gets even worse, to the point where not even his cute flowery shirt will lift his spirits. Not only is Wilson Fisk's grip on the city loosening, but he's now realized that Echo, his beloved charge, is no longer on his side. "I love you," says Kingpin, knowing full well that Maya is out for his blood in revenge for her father's death.
A quiver full of trick arrows later, and we cut ahead to Fisk confronting Eleanor in a bid to stop her from leaving the Christmas party. Thankfully, Kate arrives just in time to protect her mother, except regular arrows aren't going to cut it.
Snapping those pesky arrows out of his chest, Kingpin lunges forward towards Kate, only to then be hit by Eleanor's car, full-force. But of course, he gets up, because that's just what we would expect from everyone's favorite crime lord. Kingpin doesn't technically have any "powers" per se, but there's a reason why he's proved himself to be such a formidable foe, even for the likes of Daredevil and Spidey.
Using that almost inhuman strength of his, Kingpin throws Kate around a bit, slamming her against various walls. In hindsight, he could have snapped her neck very quickly, but instead, Fisk snaps all of Kate's fancy new trick arrows. Thankfully though, that's not the only trick up Kate's sleeve.
Remembering what Clint taught her about flicking tiny objects with force, Kate does exactly that, and in doing so, she sets off all of the snapped trick arrows at once, most of which are conveniently lying around Kingpin's feet. Boom goes the dynamite! But of course, Fisk survives the explosion, and is still well enough to stagger away amidst all the confusion.
This leads us to Kingpin's final scene in Hawkeye, and perhaps the MCU at large (although we highly doubt that). Just as it looks like the big boss man is going to make a clean getaway, Echo arrives with a jaunty festive tune, no less.
As the '12 Days of Christmas' plays out of the car speakers, Maya stands before Kingpin with a gun in hand. "You and I, we're family," says Fisk. "Sometimes, family doesn’t see eye to eye." Unfortunately for him, his pleas go unheard as Echo lifts the gun and pulls the trigger.
Justice is finally served as Maya takes bloody vengeance against the man who killed her father. Except, the camera tracks away at this exact moment, so all we hear is the gunshot. There's no body, no evidence that Kingpin is really dead.
On TV, no one is actually dead until you see the body, and in superhero stories, even that's not necessarily true. So Fisk is clearly alive still. Marvel wouldn't bring back such a popular character only to kill him off this quickly, especially as he hasn't even faced off against Daredevil again either. That really would be too cruel.
Still, there will be repercussions, and it looks like these will be drawn from a similar storyline that played out in the source material. When comic book Echo discovered that Fisk was the one who killed her father, she used a gun to shoot him too, but he didn't die. Instead, Maya blinded the Kingpin in both eyes.
While only one gunshot is heard on the show, it seems likely that the MCU's Kingpin will follow a similar path. Hawkeye's writers even hint at this with Fisk's final line: "Sometimes, family doesn't see eye to eye."
Eventually, comic book Kingpin regained his sight thanks to some reconstructive eye surgery, and that could very well be the case on screen too. But for now, expect to see a damaged version of the Kingpin return in perhaps Hawkeye season two, and most certainly in Echo's new spinoff, where Fisk will likely seek revenge in the cruelest way possible...
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