Hawkeye’s assassin is Florence Pugh’s Yelena, and the timing makes sense

[Ed. note: this post contains spoilers for Hawkeye through episode 4.]

Check out the latest episodes of Hawkeye on Disney Plus has the one-time Avenger beset on all sides: A charmingly evil stepdad, an angry mom, a martial arts prodigy, and a mysterious assassin that the show carefully doesn’t name. Yet.

But if you’ve been keeping up on your Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, you’ll know exactly who that was in the black suit and night vision goggles.

Clint Barton went up against a “Black Widow assassin” in the final scenes of Hawkeye’s 4th episode, “Partners, Am I Right?” The killer was disguised in a black costume and a balaclava, but eventually Clint yanked it off, revealing actress Florence Pugh. Which is to say: Yelena Belova, fresh from this spring’s Black Widow.

Image: Marvel Studios

Scarlett Johansson starred alongside Pugh as Yelena Belova, a Black Widow trainee. She was both a mother and a spy for Natasha Romanov. They were sisters and shared many things. Black WidowYelena was clearly focused on the rekindling and strengthening of their love in a manner that would open the door for Yelena as one more thread to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

After all, in the comics, she’s become the Black Widow herself.

We’ve known for a year that Pugh would appear in Hawkeye as Yelena, but it wasn’t until Black WidowThat’s exactly what we discovered. In the movie’s credits scene, Yelena was approached by another new MCU supporting character, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Falcon and Winter Soldier).

Image: Marvel Studios

Fontaine handed over a file on Clint, and explained that this was Yelena’s chance to go after the man who killed her sister. The Marvel Cinematic Universe viewer knows that Natasha sacrificed herself as Clint yelled at her to let him do it instead, but it seems that Yelena doesn’t exactly buy that version of events.

The younger Black Widow walked away from the fight this week, but it’s a certainty that she’ll be back sometime in the final two episodes of Hawkeye.

Hawkeye

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On Nov. 24, the new series will premiere on Disney Plus