Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Hawkeye episodes four and five.
Marvel fans have had a brighter holiday season than usual thanks to Disney Plus’ Hawkeye. We have now received five episodes of the hit new show, which has blended new characters with old favorites and even tossed in a couple of noteworthy surprises.
Warning: Spoilers lie directly ahead. Now is the time to click out if you’re not caught up on Hawkeye.
Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova was the breakout star of Black Widow and has quickly proven to be one of the best things about Hawkeye ever since she appeared at the end of episode four. As teased in the Black Widow post-credits scene, she’s currently on a misguided quest for vengeance against Clint after being told that he killed her sister Natasha. Despite this, Yelena is fairly friendly to everyone else, settling down for a nice pot of mac ‘n cheese with Kate Bishop at one point to chew the fat about New York City.
But the show also took the time to reveal what happened to her during Thanos’ snap in a pivotal scene at the beginning of episode five. At the time, she was on a mission to free brainwashed Widows. Yelena popped into a bathroom, exploded into dust, and returned a second later. For her it felt like no time had passed, but she emerged into a redecorated house only to learn that five years had passed. In a tear-jerking moment, her first question was about Nat.
Now directors Bert & Bertie have talked us through the mechanics of making the scene. In an interview with Buzzfeed, Bert said:
“We wanted to film it in a way that felt continuous so that you were there and experiencing it with Yelena. For us, we always knew that was going to be incredibly exciting for fans, but we wanted to do it in a way that we hadn’t seen it done before. So hopefully, like when we put people in the car during the episode 3 car chase, this feels the same way. We wanted audiences to experience the Blip on a real human level.”
Bertie further explained the technical challenges:
“We actually had to build that bathroom set in this incredible mansion because we needed to come straight out of that living room into the bathroom, which didn’t actually exist there, and then straight back out again to reveal how the living room and world changed We actually redecorated the bathroom for real. The transition to get from one moment to the other was done in post-production, but the green walls are real and everything that changed was real in the bathroom and the living room changes too. We always say it’s a grounded story, so that keeps it human as well. It’s tactile, it actually exists.
The last thing that we filmed on that day one in the beautiful house was Yelena entering that bathroom and turning the tap on, and the camera kind of tilts down. Then, we had to go away and just remember what we’ve done. The camera operator had to implant that moment in his brain. Then we came back the next day and he did the end of the Blip camera move. It was very technical to figure out where the camera operator was going to be so Florence could then get out of the bathroom. It was lots of fun and we love that stuff. We love figuring out the technicals. You come up with the pie-in-the-sky idea and then it’s getting down and dirty to figure how to do it best.”
Hawkeye wraps up next week with its final episode, with Yelena likely to soon see through the lies she was told about Hawkeye. My bet is that we’ll close out on a touching scene of Yelena and Kate spending Christmas with the Bartons, though it’ll be a tough ride to get there.
Here’s hoping that we see much more of Florence Pugh going forward, as there aren’t many actors who can make eating macaroni as interesting as she does.
Hawkeye airs Wednesdays on Disney Plus.
