Vulnerability – Another Look at the Strong Characters, Part 2
Or: I Chat About Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch
Previously, we discussed the fact that men and women have vulnerabilities. That the heroes need rescuing as much as the heroines do, and that a character having or revealing some type of vulnerability is not always a bad thing. In fact, it is something that naturally enables the audience to better connect with the characters onscreen, whether they are male or female. The MCU has several characters who encapsulate this, but I wish to talk about two in particular today.
The first is Hawkeye/Clint Barton. Seen briefly in Thor and given some development in The Avengers, MCU viewers only get to see more of his character in Age of Ultron. Civil War offers more insights, as does Endgame, but by far the best film for him is Ultron.
Unlike his teammates, Hawkeye has no superpowers whatsoever. He is a “baseline human” – someone who trained to the peak of human prowess with the bow and arrow. This fact alone makes him more vulnerable than his male teammates, who are a god out of myth, a super soldier, a hi-tech knight in shining armor, and a “green rage monster.” In comparison to his compatriots, Hawkeye’s best weapons are his incredible eyesight and his well-honed skills. Beyond that, he is as susceptible to injury as any other normal human caught in battles between superpowered individuals would be.
This is seen in The Avengers, where Loki – a weak Jotun (Frost Giant) – is able to physically overpower him. It is emphasized again when Captain America appoints Barton the team’s spotter and sniper. Not only does this employ Hawkeye’s unique skillset, it keeps him relatively safe and out of harm’s way in a deadly battle…for the most part. As the conflict drags on, Clint is forced to abandon his sniper hide, crashing through a window into a nearby skyscraper and receiving an injury in the process (albeit one that doesn’t compromise his ability to fight).
Clint’s “weaknesses” are shown most patently in Age of Ultron. At the beginning Pietro Maximoff (Quicksilver) uses his considerable speed to attack him and put him in the line of fire from a HYDRA bunker. While his compatriots would likely shrug off the injury, the shot incapacitates Hawkeye, requiring his evac and making his part in future battles difficult. He notably winces, grunts, or moans when landing on his injured side during later conflicts in the same movie. This shows that while medical treatment allows him to remain a capable combatant it doesn’t make fighting easier or painless for him.
His greatest vulnerability, however, is revealed when he takes the Avengers to meet his family as they recuperate from the psychic manipulation they endured in Johannesburg, South Africa. The only hero to avoid being mind-controlled, he has to step up and take care of his teammates’ mental health when they’re compromised by Wanda Maximoff’s (the Scarlet Witch’s) “mind games.” In contrast to the rest of his friends Clint has a wife, two young children, and a third child on the way. In essence, he has far more to lose than they do, and one wrong word could lead to the deaths of those dearest to him.
Endgame ably demonstrates just how much Clint relies on his family as a source of strength and power, but Age of Ultron shows that he understands how they could be used against him. He admits that he asked Nick Fury keep his wife and children out of his SHIELD file, and the Barton family clearly lives off-the-grid, with most of his children’s toys being hand-powered or battery powered rather than Internet accessible. Clint has taken precautions to protect his one great strength, which doubles as his greatest vulnerability, something we see confirmed in Endgame.
The revelation about Clint’s family adds rather than detracts from his character, making him more appealing than when he was first introduced to audiences. It also makes more room for character expansion, which we see in Clint’s reaction to the twin minor antagonists in the film: Pietro and Wanda Maximoff. Although the team does not want to hurt the twins and would prefer to get them away from Ultron, Hawkeye shows more sympathy and understanding for the two than the rest of his teammates do.
It is an attitude that doesn’t make much sense until we see him interact with his own children at the farm. Then it becomes clear: while the other Avengers may see misguided teenagers or some reflection of themselves in the Maximoffs, Clint sees children much like his own. Although he develops a minor rivalry with Pietro, he does not hate him. The moment when he shoots the floor out from underneath him and pins the boy to say, “What? You didn’t see that coming?” can be read as a sort of fatherly remonstrance to “stop thinking you’re the greatest thing the world has ever seen – it’s going to get you hurt.”
Since she receives more screentime, Clint’s paternal interest in Wanda is more easily demonstrated. To follow David Breitenbeck’s point in his article here, Wanda Maximoff is roughly in the position of the traditional princess in Age of Ultron. However, she does not recognize this herself due to her fixation on revenge for her parents’ deaths and her country’s suffering. She primarily blames Tony Stark for these things but extends that anger to the rest of the Avengers.
As I showed in “A Matter of Power,” the Scarlet Witch is technically one of the strongest heroines in Marvel Comics – and, by extension, in the MCU. Conversely, she is also one of the physically weakest and mentally susceptible members of the team, something which Age of Ultron uses to great effect. Wanda Maximoff rarely engages in hand-to-hand combat in the comics and never does so in the films, relying instead on her powers to defeat her opponents and/or to protect herself.
If you were to assign roleplaying logistics to her character and that of the other Avengers, she would be classified as a bard, a healer, or a cleric. These are roles that would put her in the rear of the formation – i.e. behind the knight (Iron Man), the Paladin (Captain America), and the barbarians (Hulk and Thor). Hers is, essentially, a support role in that she bolsters the team’s power by standing in the background and effecting the battle with ranged attacks from a position of relative physical safety – much like Hawkeye does with his skills.
Although she can “move forward” on the board, as she does in Infinity War when she faces Thanos’ army, this requires her to have backup in case of a physical threat. Hence the writers have Black Widow and Dora Milaje general Okoye arrive to help her deal with Proxima Midnight when the latter comes to kill Wanda toward the end of Infinity War.
Wanda is not, in RPG parlance, a tank. Her physical stats are poor in the extreme, as even with hand-to-hand combat training from Captain America, her physique and light frame won’t allow her the purchase or necessary leverage/physical strength to go toe-to-toe with a larger or more skilled opponent. She also lacks the specialized training which allows Natasha to close with her enemies to bring them down physically. Wanda learned the art of close quarters fighting at a later age than the Black Widow which means by that time she had lost the inherent flexibility of youth for that training to be effective.
Thus Wanda is, in essence, a model of the princess archetype which Mr. Breitenbeck describes in his piece at The Everyman Commentary. Her powers are feminine in nature, and her physical vulnerability means that her male compatriots tend to look out for her specially. Wanda commands more attention on the battlefield than Natasha because of this since she is more likely to be severely hurt or captured. This is one reason why we often see Pietro scooping her up in his arms before running off with her. Not only is he her older brother, but he is stronger and faster than she is, meaning he has to protect her.
Ultron clearly fits the role of dragon in the film, but the manner of his menace to Wanda isn’t immediately obvious since she already has a grudge against the Avengers. The fact is that he uses her pain and anger to control her. This is where Wanda’s psychological vulnerability comes into play, as she has a potent temper that tends to blind her to all else. If anyone Wanda considers a friend or a family member is injured or killed, she will lash out at whoever harmed them in a fury.
Given the force of the power she wields, this is no laughing matter, as the Avengers learn in both Age of Ultron and Civil War. When Wanda decides to cut loose, very little can or will stop her from completing her mission. But this leaves her even more vulnerable. We see this in Age of Ultron when she abandons the key to get revenge on the robot for killing her brother. Her absence allows Ultron to activate the key and send his improvised meteor hurtling toward the ground, nearly killing her and everyone still on Earth.
Various male members of the team act as the prince or hero coming to Wanda’s rescue throughout the course of the MCU. While Vision is the most obvious one due to his romantic relationship with her, Cap and Hawkeye also serve as her “paladins,” albeit in a brotherly or fatherly capacity. Steve Rogers tries to help her deal with the fallout of the accident in Lagos, Nigeria, in Civil War. Clint Barton serves as her “knight” when he gives her a pep talk in Age of Ultron and again when he comes to rescue her from confinement in the Avengers’ Compound in Civil War.
That scene in particular shows how both Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch’s specific vulnerabilities come into play and balance each other out. As he himself admits, Clint cannot physically overcome Vision (an unfortunate head of the many-headed dragon in Civil War’s plot), but Wanda has the power to do so easily. She only lacks the confidence in herself to act, since the greater dragon of public and political opinion has succeeded in holding her confined to the Compound emotionally as well as psychologically. Worse, they have used Tony Stark and Vision to accomplish this, essentially having her compatriot and her boyfriend hold her hostage in her own home.
While there is no romantic consummation between the two characters in Civil War, the father-daughter relationship between Wanda Maximoff and Clint Barton is elevated after this scene by their mutual trust in each other. Early in the airport battle Hawkeye remains at the Scarlet Witch’s side in a protective capacity. It is a favor she returns when he is confronted by attacks which he cannot counter or when he lets his guard down. The two fight their adversaries in tandem for the first half of the battle, compensating for one another’s weaknesses and strengthening each other precisely because they know the other’s vulnerabilities and how best to minimize them.
If they didn’t have that rapport due to their specific knowledge of each other’s weaknesses as well as their strengths, they would be less effective together and apart. Considering how well they fight when they split up later in the battle, it can be said that their confidence in their father/daughter relationship is what enables them to continue acting at such a high capacity. Wanda’s renewed sense of self-assurance grants her greater control throughout the airport battle while Clint is able to hold T’Challa at bay because he knows the Scarlet Witch has other matters on the field well in hand.
Looking at their relationship in this light, as well as both Avengers’ love of or longing for a family, it is not hard to see why the Usual Suspects have downplayed Wanda’s powers and tried to turn her into a villainess. They cannot have her vulnerability displayed for all to see and compensated for by various knights because it betrays their narrative that “the princess is a demeaning role.” As Mr. Breitenbeck said and as Wanda demonstrates, that is not true. The princess may often be a passive role, but it is not a position of weakness. If it were, then there would be no place for the Scarlet Witch in either the Avengers’ roster or the battlefield, something blatantly contradicted by the facts of many different Marvel stories.
Likewise, Marvel’s dislike of Clint Barton for his knightly tendencies in the MCU and in the comics shows that they consider his position troublesome. They don’t want an archer with a weakness for pretty girls or the willingness and a desire to be the knight who protects or rescues the princess. Rather, they want the princess to save herself; hence their replacement of Barton with Kate Bishop.
As Mr. Breitenbeck notes, the specific attacks on the “hero rescues the princess from the dragon” plot archetype hint at a hatred for more than fairy tales and comic books. They hint at the refusal of the first rebel, who told the Hero of the cosmos itself: “Non serviam.” These people want to save themselves from the dragon of sin and death; they do not want a Hero – a Savior – to do it for them, because that would mean they have some responsibilities to Him.
Moreover, it would mean admitting they were in error. That they were too weak to exercise their will in any meaningful way toward their own salvation without His help. Pride, the first and worst sin of all, still clings hard to mankind.
Or perhaps it is mankind that clings to pride, listening to his dulcet whispers and dreaming of a godhood that can never be achieved.