SPOILERS AHEAD! STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE THIRD EPISODE!

Hawkeye Episode 3 sets up Maya Lopez (Echo) with a series of flashbacks and the build up of the character. The episode puts Clint and Kate together in action against Echo and the Tracksuit Mafia as the antagonists start making their move.

Story-view

The episode starts off with flashbacks of Maya Lopez as a kid. It expresses how she overcame the challenges of being deaf and also managed to enhance her ability of watching. Learning by watching, as advised by her father, she can perfectly mimic another person's movements and tactics. But now, Maya is on her way to avenger her father's death as we see Ronin killing her father during his crusade against the underworld criminals.

We come back to the present where Kate and Clint are captured by the Tracksuit Mafia. Clint tries to lie his way out to Maya but fails. Clint escapes and the goons chase him. We get a brief fight sequence of Maya's Echo and Clint Hawkeye as she destroys his hearing aid. This makes Clint unable to hear for the next few scenes. Clint helps Kate escape as the episode gets into a long escape run. Kate uses bunch of dangerous arrows (though they weren't the true dangerous ones for Clint). They finally escape together, flashing a signature Hawkeye move, and enters a train.

They return to Kate's aunt's house and Clint gets a phone call from his youngest kid, Nathaniel. It seems he will miss the movie marathon but promises to be back before ugly Christmas sweater party. Later, fixing the hearing aid, they go to a restaurant where Kate explains how Clint is like a role model to him. After many fun stuffs and banters, Kate decides she will sneak into her mother's penthouse in order to get more evidences on the running issue and also Jack Duquesne. Using the Bishop Security account, Kate tries to find any knowledge on Kazi and finds out he is an employee of Sloan Ltd.

Kate has been locked out from finding any deeper information from internet and suddenly Clint feels movement in the penthouse. He moves slowly with his instincts, looking for an intruder and is caught by none other than Jack Duquesne with the same Ronin sword.

Major Details

Young Maya Lopez seems to have an interest with Dragons. She asks her father, "What sound does a dragon make?" Not just Maya, in the whole episode, the mention of dragons was very common. One of the members of Tracksuit Mafia talks about the famous pop band Imagine Dragons. On its own, the moment does not carry much significance but since Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings introduced to us the first MCU dragon, this raises a lot of questions on dragons, for the future of the universe.

Now let's get into one of the biggest details of the whole episode! WHAT AND WHO WAS THAT? Young Maya meets a black suited person, who was later being called 'Uncle' by Maya, who seems very, and I mean, very familiar to Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin. Kingpin is not officially introduced in MCU so far, but we do see a massive impact of that character in the Netflix Daredevil series. And look how cheeky Marvel Studios is! They even made sure to match the cufflink of the coat of this person with Wilson Fisk's one from the Netflix series. This can never be a coincidence, it is an actual tease by the studios for us.

During the last moments of life, Maya's father touches er little daughter's face with the blood stained hands which puts a bloody handprint on her face. This is a callback to Echo's original appearance in the comics, where Maya has this handprint on her face.

While escaping, Kate and Clint finds a 1972 Dodge Challenger, but Clint refuses to break the window to get in, rather goes to a different car. This car is is taken directly from the Matt Fraction comics where they both used the 1972 Dodge Challenge car to escape from the Tracksuit Draculas (Tracksuit Mafia in the MCU).

The arrows Clint gives to Kate (and Kate takes) are also taken from the comics. Putty arrow, USB arrow, Explosive-tip arrow, Suction-tip arrow (Plunger arrow), Net arrow, all are taken from the comics. But we do see some interesting ones, and the most mind-blowing was the arrow with Pym tech. The word 'Pym' being written at the tip of the arrow, anything it pierces makes its size big, just what Pym tech is based on. This tech is what we saw in Ant-Man movies, specially in Ant-Man and the Wasp where small objects were magnified to be used.

Kate also uses her arrow which releases a pink smoke, hinting to her costume color in comics, as well as of Hawkeye. We see Clint handing Kate over a USB arrow. This arrow is the same one from What If...? animated series where he uses it to upload Zola AI and take it in the arrow.

Kate gives Clint some costume designs for branding and besides the big head (obviously not an art major) the costume looks very familiar don't you think? This design is the exact costume of Hawkeye from the comics, with the 'H' on the forehead and the hawk shaped face mask.

Final Verdict

The episode provides a display of fun banters through the escape and chase, then struggling to communicate with near-deaf idol with his hearing aid being destroyed. One thing that is marvelous at every point of this episode is this dynamic between Kate and Clint. Clint talking to his son with the help of Kate contributed a lot in connecting with Clint more.

The flashbacks in the episode parallels Kate's flashback from Episode 1. It is amazing how Kate and Maya's bond with their father was expressed initially until their lives changed, Hawkeye being the center of it. While Kate sees Clint's heroic side, Maya sees his brutal side, which sets them down to their different paths. Overall, the episode not only gave us an emotionally investing introduction of Maya, but also some great action scenes and character writings while retaining its promised festive vibe.