Clint Barton and Kate Bishop have something in common that goes beyond archery, but it hasn’t come up yet. They’re both grieving over the death of a loved one. It’s Black Widow for Barton. It’s the death of a parent in Kate’s instance. It’s only that Kate’s death had a significant impact on her relationship with her father in the original material. In the first minutes of Hawkeye, Kate’s father, Derek Bishop, appears to die. Kate takes up a bow and arrow to protect her mother after Derek’s death and her personal connection to Barton’s bravery. For the new Hawkeye, it’s a brief but powerful heroic origin narrative. Her connection with her parents is likewise inverted from the comics. She has a tense connection with her mother and possible stepfather Jack Duquense in the show. She shares a similar bond with Derek in the comics.
Hawkeye: Kate was the kid of a single parent, Derek, when she first appeared in Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung’s Young Avengers, with Eleanor assumed dead.
Derek’s marriage to Heather, a lady so young Kate attended high school with, put even more strain on their relationship. All of this paled in contrast to what Kate would learn from Matt Fraction, David Aja, and Annie Wu’s Hawkeye, which is heavily based on the Disney+ cartoon. Kate’s father began by cutting her off financially. When Kate discovered that he was a customer of her arch-enemy, Madame Masque, the alienation became permanent.
Kate called her father right away to inform him that she had found his crimes.
She pledged that she would pursue Barton after assisting him in his struggle with the Tracksuit Draculas. Derek retaliated by ordering a hit on both Hawkeyes with his criminal cohorts, including Masque and the much-rumoured MCU rookie Kingpin. Tensions between Kate and her father have not yet reached a boiling point. The subplot of Derek taking a rage out on his daughter first appeared in Fraction and Aja’s final issue of Hawkeye, and it hasn’t been picked up on in future Hawkeye runs.
Following Fraction and Aja’s run, Jeff Lemire and Ramon Perez’s All-New Hawkeye touched on Kate’s connection with her father. It demonstrated how she evolved from idolising her father to discovering Hawkeye as a new hero. In the Disney+ show, a similar incident happened, though it had more to do with Derek’s seeming death occurring at the same time as Hawkeye’s heroism saved Kate’s life, prompting her to pick up a bow.
Kate hasn’t been disillusioned by her father’s nefarious actions in the MCU.
In her perspective, he didn’t live long enough to become a villain. That isn’t to say he won’t try. Derek’s reappearance later in the storey could be due to the inversion of her parents’ destinies. Eleanor reunited with Madame Masque in Avengers West Coast, however, her purpose was more sympathetic than Derek’s. The masque was being used to help her find a cure for her vampirism. Despite this, Kate didn’t have faith in her.
It’s unlikely that Derek will return in Hawkeye, and if he does, it won’t be a pleasant reunion.
