Kate Bishop’s mysterious Aunt Moira in Hawkeye was a West Coast Avenger

Kate Bishop’s mysterious aunt in Hawk Eye seems cute. “M. Brandon” lives in a humble apartment somewhere in the Generic Walk-Up (GenWU) neighborhood of downtown Manhattan. The place is crammed with tchotchkes, adorned with memories, and appropriately overflowing with pots, pans, and other necessities. It’s a New Yorker Life, understanding the outsider only through accumulation.

Funnily enough, Moira Brandon is a real character from the comics who first appeared alongside Hawkeye in. showed up West Coast Avengers back in the 1990s. And the apartment is a perfect insider tip Hawk Eye‘s writer. Moira is not home when Kate and Clint arrive at their apartment for the first time Hawk Eye Episode 2 – of course, she hibernates in Florida – but her place is a big weird nod.

It turns out that Moira was a B-movie actress from a young age, and she carries the legacy proudly in the form of movie posters. Besides that A chance for love (above), which sounds a bit more like frolic than Moira’s other work, we see Dark galaxy creature, a Marvel Cinematic Universe creation that you can bet Steve Rogers would have been lined up for day one if he had been there for the release.

We also get a look at a poster for The wild hyraxwhich is especially scary considering that hyraxs are herbivores!

Image: Marvel Studios

Moira also appears to be holding a headshot of her older self on the wall. Perhaps as a form of inspiration to give you confidence in today’s audition? Get it, Moira!

Image: Marvel Studios

In Episode 2, Clint asks, “Are there cats here?” To which Kate replies, “Only cat hair.” Everything starts to make sense when we get this shot of a cat poster on the wall (and our leading lady, of course, but let’s focus on the cat on the wall).

This is the old lady 101, complete with an old television that is impossible to plug into a DVD player that would allow Moira to enjoy her huge collection of standard definition films. Marvel will have to introduce Forge into the MCU just to take care of the RCA cables for this thing.

All of this adds up to an extended cameo from someone who will likely never appear in the current version Hawk Eye Show. But it’s true to character. In Avengers West Coast (Vol. 2) # 100, Moira is a unlucky golden age starlet, a Norma Desmond guy who is easily threatened by the villain Crossfire, who asks her to use her influence to bring down Hawkeye and getting his wife Mockingbird to buy her mansion as the home base for the West Coast Avengers. Comics!

Image: Roy Thomas, Don Hudson / Marvel Comics

But Moira doesn’t want to be a pawn in some diabolical scheme. In fact, she’s always wanted to be brave – so she grab a goddamn crossbow and finish it off! And then almost passed out.

Image: Roy Thomas, Don Hudson / Marvel Comics

The entire episode takes place in a flashback, and when the story returns to today’s Clint, he remembers in tears how happy Moiras were in the last few years after realizing that courage was in her all along. He even made her an Honorary West Coast Avenger. Nice guy.

Image: Roy Thomas, Don Hudson / Marvel Comics

There seems very little chance that the moira of Kate Bishop’s pedigree will also shoot a man in the chest before becoming a founding member of the West Coast Avengers, but stranger things have happened. Do we really think Jack Duquesne is capable of being the ultimate villain lurking in the shadows? – We may have a physical appearance from Moira sometime before the last two episodes to clarify where the family is when the dust settles. And hey, Marvel obviously cast someone to get that headshot.

But do we really want to meet Moira? While the comeback story of an aging actor sounds ripe for the TVs of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a picture is in Hawk Eye left me a little doubtful. Like many seventy-year-olds in the past decade, Moira seems to have gotten into strange politics, probably thanks to casual use of social media. I don’t know why she has a Thanos Was Right mug, and I don’t know if I want to know.

Image: Marvel Studios