WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Hawkeye Episode 3, "Echoes," which aired Wednesday on Disney+.

Hawkeye gets a lot of flack for bringing a bow and arrow to a superpower fight, but by using trick arrows, he often manages to close the gap between himself and his superheroic allies. While his athleticism and marksmanship are more than enough to make him a deadly force even with regular arrows, ones that release special effects allow him far greater versatility and power than the archer could have otherwise.

Trick arrows also served as the main event to the latest Hawkeye episode's big action set piece, as the archer and his new partner, Kate Bishop, resorted to a quiver full of the goodies while escaping the Tracksuit Mafia. Serving as an introduction to many of Hawkeye's go-to weapons, each arrow comes with its own unique history in the comics, save for one that was invented for the show.

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Overall, there were nine different trick arrows used throughout the episode, with each of them serving a specific function and having its own unique history. Throughout much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hawkeye has been largely restrained in how often he uses his trick arrows, with Avengers showcasing a zip drive arrow, explosive arrows and his grappling hook arrow. These were also seen in the most recent episode. Part of the reason there was precedent for these is that they prove some of his most common tools across media. The zip drive arrow was a valuable tool in bringing down Ultron with the virus that saved the day in What If...?'s finale and the grappling arrow was even used in the car chase from the comics that served as the episode's inspiration. Only there, its cable was so strong, it sliced a car in half.

The explosive arrows are perhaps Hawkeye's most common way to produce raw power, and in Hawkeye, Bishop uses it to take out a car when she fires it into the vehicle's grill. Hawkeye's explosives in the comics range across huge variances in power, holding 30 megatons, bunker-busters and even miniaturized nuclear warheads. The smoke arrow used in the episode that obscures a driver's vision has similar variance in the comics, sometimes holding knockout gas, tear gas or even just a foul scent, like the West Coast Avengers' stink arrow that Hawkeye uses to disorient opponents just by smelling really, really bad.

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There's no end to Hawkeye's assortment of tricks it seems, as even the weapon Bishop calls a "Play-Doh arrow" that releases an expanding foam has a wide range of applications. On top of binding enemies together, Hawkeye has foam arrows that can extinguish flames, interrupt projectiles like Captain America's shield midair or provide a safe cushion during a panicked landing. The acid arrows Bishop uses to fell traffic lights are similarly more potent in the comics, destroying a car engine in the source material's car chase, containing nitric acid, or combining with other trick arrows to melt through glass and release a sensor inside a building Hawkeye is breaking into.

Hawkeyes Trick Arrow Quiver.

But the arrow that steals the show is the Pym arrow, used to release Pym particles to turn a second arrow into a massive barrier that smashes down on a charging vehicle. The Pym arrow has a rich history in the comics, where Hawkeye has used it even more straightforwardly to just turn himself into a giant or shrink opponents like Atlas back down to size. Perhaps even more creatively, by shrinking down a bunch of arrows with Pym particles and containing them in capsules, Hawkeye has released a whole shower of arrows that could take down a small fleet of bikers all at once, as in Hawkeye & Mockingbird.

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Perhaps most curious of all is the only arrow that goes unnamed in the episode, and which seems to have little precedent in the comics. Bishop fires it into the grill of a pursuing car as their chase carries the pair through a vendor for Christmas trees. The arrow releases several wires that not only latch onto surrounding trees but pull them in to collect around the windshield. This is somewhat similar to the bola arrow Hawkeye invariably uses to nonlethally incapacitate his foes with wires, but even those function differently than the arrow in the episode.

It seems that Hawkeye not only understands its history but is willing to expand on it by adding new arrows to Hawkeye's repertoire. This starts to get at the fun of the character, with such a seemingly ridiculous concept coming across as cool to any fan. When facing off against Hawkeye, the bad guys may want to laugh him off, but knowing he has a different arrow to perfectly address every threat is what really makes them quiver.

New episodes of Hawkeye air Wednesdays on Disney+.

KEEP READING: A Hawkeye Guide: News, Easter Eggs, Reviews, Theories And Rumors