WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Hawkeye Episode 5, "Ronin," now streaming on Disney+.
The ghost of Natasha Romanoff haunted Hawkeye from the very beginning, and was made manifest by the appearance of her sister Yelena at the end of Season 1, Episode 4, “Partners, Am I Right?” That taps into Clint Barton’s complex feelings of guilt and loss, not only of Black Widow, but of his family to the Blip and his dark deeds in the interim as the Ronin.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe leaned heavily into the effects of the Blip from the outset, starting with the bold decision to forward the timeline by five years in Avengers: Endgame. The ramifications of it – and its sudden undoing during Endgame – have appeared in everything from Spider-Man: Far From Home to Loki. Hawkeye uses it not only to fill in some of the gaps in the timeline left by Black Widow, but to the impact of the Blip from a devastating new perspective.
Season 1, Episode 5, “Ronin” opens with a flashback centered on Yelena, shortly before Thanos makes the Snap and sometime after the end of Black Widow. She and Sonya enter the house of a former Widow, Ana, with the intent of freeing her from the Red Room’s mind control. As it turns out, she doesn’t need freeing. Ana is working as a killer for hire on her own accord. The trio spend a little time catching up, then Yelena goes into the bathroom. That’s when the Snap hits. Seen from Yelena’s perspective, she flies apart into a cloud of dust, only to re-form an instant later as the world around her changes. The wallpaper and fixtures are new, and five years have passed. Ana is now married, and has adopted three children, presumably left orphaned by the Snap.
The return from the Blip isn’t new territory for the MCU, and the impact has varied depending on the particular project. No Way Home played it for laughs, as the lost students from Peter Parker’s high school reappeared without warning. WandaVision had a much more complex take in Season 1, Episode 4, “We Interrupt This Program,” as Monica Rambeau returned from the Snap in the hospital. There, amid the sight of people returning from the dead all around her, she learned that her mother died during the Blip. The scene holds a mixture of wonder and melancholy, matching Monica’s emotions as she processes what has happened.
Both incidents show the Blip from the perspective of innocent bystanders, who had no idea Thanos even existed and found themselves either erased from existence or forced to deal with the aftermath. It also brings new dramatic weight to Natasha’s sacrifice. Though she happily did it to save everyone, Endgame strongly suggested that she did it for Clint as well, and more specifically his family who were taken by the Blip. “Ronin” reveals another reason even closer to home: the Blip claimed Yelena, which would have hurt Natasha as deeply as the loss of Clint's family hurt him. Bringing her back leaves Yelena with survivor’s guilt similar to Clint’s, and gives Hawkeye an opportunity for both characters to confront it.
From Yelena’s perspective, her sister literally disappeared in the blink of an eye, and learning that she did so fighting to restore everyone would only intensify her feelings of anger and guilt. Val provides Barton as an easy target for her, but her skepticism leads her to question who hired her, and ultimately to the episode’s big reveal. It suggests a certain volatility springing from her experience with the Blip. Having failed to locate her sister, she now seeks revenge as the easy alternative, only to slow down when she realizes that someone might be taking advantage of that. While fans haven’t yet seen precisely what she thinks Barton is responsible for, it’s likely that she doesn’t know the actual story of how Natasha died, and that doubt feeds her decision to stop reacting to stimuli and start thinking more clearly.
Regardless, it’s another indicator that the MCU has no intention of abandoning the Snap or its ramifications anytime soon. It’s touched every series on Disney+ thus far, as surviving characters deal with grief and loss in their own way. Hawkeye had explored the same themes in a very different way before now, with Natasha’s sacrifice continuing to haunt Clint years after the fact. Yelena’s sense of loss is fresher and keener, while Clint’s is further on the road to healing. The difference is another subtle indicator of how the Blip changed the MCU forever. Hawkeye is just the latest project to develop its aftereffects.
To see the Blip from Yelena's POV, the fifth episode of Hawkeye is streaming on Disney+.