Why do Hawkeye and Mockingbird Divorce?

Please Share and Follow us on Twitter!


Why do Hawkeye and Mockingbird divorce?

For at time Hawkeye and Mockingbird were the top super-hero couple.  They even created their own Avengers team.  Their relationship and even hero partnership went sour and the two split.

What happened?

The primary disagreement between Clint and Bobbi (Hawkeye and Mockingbird) is that she effectively kills the villain Phantom Rider when she did not need to.  She lets Phantom Rider fall of a cliff to his demise.  This event occures in The West Coast Avengers #23.

In Bobbi's eyes the guy deserves it.  In Clint's eyes an Avenger should never kill unless absolutely necessary.  This argument blows up, does not end and their relationship does not survive.

The backstory on this gets pretty messy.  Bobbie does not just kill Phantom Rider because he is a bad guy.  The Phantom Rider effectively raped Bobbi by mind controlling her and making her think she was part of his time period.  This violates her will, her thoughts and her body all at once and is an extreme violation of a person that could only be compared with other mind manipulating villains like the Purple Man.  There is however a question as to whether Phantom Rider himself was being manipulated by the spirit of the Phantom.  That said there are a lot of thought bubbles of him thinking through things as he is manipulating her that make him see vile no matter the reasoning.

One of those scenes is where Bobbie wears an arrowhead that the Rider immediatly recognizes as sign that she might be remembering her actual husband Hawkeye.

Bottomline if there was ever a guy that deserved to be tossed off a cliff its this guy.

However, to Hawkeye an Avenger should never kill. No Matter What.

This remains a controversial moment in Avengers History.
Who is right and who is wrong in this?  A lot of people look back on this moment as Hawkeye being very cold to a rape victim.  Regardless of his opinion on the act of killing Phantom Rider he should have still had more compassion for his wife and what she was going through.  Others bring this up as an example of the high standards of the Avengers when functioning at their best.




This death leads them to break up and to eventually divorce.

Bobbi is found shortly after she kills the Phantom Rider by Hawkeye who explains that he has been searching everywhere for her.  Bobbi tells Hawkeye that Phantom Rider killed himself.

However, the ghost of Phantom Rider haunts the Avengers and eventually reveals the truth that Bobbi in effect killed him.  This is really the Phantom Rider playing more tricks and getting his own vengeance on Bobbi but it works.

Hawkeye does not like the idea of any Avenger killing someone, especially when they have the ability to save them.  He especially does not like the fact that the Avenger that did the killing was his own wife.  Westcoast Avengers is really Hawkeye's chance to be the leader of the Avengers.  He takes this very seriousily and he expected his wife to have his back and be one of his most loyal members.  Keep in mind, Hawkeye had been a villain and he had found redemption in the ranks of the Avengers.  He was never considered a powerhouse hero though so him being there at all was questioned at times.  So for Bobbi to disobey the rules of the Avengers when he is leading is seen by him as the ultimate act of betrayal.

Bobbi of course sees Hawkeye as an insenstive jerk and the whole thing sprials quickly from there.



The two do attempt to reconcile especially after Bobbi returns after Secret Invasion.  However so far none of these meetings have led to the two getting married.


After this the new Mockingbird series of 2017 begins to rewrite history.  This change occures in Mockingbird #8 the last issue of the series.   The truth this comic says is that Mockingbird was cheating on Hawkeye and Hawkeye couldn't deal with it.  So he told himself that Mockingbird had been drugged when in fact she hadn't.

This comes out when Phantom Rider comes up to stalk Bobbi.  She refers to him as one of her exes.

This would be the present canon on the issue.




Who is Hawkeye?
Who is Mockingbird? 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Check this Out


Blog Archive

Toylab Pulse