“Hawkeye” set up a bit of an intriguing new mystery in Episode 4, which was finally solved in the season finale. If you’re here, it means you’re probably asking yourself the same thing we asked ourselves: “Why is that Rolex watch suddenly so important?” Well, we’ve looked into it.
In reality, it’s not really “suddenly” important. It’s just been overshadowed by Clint’s (Jeremy Renner) need to get the Ronin suit and sword back. But, the watch was actually what the Tracksuit Mafia goons were after when they first attacked the underground auction that Kate (Hailee Steinfeld) crashed in episode 1.
“We’ve got 90 seconds to find the watch. Everything else is secondary,” one of the tracksuits says after they blow the auction open (literally). Eventually, it’s the getaway truck driver who finds the watch — you know, the guy who Lucky the Pizza Dog heroically tries to stop. Unfortunately, Lucky doesn’t get the watch away from the man, and Kate doesn’t know it’s something she needs to care about, let alone that he has it.
From then on, the watch has kind of been forgotten, as the Tracksuits hunt Kate down because they think she’s the Ronin, and Clint tries to get his old suit and sword back. Then, this week, the MacGuffin came back in glorious fashion.
In Episode 4, Clint has his wife Laura (Linda Cardellini) look into Sloan, the company Kate found while using her mother’s security company info to find out more on Maya and Kazi. In doing so, Laura found that Jack Duquesne is actually the CEO of the company, which is a front for the Tracksuit Mafia’s money laundering.
It’s Laura who asks Clint whether anything else went missing from the Avengers compound — specifically the Rolex. Clint is confused at the question, thinking it was destroyed a long time ago, at this point.
“Well I thought so, but I thought the same thing about your fancy outfit,” she shoots back. So, Clint has Laura “check the signal from the transmitter,” only to find that it is still online — and being held in Echo’s apartment. According to Clint, it belongs to someone he “used to work with” who’s “been out of the game a long time.”
That said, the watch can still identify them and if the Tracksuits were to find it, “it would blow their cover.” So again, this brings us back to: why is this vintage Rolex so important? Who did it belong to? Why did Clint have it?
As revealed in the “Hawkeye” finale, the watch is actually extremely important to Laura. In the final episode of the season, Laura turns the watch over to reveal a S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia and the number “19.”
In the comics, Mockingbird is the superhero name used by Dr. Barbara “Bobbi” Morse, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent-turned Avenger who first appeared in “Astonishing Tales #6” in 1971, written by Gerry Conway and pencilled by Barry Smith. While she’s had plenty of adventures, for the purposes of this article, all you need to know are two things: While working for S.H.I.E.L.D., her official designation was “Agent 19”; and as an Avenger, Bobbi had an off again, on again relationship with Clint Barton.
So the watch confirms that Laura was a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and that’s likely where she met Clint. She’s been working with him all this time while watching the family at the farm. Is she Mockingbird? That’s a little less clear, but the big reveal here is that Laura is much more than just a concerned housewife.