Florence Pugh seems to be having so, so much fun as Yelena (“Are you not hungry? That fight was soooo long!”), flip-flopping between a hilariously sitcom-esque performance – all big eyes and hair-shaking, really leaning into her accent – and gravely threatening reminders that she’s here to kill. After last week’s oddly inconsequential confession, in which Clint’s revelations about his past were kind of brushed off by Kate, it is Yelena who forces her to really think about it. How much can be dismissed as “a silly, dangerous thing this person did because he was in a bad place”?
There’s a lot to love in this episode. Kate (Hailee Steinfeld) and her appalling answerphone technique montage. The Tracksuit Mafia jamming to Run-DMC. Jack chewing the scenery like a pantomime villain. And more and more serious dodginess from Elanor (Vera Farmiga), Kate’s mum, starting with passive-aggressive dream-puncturing and graduating to something far more sinister.
(NB. The Tracksuit Mafia have seen The Royal Tenenbaums, so it exists within the MCU. That movie stars, among others, Gwyneth Paltrow and Owen Wilson, aka Pepper Potts and Loki’s Mobius M. Mobius. It’s not a big deal, but it always seems worth pointing these things out.)