The MCU Disney+ shows have been a bit hit and miss since they started rolling out on the streaming service. For every “Loki” there’s a “Secret Invasion,” the last episode of which became one of the worst-reviewed Marvel things ever. But “Hawkeye” was, in my opinion, the most enjoyable of them all. Perhaps that’s because it was made for casual Marvel fans, which, ever since this franchise bombarded us with too much media for a single human to consume, is pretty much how I’d classify myself. But I think “Hawkeye” also worked well because it got its tone right from the outset, balancing humor and drama in a way that worked.

It seems, as with the MCU movies of old, much of that humor came from improv. In a 2021 interview with Buzzfeed, directors Amber Templemore-Finlayson and Katie Ellwood, collectively known as Bert and Bertie, spoke about their time filming a block of episodes for “Hawkeye,” during which they were treated to multiple moments of improvisation on the part of the actors. One such moment came from Florence Pugh, who plays Yelena Belova, the sister of Scarlet Johansson’s Black Widow.

As Ellwood explained to the outlet, during preparation for a scene in episode five, in which Belova breaks into Kate Bishop’s (Hailee Steinfeld)’s apartment, a new joke was added to the script after Pugh realized the lack of cutlery props in the apartment set. The scene in question sees Belova walk over to a drawer and take out a fork, before delivering the line, “You have one fork?” to which Bishop replies, “I’m one person.” This was a hasty addition to the script.