My problem with Hawks losing his wings as a symbol of āliberationā
Recently, on tiktok (like always lol) I entered a debate with a bunch of Hawks fans that were hellbent into claiming that him losing his wings was symbolism to him becoming āfreeā, and while the OG creator blocked me, I canāt stop thinking about it. It genuinely left this weird taste in my mouth and I NEEDED to rant about it.
One thing thatās always bothered me about the āHawks loses his wings and stays with the Commission, but heās finally free because they canāt use himā is how easily it shifts the blame. On the surface, it reads as symbolic: wings as chains and antithesis of freedom. But narratively, it ends up placing the weight of his exploitation onto his quirk rather than the institution that deliberately stripped him of agency in the first place. Because once you frame his loss of autonomy as something that happens because of his wings, you ARE implying that the wings were the problem. And thatāsā¦ just not it.
Hawks didnāt lose his autonomy because he could fly. He lost it because the Hero Commission made an active, conscious decision to weaponize a vulnerable child.
If Hawks hadnāt grown up in poverty. If he hadnāt been neglected. If he hadnāt lacked any form of protection or adult supervision. Would he have been utilized the way he was?
It genuinely doesnāt mattered what quirk he had (as long as he caught the eyes of the Commission). Wings, fire, speed, something flashy, something discrete, etc. none of that changes the outcome. Thatās because he was molded into a tool because he was available, disposable, and easy to isolate. His wings had nothing to do with that.
Thatās the part that gets erased when the narrative leans too hard into the wings-as-chains metaphor. The Commission didnāt exploit Hawks because he was useful. Plenty of children have quirks that make them useful, some even more than Hawksā. They exploited him because he was usable. Because he had no safety net. Because no one would question where he went or what was done to him. Because he could be trained and conditioned without resistance.
His wings made him useful. But his vulnerability made him usable.
So when the story frames the loss of his wings as the moment of āliberationā or āfreedom,ā it completely destroys the social commentary itās supposed to represent (even if it had been an accidental commentary, which I believe it was, with how inconsistent Hori is). It suggests that removing his wings solves the problem, when the problem was the system that decided some children are resources instead of people.
Keeping him with the Commission after that, especially without directly interrogating that power dynamic, risks turning institutional abuse into some kind of tragic inevitability. Like this was always the cost of being Hawks. Like it couldnāt have gone any other way.
Hawksās story is only meaningful as social commentary if we keep the responsibility where it belongs: on the institution that saw a child in crisis and decided to sharpen him into a weapon.
Taking away his wings doesnāt undo that. And pretending it does lets the Commission off the hook far too easily.
