When Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins steps up to make his final stroke in the finale of The Hawk, he’s bringing along a lot of baggage.
Lonnie (played by series creator Will Ferrell) has been through the wringer over the course of this PGA Tour. He’s lost his loyal caddy (Keith David), found a new caddy (Fortune Feimster), lost that caddy, started a feud with his son (Jimmy Tatro), played with his hand caught in a pickle jar, reignited a romance with his estranged wife (Molly Shannon), and torn up the golf course on his way to the Grand Slam he failed to achieve 20 years prior.
Everything comes down to this putt. Oh, and if he defeats his son Lance, the young man’s gambling debtors might just kill him. No pressure.
Well, maybe a little pressure. Lonnie misses the final putt, just like he did last time. He tells his son he missed on purpose, to save his life. Lance is triumphant — and he reveals that there were never any bloodthirsty debtors. It was all a mind game, a sneaky tactic he picked up from his father.
Thanks to his caddy Sam’s javelin-catching skills, Lonnie survives a haphazard assassination attempt from his nemesis Anton (Chris Parnell). And with that, the US Open is over.
All’s well that ends well: Lonnie gets asked to be a captain in the Ryder Cup next year, gets medical help for his gangrenous pickle-jar hand, and sets off on a cross-country road trip with Lance. He’s proud of his son, but the final moments of the series raise a crucial question. As Sam puts it, “You did the right thing, missing that putt. You did miss it on purpose, right?”
Lonnie doesn’t answer. Instead, he offers her a pickle.
But Ferrell has his own answer. “I think he had every intention to [miss it], and then he really was trying to make it,” he tells Tudum. “That’s why I wanted to add that line, ‘I missed on purpose,’ to cover his shame of actually missing it for a second time.”
That’s breaking news for Ferrell’s co-star Shannon. “You can interpret it,” she adds, “because I didn’t know that!”
Ferrell agrees. “That’s what’s fun about it,” he says. “We also love it if there’s a debate for the viewer.”
The Hawk is now streaming on Netflix.
