The Hawk: Cast, Plot, Ending, Review and Where to Watch
- The Hawk is a 10-episode Netflix comedy created by Harper Steele, Chris Henchy and Will Ferrell. All ten episodes dropped at once on Thursday 16 July 2026, so the full season — including the finale — is already available.
- Ferrell plays Lonnie ‘The Hawk’ Hawkins, the world’s top-ranked golfer back in 2004, now well past his prime and one major short of a career Grand Slam, estranged from his ex-wife Stacy and his son Lance.
- Critics were harsh. As of 19 July 2026 it sits at 29% on Rotten Tomatoes from 34 reviews and 49 on Metacritic from 23 critics — though audience measures point in opposite directions, so we don’t claim a single verdict for viewers.
- Netflix has published no viewing figures for it yet: its most recent weekly Top 10 covers the week of 6 July, before the show premiered. Any ‘Netflix says X hours watched’ number circulating right now is invented.
Quick answer: The Hawk is a 10-episode Netflix comedy starring Will Ferrell as a golfer decades past his best, created by Harper Steele, Chris Henchy and Ferrell. All ten episodes arrived at once on Thursday 16 July 2026, so you can finish it this weekend. Critics were not kind — 29% on Rotten Tomatoes as of 19 July — but it has been near the top of Netflix’s charts anyway.
Everything down to the marked spoiler barrier is spoiler-free.
What is The Hawk about?
Ferrell plays Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, who was the world’s number one golfer back in 2004 and has spent the years since falling a long way from that. He is one major short of a career Grand Slam — the thing that would define his legacy — and he is chasing it well past the age when that is a reasonable plan. He is estranged from his ex-wife Stacy and from his son Lance, who is everything Lonnie no longer is: young, winning, and on the PGA Tour.
That’s the setup. The comedy runs on the gap between how Lonnie sees himself and where he actually is.
A note on how that premise is described elsewhere: you may see the show summarised as being about a rival league competing with the PGA Tour. That doesn’t match the show that aired, and looks like an early development-stage description that escaped into circulation.
Who’s in the cast of The Hawk?
| Actor | Character |
|---|---|
| Will Ferrell | Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins |
| Molly Shannon | Stacy |
| Jimmy Tatro | Lance |
| Fortune Feimster | Sam |
| Luke Wilson | Golden Fisk |
| Chris Parnell | Anton |
| David Hornsby | Radford |
| Keith David | Old Henry |
Professional golfer Rickie Fowler appears as himself.
Two caveats worth making, because other cast lists are looser than they look. Sources disagree on some character names — Sam versus “Samantha”, Anton versus “Anton Floyd” — and we’ve used the form The Hollywood Reporter uses. And no outlet has published a formal series-regular versus recurring breakdown, so the order above is not a billing hierarchy.
Behind the camera: Harper Steele, Chris Henchy and Will Ferrell are credited as creators. Andrew Guest is credited as an executive producer and writer. Gloria Sanchez and T-Street are the production companies confirmed by PGA Tour’s own coverage.
If the Ferrell–Steele pairing rings a bell: Steele is a former Saturday Night Live head writer and Ferrell’s longtime collaborator, and the two of them made the 2024 Netflix documentary Will & Harper together.
How and where to watch The Hawk
- Where: Netflix, exclusively.
- When: all 10 episodes went live on Thursday 16 July 2026.
- How it’s released: everything at once. There’s no weekly wait — the finale has been available since day one.
- Episode length: roughly half an hour each.
We’re not going to publish a country-by-country availability list or a subtitle and dub rundown. Netflix’s own pages don’t render for automated checking, and we’d rather leave those blank than guess at them — check the title in your own region’s Netflix app.
Is The Hawk worth watching?
The critical response has been poor, and it’s worth being specific rather than vague about that.
As of 19 July 2026, it sits at 29% on Rotten Tomatoes from 34 reviews, and 49 on Metacritic from 23 critics. Those numbers are moving — Wikipedia was still carrying 30% and 52 when we checked, three days into release — so treat any score you see, including ours, as a snapshot with a date on it.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Daniel Fienberg called it flat and disposable, which is roughly the shape of the negative consensus: a very familiar Ferrell character in a setting that doesn’t push him anywhere new. Not every notice was negative — the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Lloyd was substantially warmer, scoring it 80 on Metacritic’s scale.
Several outlets have framed this as Ferrell’s worst-reviewed project. That’s their characterisation, repeated widely; none of them appears to have actually checked it against his filmography, so we’ll pass it on as a claim rather than a fact.
On audiences, we genuinely can’t give you one number. Rotten Tomatoes’ Popcornmeter sits at 64% while Metacritic’s user score is 2.1 out of 10. Those don’t describe the same reaction, and picking whichever one suits a narrative would be dishonest.
What we can say is that it has charted well: ScreenRant reported it at number one in several countries including the US, Canada and Australia in its first days. Those are chart positions observed by a third party, not Netflix data, and not viewing hours.
On that — Netflix has published no viewing figures for this show yet. Its most recent weekly Top 10 covers the week of 6 July, which is before the premiere; the first list that can include The Hawk is due around 21 July. If you see a specific “Netflix says it was watched for X million hours” figure today, it isn’t real.
There’s also been no renewal or cancellation announcement as of 19 July 2026.
⚠️ SPOILERS BELOW — SEASON 1 ENDING
Everything above this line is spoiler-free. Stop here if you haven’t finished all 10 episodes.
The Hawk ending explained
The account below follows two independently written recaps — TVInsider and TheCinemaholic — which agree on the finale’s main beats.
Lonnie’s pursuit takes him to a U.S. Open playoff, against both Golden Fisk and his own son Lance. He doesn’t win it. Lance does, after Lonnie misses the decisive putt on the 18th.
The turn is what surrounds that putt. Through the season Lonnie has been under pressure from a $4 million loan-shark debt, complete with menacing figures visible in the gallery. In the finale, Lance confesses that he fabricated the whole thing — the debt never existed, and the intimidating faces in the crowd were staged. He engineered it to rattle his father’s nerve at the decisive moment.
What makes the ending land is Lonnie’s response. He doesn’t rage. His reaction reads as pride — his son out-manoeuvred him, which is its own kind of inheritance.
And then the question the show deliberately refuses to answer: did Lonnie miss on purpose? Both recaps note the finale leaves this genuinely ambiguous rather than resolving it. A version of Lonnie who threw the putt to hand his son the win is a different character from one who simply cracked — and the show declines to tell you which you watched.
Two other threads close out. Stacy calls off her engagement to Radford. And despite losing, Lonnie is offered the Ryder Cup captaincy — a form of recognition that arrives, characteristically, in place of the trophy he actually wanted.
One detail we’re flagging rather than stating: TVInsider describes a confrontation involving Anton that TheCinemaholic’s recap doesn’t mention at all. With only one of the two carrying it, we’re leaving it as one outlet’s account rather than part of the record.
As for whether any of this continues — there’s no second season announced either way.