Without rehashing the entire laundry list of stumbles, it’s fair to say that 2023 was not a good year for Marvel Studios. One of the most reliable cash cows in the Disney family yielded some notable disappointments, awkward casting decisions and a general sense that the expansive universe of feature films and Disney+ shows had grown unwieldy. In announcing the “Marvel Spotlight” banner, with Echo as its first entry, Disney was finally seeming to grasp something that anyone who has actually read comic books already understood: Not every issue needs to be part of a massive, ongoing serial drama where you’re lost if you haven’t been following along for years. You could tell a story that was just, you know, a story.
Echo, however, feels like a weird way to start building that brand, since it was already part of the massive, ongoing serial drama that is the MCU. We’d already seen Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) introduced in the 2021 Hawkeye limited series as the Deaf, ass-kicking, vengeance-driven head of a criminal organization, her story tied into that of Wilson Fisk/Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) from the Netflix Daredevil series. There’s no way to start from scratch and pretend that introduction didn’t happen, so in the name of allowing Echo to be a “stand-alone” series, show-runner Marion Dayre has to spend around half of the first episode on an origin story that includes the events from Hawkeye—most significantly, Maya shooting her surrogate father-figure Kingpin in the face upon realizing that he was responsible for ordering the execution of her actual father—before launching into the new narrative. For the newcomers, that’s all well and good; for those of us who have been following along, it ends up feeling clunky and overly expository.
Things get at least a little more compelling once the focus shifts to the more-or-less present, as Maya deals with the aftermath of shooting Kingpin. On the run from his organization and wounded, she returns to her Oklahoma hometown and the Choctaw community into which she was born. In each of the three episodes available for preview, there’s also a sequence flashing back to other strong Choctaw women in Maya’s matrilineal history, suggesting an inherited supernatural power in no way related to the powers of the comic-book Echo character. That’s not a bad starting point, as it creates a tension between Maya’s estrangement from her family members—including her grandmother (Tantoo Cardinal) and cousin/childhood best friend (Devery Jacobs)—and the way her visions and abilities draw her back to the importance of her heritage.
But there’s a real problem with Echo, at least through those first three episodes: Maya herself just doesn’t work as a well-thought-out character. This isn’t an issue inherent to Cox acting entirely through sign language and her physical performance, but to a one-note focus on her angry determination, no matter what other character she’s interacting with. The series also repeatedly makes bad decisions about clarifying what abilities and disadvantages will affect any given scrape she finds herself in. At one point, she loses the custom-built prosthesis for her amputated leg, and the short-term substitute she receives suggests her fighting ability might be compromised—except that it isn’t, not even remotely. It also seems to come out of nowhere when Maya finds herself held captive, and MacGyvers her way out of the situation with a gun created from a roller skate and loose bolts, indicating a degree of engineering prowess never previously addressed. Genre material like this depends almost entirely on understanding the stakes, and in Echo, where Maya Lopez is concerned, that’s not true either emotionally or physically.
Again, this is an incomplete picture, and Echo might right the ship in its final two episodes. The whole point of the Marvel Spotlight concept, however, is shifting the MCU model from a sense of obligatory viewing, to one where individual stories are individually compelling. Thus far, there’s just not enough in Echo to work on that level, suggesting Marvel still has some work to do to put the shine back on a once-unstoppable juggernaut.
Let’s Hear From You
As ‘Echo’ attempts to navigate away from Marvel’s MCU, it presents a unique blend of legacy and innovation. But does it successfully stand alone, or does it falter under the weight of its own ambition? This is more than just Maya Lopez’s story; it’s a test of Marvel’s ability to captivate with singular narratives. We’re eager to hear your thoughts. Did ‘Echo’ resonate with you, or does it miss the mark? Share your views on Marvel’s new direction and where you’d like to see the studio head in the future.
