Echo to launch new Marvel Studios label with less emphasis on “larger MCU continuity”
It seems like Marvel Studios quietly just announced that it's not super committed to this whole "cinematic universe" thing
Aux News Echo
Marvel Studios just released the surprisingly cool trailer for Hawkeye spin-off Echo (surprising because Marvel’s in an arguable slump, not because Echo stars Alaqua Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio aren’t awesome), but there’s also a potentially big reveal about Marvel’s future in a little news post on the Marvel website: Apparently, Echo will be the first entry in a new series called “Marvel Spotlight,” with Marvel’s Head Of Streaming, Brad Winderbaum, saying that the label will be applied to “more grounded, character-driven stories” that focus on “street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity.”
Winderbaum compares it to the way that the Spotlight label is used in Marvel’s comics, where you “didn’t need to read Avengers or Fantastic Four to enjoy a Ghost Rider Spotlight comic.” He says viewers won’t need to have seen other Marvel shows in order to understand Echo, which seems… like it might be a stunning reversal of the whole MCU gimmick.
Part of the reason that’s surprising is that, as you may have noticed up above when we called Echo a spin-off of Hawkeye, is that this new show is deeply indebted to a thing that already came out, you know, like every other MCU thing. You apparently don’t need to have seen Hawkeye to understand Echo, even though Hawkeye is where Cox’s character was introduced, and it had a big reveal about her relationship with D’Onofrio’s Kingpin, and a lot of that show was about dealing with her grief over her father’s murder (at the hands of Hawkeye himself, in his Ronin persona). But… none of that is relevant? Even though it seems relevant in the trailer? Seriously, what on Earth is Marvel talking about here?
It seems like both a nod to the fact that not every Marvel Studios thing “matters” in the grand scope of the series, which, duh, but also an attempt to plead with viewers that they should still care about what happens here anyway. It’s not completely absurd, and it’s something Disney+ has tried in the past with its one-off “Special Presentations” like Werewolf By Night, but having Marvel itself come out and say “hey, heads-up, there aren’t any Avengers in this thing” seems so backwards compared to everything it’s been doing up until now—which may be the first, or second, clear acknowledgement we’ve gotten that things aren’t totally working the way they should be at Kevin Feige’s house.
Echo hits Hulu and Disney+ on January 10.
83 Comments
Sounds like a good decision, although couldn’t you argue they’ve already had shows where that applied? I mean Moon Knight was pretty separate from anything continuity related.Having written that, I realize they’re taking a pretty big swing by having the first show of this new initiative be Echo as the more I think about this show, the more confused I am what they see being its main appeal. Don’t get me wrong, the trailer was awesome, but also still established it as a Marvel show. Featuring a character who is not that prominent in the comics, although I don’t really know how to position the Enter the Phoenix thing here, but even beyond that the show deviates a lot from the character and the showrunner has already verbally mocked the comic book version’s powers. She was introduced in another Marvel show, but apparently now will not be that connected to it after all despite featuring the same actors.It’s… I don’t wish this show to underperform, but I sure as hell wouldn’t be surprised if it did.
To me, it seems like nothing’s really changed. It’s just that they used to think that the “Everything is connected!!!” marketing gimmick would bring people in. But now, after years of a growing backlog of variably entertaining shows and movies, that same slogan keeps people away instead of drawing them in.This is Marvel saying “We were just kidding! You actually don’t need to watch all the things you are never going to watch to understand this! Please don’t quit the MCU because it feels like homework! Please!”
Yeah, there’s a real appeal to the simple promise of the superhero movies of an earlier generation. The pitch to the audience for Spider-Man 2 was basically, “Hey, you like Spider-Man and you like Doctor Octopus. Give us money and see them fight.”This doesn’t have to be rocket science. The three seasons of Daredevil on Netflix were basically: (1) Daredevil fights Kingpin; (2) Daredevil fights the Punisher; (3) Daredevil fights Bullseye. The character is pitted against three of his most reliable adversaries. Everything else that’s going on is in service of that.
“(1) Daredevil fights Kingpin; (2) Daredevil fights the Punisher; (3) Daredevil fights Bullseye”Exactly. Season 2 was 4 episodes long and we DID NOT do the worlds worst courtroom arc and a bad Elektra arc. Episode 4 wonderfully adapated one of the better Punisher stories and then we had a longggg break until Season 3.Defenders? Never heard of it (but would argue that some sizeable changes to the last episode and a half could have salvaged that show).
I give them about a year before they either can the experiment, or just devolve back into their usual……bullshit and start throwing in characters from other movies with no explanation just so the dweebs can feel smug.Nerds don’t like new things. They like old things, the same things they’ve seen before. The MCU feels like homework not as a bug, but as feature – nerds like the homework. They like learning about a system because they know if there’s system they’ve learned then others have learned it and they can finally feel like they’re part of an in-group.We know what’s gonna happen. The Real Fans™ who feel that they’re not merely consumers of Marvel content, but investors because they’ve spent so much on it, will feel entitled to anything Marvel produces and start getting toxic, and Feige will have to quell the screeching, cargo-shorts rage coming from the MCU bread-and-butter (or Tendies-and-Mountain Dew). Casual MCU viewers, who mostly only watch because they turned up at the cinema and it was wall-to-wall capeshit, will take one look at the “It’s Marvel, but different” and go “Oh, so it’s still Marvel”. I doubt this is gonna convert anyone.
i also have my doubts that this marketing will even get to the eyeballs they want.like that ‘marvel spotlight’ logo isn’t going to mean anything if you’re a non-fan, and if you’re a non-fan you’re not going to be compelled to learn what it means.now obviously there’s a chance you’ll see the trailer and get excited, but if you’re a non-mcu fan what are the chances you’ll be served an ad for the new mcu show? what are the chances you won’t just tune out and hit skip as soon as you see the marvel logo?and i mean, there’s also the point that this is…a sequel to hawkeye! and will also obviously be setting up daredevil! it’s not even the thing that they’re saying it is.
New Show to Be Just Like that Other Daredevil Show You All Liked, says Marvel guy
What if instead of not being able to see, someone was deaf instead?!
I think that they should have a super-hero that no longer has a sense of smell, but has a sense of taste 100x better than anyone else. So he or she can save the day by licking everything and everyone!
He can taste crime!
Get ready to savor the flavor of justice when Marvel presents . . . The Palate!
“Captain Coriander! I’d recognise that flavour anywhere!”
‘”I think that they should have a super-hero that no longer has a sense of smell, but has a sense of taste 100x better than anyone else.So he or she can save the day by licking everything and everyone!”’I realize this was said in snark but there was a superhero procedural show called The Sentinel. All of his senses including his sense of taste were naturally enhanced.
Hockey player Brad Marchand just discovered his next career move.
What if it was some kind of historical-fiction/time travel thing with Hellen Keller?
I like that. Helen could go to the 70s and show off her kick ass pinball skills.
It’s been done…
I always loved the funny “What If?” Issue.
I want a superhero who can’t taste, and they need to keep coming up with scenarios where that is a huge challenge to overcome.“We have five seconds to cut the wire and stop the bomb, but all we know is that the villain was baking a pie while handling the right wire!”
“Do you know what it’s like being me? Never being able to taste the people I love again?”“… what?”
Maybe he’s a super hero who has no taste and defeats villains by having bad opinions about mediocre things. “You may be powerful Doctor Doom but you are not as powerful as my love of Nickleback”
That’s a good idea for the scene, but it won’t work because we don’t have any appropriate music to accompany it. If only Nickelback had some kind of song about a “Hero,” or something. It’s a real shame.
I find it fascinating that one role required a real life disabled person yet I’m pretty sure Charlie Cox is not blind.
Sounds to me like they introduced a major continuity error that nobody noticed until post-production and it’s not something they can explain by Multiverse/Kang handwaving. “I meant to do that” is as good an explanation as any.
It seems like both a nod to the fact that not every Marvel Studios thing “matters” in the grand scope of the series, which, duh, but also an attempt to plead with viewers that they should still care about what happens here anyway.Actually, it’s the exact opposite. It’s more like this is Marvel Studios giving mainstream MCU fans permission to ignore this show, just as most of them ignored the Netflix shows. Barsanti really is amazing talented in being so consistently wrong about nearly everything.
It’s his super power
Did mainstream MCU fans ignore the Netflix shows? I feel like a lot of them watched Daredevil and some of them watched Jessica Jones and…some of them watched some Luke Cage and Iron Fist and that’s about it.But they definitely watched Daredevil.
Yeah, the cheers in my theater when Matt Murdock showed up in Spider-Man: No Way Home definitely indicate that MCU fans were not ignoring the Netflix Marvel shows. I’m not sure what the snarky OP is talking about.
I think a lot of us gave them a shot but the quality dropped quick.
The pre-disney+ TV era of the MCU had it’s share of highs and lows, just like the mainline movies did
I imagine Daredevil did fine for a violent streaming show, though I also imagine its fans are the extremely online, very vocal type. I don’t know how many regular MCU theatergoers watched it, however, which is what I was getting at.
Even if a lot of regular MCU theatergoers did watch Daredevil, which by all accounts is the best received of all the Netflix Marvel shows, it doesn’t automatically follow that they watched all three seasons or any of the other shows. I think your point stands fine.
Lol Netflix Daredevil is still the best thing Marvel tv has produced
He’s just “echoing” the message Disney is putting out. It’s hard to be right when you don’t have your own ideas.
People didn’t choose not to watch because of continuity. It’s because the shows weren’t the kind of product they wanted. In fact, people joined the Marvel movies in greater numbers later DESPITE continuity.
Now Disney thinks what people really care about is the word Marvel, Not the characters. Getting rid of continuity will make it easier for the writers to make any random show instead of a Marvel Superhero style show.
Yes, I’m sure giving people nothing that is like the old MCU except a label is what will work.
yeah 100%. the average person who either fell off mcu or was never interested in the first place isn’t going to be dialed in enough to even understand this messaging, let alone care about it.if the problem for some people was that it was confusing, making it more complicated by introducing a sub-brand will not solve that.
Oh great. So a show that no one really cares about(good trailer aside) will now get a special label that says MCU optional. Disney is really killing this one in the womb huh?
January release and all episodes dropped at once. I have my suspicions …
The all episodes on one day thing is super fascinating. They definitely don’t want this show lingering in the fan bases mind. The reasoning is unclear tho. Could be due to the violence.
It could also be: there is a better chance of people watching the entire thing if it drops at once. People are prone to binge watching nowadays. If they watch an episode of a fairly unknown character like echo on a Thursday and are like “that was ok”, they are less likely to tune in the next week. By dropping all five episodes at once, it’s arguable there is a better chance of people sticking out the entire thing.My thought: there is a time and place for weekly or all at once. When you’re doing a NEW character who has not been established in the movies, in an Avengers flick, could it be you have a better chance of folks watching the whole thing? And if the whole story is consumed there is a better chance of people becoming a fan.Imo ms. Marvel should have been a one day drop. It was a good series (with issues). But unlike every Disney+ show up to that point, it was NOT based on a character who had been in multiple movies. Ppl tuned into wandavision, falcon, Loki, etc in large part because they were ALREADY invested in those characters. Or if nothing else drop 2-3 episodes at once. The boys and peacemaker are good examples. By the time you’ve sunk that much time in, you might be more likely to finish it. But also? By that point in a series, a lot of the setup is done and you’re into the actual plot and shit. Shehulk should have dropped all at once or AT LEAST dropped two episodes to start esp when the call was made to open with the big flashback episode. Because the rest of the series was very different from the flashback. Made people wait a week to see the actual show and if folks shrugged at episode 1, they were gone. But dropping 2-3 at once, guarantee more people than not watch on even if they were meh on episode 1. I don’t think the violence level has anything to do with it. I do think I’m being too generous and you’re right, they’re just dumping this to get it out. but I definitely think enforcing the weekly model is NOT always the way to go.It was good when they dropped two episodes of Hawkeye at once. They should do that more.
I think what Marvel’s recognizing is that there are Batman fans and then there are Superman fans. If you’re a Batman fan, you like that there are human characters, interacting in a city, with stakes that are readily understandable. Nothing in comics is “realistic” really. But a standard Batman story involves Batman being in Gotham City, fighting a human criminal. Most Batman stories don’t involve Batman having to enter a mystical realm to obtain a mystical object to fight a mystical evil threatening multiple universes.Right now, the MCU does not provide a lot of content for Marvel’s equivalent of Batman fans. A lot of the MCU depends a lot on a bunch of magic and space nonsense that can make it hard for stories to register on a human level. When you watch a trailer for The Marvels, you see one hero who shoots blue-red beams and a hero who shoots white beams fighting a villain who shoots purple beams.It looks like the Marvel Spotlight label is meant to indicate that certain TV shows will be a departure from that.
I feel like that’s why I don’t love the MCU spiderman moviesThe first one is fairly classic Spidey tho too much iron man. But that’s really the only “street level new York Spidey” shit we got. Far from home has to go away from ny and again too much stark shit, and no way home, while I liked it, obviously is multi verse cameo shenanigans.
People get caught up on how cute Tom Holland is… Far From Home is my least favorite MCU film and NWH isn’t good until the backhalf.
I like the MCU Spider-Man movies generally, but they’re definitely a departure from what fans of the hero are used to — Spider-Man fights a villain in New York, and that villain threatens someone Peter cares about.
I’m really not reading it that way myself. I think this is just an attempt to widen the pool. Disney is counting on existing fans of the MCU to watch this because it’s more Marvel content (which you could call risky considering the downturn in quality recently, but people still tend to like Kingpin), but they can get new fans in by saying, “Hey, you’ll be able to get into this even if you haven’t been following the rest of the films and shows.” The fact that it looks grittier and more violent also suggests to me that they’re looking to hook people who are fans of things like ‘The Walking Dead’ or ‘Game of Thrones’.
Same
Dumped in one day + special new branding = we think this show is gonna suck.
more grounded, character-driven stories” that focus on “street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity.”Netflix: “Really? What a novel idea!”
Fitting image.
The Kingpin and Daredevil in this continuity are the same Kingpin and Daredevil that just got trashed by Marvel executives for being terrible. So don’t expect a lot of consistency there.The rumors around this show is that it’s pretty bad, and Marvel was thinking of shelving it entirely, but it was in the can when people went on strike and they decided to run it anyway for more content.
Terrible? According to who?
Some of the more reliable leakers, but specifically Chris Brewster, stuntman for Daredevil and Captain America, who was not hired back for She-Hulk or Born Again (Matt’s stunts are largely CGI now) but did some work as a non-Daredevil character on Echo.
Even though it seems relevant in the trailer? Seriously, what on Earth is Marvel talking about here?You don’t need to have seen Hawkeye to understand what’s going on in Echo. That’s it. That’s what they are talking about. It’s pretty simple.Now, I understand that Marvel has been hyping their “everything’s connected” bit for a while, but for this show, they are trying to hype their “it’s a really good show” bit and say “It’s not as connected to other stuff, but it’s a really good, grounded, gritty show, so you can watch it, even if you’ve never watched other Marvel stuff.”That’s about it. It’s not hard to understand.
Exactly. I think they know there’s an audience for shows that feature criminals and vigilantes beating the crap out of each other but who don’t care for multiverses, cosmic hijinks or aliens. ‘Echo’ is there to hook those people.
There are dozens of us. Dozens!
Because for a lot of these people if things aren’t spelled out directly they get confused and angry, so if they miss one small thing it throws them all off.
Those people can go suck a lemon, I don’t care.
Yep and Barsanti should suck all the lemons.
I take it less as a sign acknowledging their current problems and more as an acknowledgement that not everything they make can realistically fit with whatever large narrative they have set up for their larger universe.
This is a good idea. DC is doing it too.You need to be able to release things with stand-alone plots that still build your overall brand and fan enthusiasm without tying yourself to the overall continuity. I’m all for this. If something ends up being a mega hit, you just tie it in anyway. Because fuck it.
Or you don’t tie it in. Marvel made Iron Man, then made Iron Man 2, and then a bit later, made Iron Man 3. None of these movies were wholly independent of the rest of the MCU, of course, but they told a largely isolated story about Tony Stark.
They can also do what was done for years before the MCU existed and make movies and tv shows that aren’t in the same universe.
2 of the Iron Man movies came out when essentially nothing else existed in the MCU for them to be tied with. And by IM3, it was all about his PTSD from another movie, the Avengers battle of New York.
They should try and do a “Marvel Team-Up” or “Marvel Two-In-One” style show, featuring different heroes and villains. They’re already doing something like that with What If…?
IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME!
Really curious. All episodes at once. “Ground-level” focus. TV-MA.Disney is just making its own Netflix Marvel shows now.
And?
wtf are YOU talking about? Most of the movies and shows are fine enough to watch without having watched previous entries. Watching everything enriches the experience, but is never necessary
As soon as I saw that all episodes were streaming the same day I knew something was up. That trailer was too graphic to be standard MCU.
This article feels like a lot of words to say “This is gonna be kinda like Moon Knight, where it was clearly in the setting but still kinda standalone” without actually acknowledging the Moon Knight series.Like, I’m not sure if you’re being deliberately dense, or just writing for the people who think “going into YouTube comments on Marvel movie clips just to complain about Love and Thunder” is a worthwhile hobby.
it is notable that they’ve developed a sub-brand and named it marvel spotlight.
You’re absolutely right, but the actual analysis in this article is silly. Almost to the point of being deliberately obtuse.
My response wasn’t directed at the notability, my response was directed at the sheer amount of faux-confusion Barsanti’s written into the article, as if this is some bizarre new concept being presented.
I fucking hate the childish, bad-blog writing here. Yet here I am, again, commenting on it.
One of us! One of us! Gooble gobble! Gooble gobble!
wahhh he doesnt like my superheroes!!👶👶👶
the show is also releasing all episodes at once, it’s dropping in january, it’s also on Hulu, clearly they made some extremely last minute changes to the marketing… it’s all pointing in one very amusing direction!
This just sounds like what they did with Netflix years ago. IMO was a mistake to stop that arrangement. All of these studios made the same mistake of overvaluing IP and content and gave up licensing revenue to make shows that cost eight to nine figures that aren’t going to push the needle much.
You’re being deliberately obtuse to allow you to shit on Marvel as per. The point of this is obviously to “spotlight” characters that won’t be in the larger MCU. It clealy doesn’t mean they’re abandoning the larger connection.
It’s working fine.There is room for both Big Crossover Continuity and also smaller street level stories set in the same world. That’s how comics have been doing it since forever.The existence of Echo doesn’t mean that the next Avengers movie is gonna be a flop. And if the next Avengers rakes in 15 bazillion dollars, that doesnt mean that Echo was pointless.The other useful thing about smaller stories set in the Marvel world like this is that it allows creators to experiment and play with different ideas. And sometimes when one of those ideas ends up being a breakout hit, then it can be a linchpin or cornerstone of the next big crossover event.
Jessica Jones had some good episodes, as did Iron Fist, etc. I think they should have compressed some of these shows to shorter seasons and they might have worked out better
They can relaunch and rebrand and re-whatever they want, and they probably should. But not with Echo, a character 99% of potential watchers have never heard, and a show that nearly everyone wants to watch only because of returning characters.
It wasn’t until skimming this that I finally remembered we’ve actually seen Echo before in the Hawkeye show. All I honestly remember was they had a semi-decent fight scene at the ice rink and that D’Onfrio showed up wearing a really sillly shirt.Anyway, looking forward to not seeing this.
Marvel seems to have hit an inflection point, though not necessarily with Echo. The corporate appeal of the connected universe is that people who might not normally watch Ant-Man will because it is part of the MCU. And people will give less-than-good movies like Eternals a shot for the same reason. On the other hand with isolated stories, if they have no connection to the larger universe and they suck, it is going to be pretty easy to skip it. Which is good for me as a consumer, but not great for the execs.Moon Knight was largely separate from the MCU and I was ultimately disappointed by it (I wanted it to be more action heavy). So was Werewolf By Night, which I did enjoy. Echo appears to be separate too and honestly, I have no familiarity with the character from when I ready comics in the mid-90s and I did not see what was so appealing about her from Hawkeye, so I will be skipping it. I imagine that is the exact response that the Marvel execs do not want.
Marvel making the same mistake 3 times now, with Netflix, Agents of SHIELD, now Disney+. How many times are they gonna hit themselves on the head? The movies are the universe.There is a reason that in the comics, everything not originally published as monthly issues is almost always a different continuity. Audio plays, telltale games, books, long form OGNs (usually), video games, non-canon to the 616.