Echo‘s portrayal of disability marks a big step forward for Marvel
Here's hoping the superhero miniseries' handling of ASL inspires other shows to follow suit
TV Features Echo
The groundbreaking Marvel Spotlight miniseries Echo, which debuted earlier this month on Disney+ and Hulu, centers around Maya Lopez, a Deaf Choctaw superhero. However, as many fans know, this series isn’t the first time Marvel has introduced a Deaf or disabled character. There’s Daredevil, who is Blind (a character Echo faces in this show—we’ll get to that); Makkari of the Eternals, who is Deaf; and Hawkeye, the star of the series in which Echo first debuted, who is hard of hearing. Stretch your brain just a little, and you see that even some of the MCU’s straight-up superhero’s superpowers can be disabling. Hulk, for one, comes to mind. Sure he could get super big and strong (and green) on a dime, but at the expense of some cognitive function accompanied by serious impulse control issues. He had to work hard to learn how to accommodate himself so that he wouldn’t be “Hulking out” and wrecking shit all over Avengers HQ and the world.
And as we would hope with a brand-new show, Marvel’s Echo does some pretty cool things that Marvel hadn’t done before. It takes all the lessons learned from past efforts at portraying disability—as well as its Deaf/Hard of Hearing consultant Douglas Ridloff, husband to Lauren Ridloff, who played Makkari—and breaks new ground in a variety of ways while staying true to the story. Here are a few of them.
Echo portrays being Deaf as both disabling and a sort of superpower
Maya is never jumpy around loud noises, as others often are. She can be in the middle of a shrieking, violent dust-up, but aware of only the thud of her own blood rushing through her veins. She can send a motorcycle soaring through a store window, without recoiling from the crash at all, with a sort of turn-and-walk-from-the-explosion kind of energy. Unfortunately, this also means people can sneak up on her. She has to rely on visual cues (for instance, a shadow crossing past her front window) to indicate that someone might be at her house trying to get her. At the powwow in the final episode, we dip into her perspective to see her struggling to discern the beat and fall in step with the music. We see her clear discomfort as she attempts to mimic the moves of the dancers around her to blend in. In flashback, we also see her as a child attempting to order from an NYC hot-dog truck in ASL (American Sign Language), only to be bullied by a grown adult—told “use your words” as he waved his hands around mockingly. Echo’s is not a simplified, rosy portrait of disability; it acknowledges the complexity of it.
The series normalizes the use of accommodations the hearing world may not recognize
Did you know that there are devices that can detect motion at the door, triggering lights to flash to alert people who can’t hear a knock or doorbell? Well, you’ll see one used in Echo. The show cuts to the light flashing, just to show what’s going on, but otherwise treats it as a pretty normal thing. You’ll also see some fantastical contact lenses poked into Maya’s eyes that allow Kingpin’s words to be translated into some line-drawn, animated arms that simultaneously sign his words in front of his body as an earbud component feeds him her ASL responses as verbal speech. But those don’t exist yet. Still, imagining technologies that could evolve to make the world more accessible for DHH folks is a worthy endeavor and cool to see represented in television.
Echo shows a heck of a lot of ASL
Maya is very much the main character of this miniseries, and she uses ASL to communicate. Ergo, any conversation she has is either via text messages, which are shown on screen (much more accessible than verbal speech), or manual signs. This means viewers get a ton of exposure to the language, whether they use it themselves and it aids their understanding of the show or they’re curious about it and maybe even want to learn a phrase or two—like “Thank you, Uncle,” or “All I bring is danger.” “Need” is a pretty basic one that we didn’t know, until we saw Maya use it, so thanks, Echo. (Yeah, our ASL is very rudimentary—don’t make fun of us.)
Maya’s disability is crucial to the storytelling, not an afterthought or novelty
Characters’ commitments to communicating with Maya gives us insight into the quality of her connections to others. Those contact lenses mentioned earlier? They show Maya, clearly, that Kingpin doesn’t value her. Her family, on the other hand—her parents, grandparents, cousin, and closest friends—all became fluent in ASL, first for Maya’s mother and then for her. Her cousin and grandfather have even found a practical use for it, in the store they own and operate, to communicate behind customers’ backs.
Her disability also raises the stakes in conflict in ways that are organic to the character. When her hands are tied behind her back, stripping her of her mode of communication, our hearts drop. When she encounters Daredevil in combat, a Blind superhero who can’t see her sign, even if he could understand ASL, we fear for her all the more. Her metal prosthetic leg can get smashed by a train coupler as she’s planting a bomb, but that only gives us a nice opportunity to see her grandfather forge her a new, more meaningful one.
Keeping in mind that Echo is still a show primarily oriented toward a hearing audience, it does an amazing job at representation for something so mainstream. There have been some critics of the show who have not responded well to its inclusion efforts (as usual), but Marvel and the normies will continue to grow their relationship. And it’s frankly exciting to think of what Echo’s example can do for future portrayals of disability in popular entertainment.
69 Comments
The writers admitted they didn’t even bother to think about how a blind superhero and a deaf superhero were supposed to communicate. You are giving them FAR too much credit for anything they may have done right representing disabled people. Kingpin was defeated from generational trauma or some such bullshit, right? These are the people you’re bending over backwards to applaud for a thoroughly mediocre show?I wonder what Disney’s blogger shill budget is?
The first 3 episodes were really good, but they basically ruined the character in the last two. She went from badass villain to redeemed Navajo Goddess or something.It would have been much, much better if she had gone back to New York as Kingpin’s heir apparent. She was a truly awful person, and now all the murdering and thuggery is swept under the rug. She murdered people in a skating rink the day before…but now, she is good?I was appalled they went that direction. She was a pretty good villain in the making.
White Male = VillainMinority Woman = Misunderstood Antihero
Oh good. I was afraid we weren’t going to get a bitter incel’s bad faith critique of this show.
Criticizing media on it’s artistic merits is considered bigotry by morons like IContainMultitudes. Fuck off you rancid twat or I will sick my woke granny ghosts on you.Bitch.
QED.I didn’t say your critique was bigotry. I said that no one should read your critique in good faith because you are a pathetic fucking bigoted loser seeking vengeance on the world because women won’t fuck him. The dude who can barely make a comment without a slur isn’t actually criticizing the program starring the woman of color with a disability because they didn’t handle representation well enough.Maybe accusing people of being corporate shills and using badly mannered profanity will make you feel better about being alone forever!
Incels – whiny babies
There’s an entire show about Hawkeye feeling sad because he went on a mass murdering rampage that one time and this is the hill you’re dying on?Natasha Romanoff was an assassin who tried to murder a little girl.Thor was a bloodthirsty imperialist who subjugated and slaughtered countless people just to prove Asgardian supremacy. (He literally does this in his first five minutes of screentime.)Tony Stark was an arms dealer and probably voted Republican.The only double standard here is yours, mate.
You’re so brave and such a good person. And yes, anyone asserting anything is “dying on a hill”. Why do people like you speak exclusively through dumb cliches?
#1. I’m not your mate.#2. I think you’re responding to SweetJamesJones comment not mine. I never said anything about Echo being redeemable or not. Maybe make sure you’re insulting the right person before typing your ignorant ass opinion you fucking imbecile. #3. Go fuck yourself. MCU is dead.
The Punisher, Male, misunderstood anti-hero. Daredevil, Male, misunderstood anti-hero. Loki, Male, misunderstood anti-hero. Need I go on?
Jesus, we sat through years of people praising “complex” anti-heroes like Tony Soprano and Walter White, but dare to suggest a traumatised orphan who was deliberately trained and manipulated by a crime lord isn’t pure evil and suddenly the pearls are being clutched all over the place.
You’re honestly comparing the writing in Breaking Bad and The Sopranos to fucking Echo? Seriously?If you are trying to make a point, please don’t be retarded.
Nice use of an ableist slur there buddy. However, I at no point compared the writing of any shows. I was talking about a concept (a protagonist who is morally dubious) that is utilised in all these shows, not to mention many other fictional properties.
How is a concept expressed? Through the story. Idiot. I’m sorry if my pointing out the fact that you are mentally retarded hurt your poor feelings. Cancel me.
Walter White was horrible which is why he was popular. He admitted in the end that he did it because he liked it and died because his best friend hated him so much he would not save him. Tony Soprano was assassinated.Secondly, she had agency and made decisions. Before killing the first guy, she was hesitant. They went out of the way to hear his neck crack and see her be happy about it. Kingpin even called her out when she tried that excuse. She knew what she was a part of and was prepped to take over. She was simply terrible on her own, and she should have either remained that way, died, or did a whole lot more for redemption.
The Punisher is a villain. Daredevil is not an antihero.Loki got turned into a chick didn’t he?You’re a dummy.
They’re not allowed to make minorities real villains anymore.
Completely agreed. It’s starts strong, but falls apart as it goes. If she’s going to be redeemed and become good, then actually have her do that. But Echo never sees the error of her ways, shows guilt for her actions, or undergoes personal change. It was more about everyone forgiving her, and the story affirming her innate greatness. If anyone is paying attention, Maya had no character arc. She just leveled up.
Women are not human. They are icons of empowered oppression.
Women are not human. They are icons of empowered oppression.
Please don’t breed.
Better tell your mom to shut her whore legs then, bitch.
She went from badass villain to redeemed Navajo Choctaw Goddess or something.
These are the people you’re bending over backwards to applaud for a thoroughly mediocre show?
To be completely clear, the applaud is the entire point. This show (which was greenlit before the character even debuted) exists precisely to get media outlets to praise it. Easy journalists fall for it easily.
What are all of these bloggers going to champion when we’ve all moved on from pretending diversity > story?
When she encounters Daredevil in combat, a Blind superhero who can’t see her sign, even if he could understand ASL, we fear for her all the more.I can’t say I feared for her. At this point, she is a killer for hire, I was rooting for Daredevil.
I remember back when Inhumans was on, Anson Mount talked about the effort he put into developing a sign language for Black Bolt that would be internally consistent but also make sense for a character who had never been exposed to ASL. Of course, one of the many craptastical elements of that trainwreck was the cinematography, & Bolt’s hands were almost always out of frame when he was signing.Fast forward 4 years: Eternals opens, & all of the ASL was easily viewable onscreen. Not just when Makkari used it, but when other characters talked to her too. A couple weeks later, though, Hawkeye premieres, & Maya Lopez is introduced. Good show overall, but again the issue with keeping the ASL in-frame returns.And now Maya’s own show, Echo: For 4 out of 5 episodes, we have all the ASL really well-framed! …but then in the finale, there are closed-captions over a tight closeup of a bird. No other indication that a character was signing in that moment. What were they thinking there?
I was curious what the reshoots were for this show before it started, and the moment I got five minutes in I thought, “Oh… okay, it’ll be really obvious what Marvel demanded the show redo.”The magical power upgrade, the flashbacks, the out-of-frame subtitles over the woodpecker that really annoyed me, basically anything involving her mother. I guarantee all of that was added to make Echo more of a superhero and to give Echo a unique powerset. Some of these beats are nonsensical until five seconds before the story needs them to happen.So there’s a 9/10 family crime drama in that show. And then there’s the slipshod attempts to shove more MCU into it. One of these consequences is quite a few scenes that are poorly framed and shot and acted that seem completely out of place and were probably handled by a B-team that wasn’t aware how important ASL and being hard of hearing is to the visual language of the show.
I actually loved most of the flashbacks. I just thought the editing in the finale was sloppy, between that woodpecker & the jump cut in the final fight.
How did Marvel even find a deaf Native American woman with a prosthetic leg for this character? Let alone one who is in the proper age range and can act well enough to carry an entire show? Talk about lightning in a bottle…
I haven’t read the comics, but I don’t think the character had a prosthetic leg in them. So, that was just added in after she was cast. They just had to find a deaf Native American woman.
Got it. I’m unfamiliar with the comics character. But honestly, kudos to casting for finding her and not letting her prosthetic leg be a disqualifier.
And that doesn’t seem like that much of an ask. Disability, of all sorts, is a lot more common than people think. I’m not saying it was a huge pool to draw from, because the deaf Native American person would have to want to act too rather than be, say, a vet, but it’s not a miracle either.
Either that or Kevin Feige is some sort of Mister Glass level super villian creating his perfect stars. Just how long is his long game? Does anyone know where Kevin Feige was when RDJ first started abusing drugs? Did Feige somehow convince the Hemsworth to keep having children until one came out blonde and beautiful enough to be Thor? Maybe it was all part of his plan?
“Did Feige somehow convince the Hemsworth”
What is “the Hemsworth”?
Casting call was for a deaf indigenous and/or Latina woman. Some of the other details were built around the amazing woman they were able to cast.
I’m pretty sure they just found the best deaf native American woman for the part and then sawed her leg off.
“However, as many fans know, this series isn’t the first time Marvel has introduced a Deaf or disabled character.”
This series didn’t introduce Echo either.
Let’s be honest Daredevil is “blind” and could probably read ASL from “seeing” the hand vibrations causing a disturbance in the air or some horseshit like how he reads by feeling the print instead of using Braille.
why would this lead to other shows following suit? wasn’t the whole point of this show to specifically spotlight a superperson with disabilities? not trying to be glib here i just don’t see how one leads to the other or what that means. obviously if echo shows up in other shows or movies she’s not gonna all of a sudden be like ‘a wizard fixed me here’s a whedon-quip’.
I’m confused about how you so comprehensively misunderstood how that phrase was used here. “Here’s hoping the superhero miniseries’ handling of ASL inspires other shows to follow suit”The statement was not “I hope other shows remember that Echo is deaf,” but “I hope that other shows that include deaf characters will do as good a job centering ASL.
alright i can see how what i said came off like that, let me try to be clearer.echo was clearly a specific choice to make an MCU show with a protagonist whose disabilities were front and center. and if you’re someone who’s interested in that specifically, i’m sure they were hoping to introduce a new audience to the mcu. considering i think they greenlit the show before the character even appeared that was clearly their intent.and awesome, they did a good job with both the show itself and the realities of representing that. to me that’s the point and niche that echo has carved out for itself.so to me it feels weird to assume they wouldn’t continue dealing with that as the focal point of more echo, as opposed to be that effecting other shows. otherwise what was the point of carving that niche?it just feels like a strange thing to be hypothetical about. to your point the reason this show is so good with it is because they were already following the lead that was setup in hawkeye.to me the call to action is ‘there should be more echo’, not ‘i hope if they make up some more deaf characters they’re also handled well’, which is how it comes off to me and just feels weird. that’s all.
I’m just a hell of a lot more confused now, honestly. Or way more likely, you are.The writer of this article’s hopes for better ASL representation have absolutely nothing to do with whatever idea you are fixated on. The takeways from this success for Marvel, for other creators, for critics, and for audiences do NOT have to be the same.I honestly cannot fathom what your actual take is here.
I also liked how in this show and on Hawkeye, they integrated her prothetic limb into her fighting as an asset. She would use it to block incoming blows and knife strikes.
This was a good show. I hope them posting up all the episodes at once was a good sign and not a bad one. I’d love more of the character, especially if she can team up with Daredevil at some point.
they integrated her prothetic limb into her fighting as an asset. She would use it to block incoming blows and knife strikes.
Seems like they also could turn it into a more offensive weapon.
She did hide a knife in the shoe
Another good example is the henchwoman from Kingsman.
Really brave of them to focus on shit like this and not on making a decent show that tells an interesting story.
The ASL stuff was very well handled. The attention to the nuance of her being a deaf person that they took was really impressive. Didn’t slap you in the face and trusted the audience to learn and understand. Best part of the show, which otherwise was completely meh.
Please give us a Silhouette live-action version in the MCU. Sil is an extremely cool (and mostly forgotten) teen hero who uses crutches and can teleport through the Darkforce (similar to Cloak from Cloak and Dagger). Debuted with the most 90s of superhero teams, the New Warriors.
You’ll also see some fantastical contact lenses poked into Maya’s eyes that allow Kingpin’s words to be translated into some line-drawn, animated arms that simultaneously sign his words in front of his body as an earbud component feeds him her ASL responses as verbal speech. But those don’t exist yet. Still, imagining technologies that could evolve to make the world more accessible for DHH folks is a worthy endeavor and cool to see represented in television.And then you tell us: Those contact lenses mentioned earlier? They show Maya, clearly, that Kingpin doesn’t value her. Her family, on the other hand—her parents, grandparents, cousin, and closest friends—all became fluent in ASL, first for Maya’s mother and then for her. So, technology that would help people communicate with the sensory impaired is a worthy endeavor, but if you use it, you’re just an asshole?
I wouldn’t go that far, but I get what the show was suggesting. Fisk had years to learn ASL, but he never bothered and then just sorta threw money at the problem. I was so confused by that scene where he has their translator killed. I thought for sure he was going to reveal he’d taken lessons and learned to talk to her directly. But….no. So what was that scene even about beyond “remember, this guy is evil?” How did they communicate after that? Did he just immediately bring in another doomed translator?
I feel like that there’s a scene on the cutting room floor where he has the translator killed and immediately brings in his loyal man Kazi as the replacement.
That would make a ton of sense.
The translator was ostensibly privy to tons of conversations that were extremely incriminating for both Fisk and Maya. Furthermore, the fact that she knew how to communicate with Maya in a way that Fisk (still) didn’t fully understand was an unacceptable vulnerability.
If anything, him killing the translator makes sense for too many reasons at once. It’s an overstuffed scene. They could’ve made it a little less dense if they’d intimated that Fisk had regularly been “swapping out” translators (from Maya’s perspective) so that she could never form any kind of relationship with any of them, and so that Fisk could further mitigate the risk of one of them snitching. That would’ve required at least making the translators visible and distinct enough in various scenes so that audience would have a fair chance of noticing that it was a bunch of a different people in the role.
I got that she was a risk, but it seems like now he just has to bring in another one and he just did a murder on someone known to be associated with him.I do like you’re idea that he goes through several in the show and only then we see what happens to them.
The technology is a worth endeavour, if it’s only invented because you couldn’t be bothered learning sign language in the 20 (or whatever) years you were someone’s guardian, you’re just an asshole.
I mean, if I have magic contact lenses and earbuds that can automatically translate a conversation both ways, with perfect accuracy, I’m sure as hell not gonna bother taking years to learn ASL.
I mean, it’s very much in character for Fisk. But it also kinds of stood out to me in the article.
esp given it was shown he is fluent enough in Mandarin.
The asshole move is that Fisk, who claims to be as close as family, spent years not learning ASL when he had the time and resources to do so and has just now come up with some other solution so he still doesn’t have to. (He claims he wants to speak to Maya “without intermediaries”, but that’s exactly what the contact lenses are. He’s still not communicating with Maya directly.)
A deaf woman crime fighter? Who does she stop from committing crimes? Other cripples? Children? Evil midgets?
I’m happy they were willing to show both that Maya’s deafness is part of her identity and that it’s a condition that has its draw backs. As someone with both physical and mental disabilities myself, I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, particularly with my ADHD. There’s all this talk in ND circles about reframing our conditions as a “superpower”, and it honestly annoys me sometimes. Frankly, having ADHD sucks a lot of the time, and it makes doing a lot of normal things incredibly difficult. I accept that it’s part of me, and that it has shaped the way I see the world, but most days I could just do with some of that focus and sensory regulation the neurotypicals have.
Echo is trash and how much did Disney pay you to write this puff piece?
Now it’s just shameful that Marvel didn’t cast a real blind actor for Daredevil.
I found this show to be so aggressively mediocre that it was hard to focus on anything other than it. I’m of the opinion that everything other than Loki could just be retconned out of existence and they could start this whole ‘spotlight show’ thing from scratch.
There are some posters in this thread that are really triggered by having anyone other than a white, straight, non-disabled male as the protagonist.
I love the participation trophy comments. The girl cannot act, has no emotion in her face, the fight scenes and choreography were absolutely not good. She even admitted she has no acting experience. People are followers anymore instead of being honest so they don’t hurt people’s feelings. I’ve seen great acting up close and in person as a stand-in on True Detective, Foxcatcher, Out of The Furnace, and many others. Her acting is dry, like the women in Monarch. Her face is the same in many scenes with 0 emotion This is not a good show. Typical Marvel crap.