Echo review: A quietly lovely (and very bloody) entry in the superhero canon
Alaqua Cox's Hawkeye spinoff, on Disney Plus and Hulu, is a brutal and heartfelt Marvel miniseries
TV Reviews Echo
There’s a moment halfway through Echo (out January 9 on Disney+ and Hulu)—a years-later spinoff of the mostly cheery (and underrated) Hawkeye series—where a seemingly small plot point plays out in such a way that feels unexpectedly moving and speaks to the power that these superhero stories have when they manage to pair the perfect actor with the perfect character. And that’s what Marvel seems to have done with Echo star Alaqua Cox.
The moment is essentially a version of the standard “superhero getting their suit for the first time” sequence (though that’s not exactly what it is), but the emotionality of the scene sneaks up on you and, in retrospect, feels like it’s on a similar level to Robert Downey Jr.’s iconic final line in Iron Man or Chadwick Boseman revealing that he’s the Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War. This is Cox getting her moment like only she could because of who she is as a person, and it’s kind of incredible.
Cox, who debuted in Hawkeye (literally, because that show and this show are the extent of her onscreen acting career at this point), stars as Maya Lopez, a deaf Choctaw woman with a prosthetic leg whose father was a low-level criminal working for Wilson Fisk (a.k.a. the Kingpin, with Vincent D’Onofrio reprising the role here from Hawkeye and Netflix’s Daredevil). As seen in Hawkeye, Maya’s father was murdered by Ronin in his post-Thanos snap murder spree, though it’s eventually revealed on that show that Robin was tipped off by the Kingpin himself—oh, also, Fisk thinks of Maya like his own daughter, and he has spent her whole life shaping her anger and violent instincts into a weapon.
But if that seems like a weighty bit of backstory, Echo is reluctant to spend too much time on it, even as almost every second of the series is indebted to the events of two other shows that not every viewer might be completely familiar with. The first episode flies through the events of Hawkeye, including flashback scenes of young Maya that were already in that show paired with new flashback scenes (though Echo gets some real juice out of reprising the Kingpin’s original Hawkeye cameo), creating an awkward middle-ground between assuming viewers don’t know it at all and trusting that viewers will already be deeply familiar with the existing canon.
That all becomes a bit easier to ignore once Maya hightails it out of New York, believing she has just killed the Kingpin after the events of Hawkeye and will now be on every two-bit mobster’s hit list. She hides out in her old hometown in Oklahoma—a hometown that happens to be full of old friends and family members who seem vaguely aware that her father was a criminal and that she’s following in his footsteps. (Special shoutout to Graham Greene from Dances With Wolves as Maya’s grandfather, who carries a lot of Echo’s emotional depth and also gets a funny scene screwing with some dumb white people.)
Maya has a mission in mind now that the Kingpin’s throne is vacant, and she’s also been having mysterious visions of the Choctaw creation myth (in which the tribe’s first people emerged from a cave and became humans), but, of course, the Kingpin’s not really dead. It takes more than being shot in the eye to kill Wilson Fisk, which is as true here as it was when Maya did the same thing in the comics. (Speaking of, writer Brian Michael Bendis put a fun gag in his Daredevil comics after Fisk got shot in the face by Maya, with his wife selling one of his properties to the only New Yorker more evil than the Kingpin.)
Over the course of its first few episodes (only three were screened for critics), Echo gradually draws out the explanations for why Maya is back in her hometown and why everyone is so wary of her, but the short version is that she’s there to do some violence—and she succeeds. There’s only one annoyingly dark action scene set atop a moving train, but other than that Echo has some solidly brutal fight scenes, many of which are choreographed around Cox’s use of her prosthetic leg in a way that seems more like her just being awesome than treating it like some kind of superpower, which could’ve been a little crass.
This was spoiled in the trailers, but there is also an appearance from … another Marvel superhero with a connection to Maya in the source material, and though his appearance comes earlier and is shorter than his fans might’ve expected, it is handled well and is used to hype him much as much as it’s used to showcase how cool Maya is. It bodes well for that unnamed character’s hypothetical future, and it kind of answers some questions that someone may or may not have had about how much of his history is canonical to the MCU.
Throughout all of that, it’s impressive just how good Cox is here. She carries the show completely with her body language, facial expressions, and signing, and it genuinely feels special that Marvel is introducing a hero here who is a deaf Native American woman who uses a prosthetic leg played by a deaf Native American woman who uses a prosthetic leg. As tired of superhero stories as people may be, it’s really goddamn cool that they can be used for stuff like this.
Echo premieres January 9 on Disney+ and Hulu
94 Comments
“Pinch-hitting for Pedro Borbon: Manny Mota. Mota. Mota.”
As tired of superhero stories as people may be, it’s really goddamn cool that they can be used for stuff like this. People are never tired of good stories, but they’ve always been comparatively few and far between.
Superhero stories are just one of the more recent punching bags, but there’s just as much good and bad in its genre as any.
Show was already getting review bombed before it was even out.I will never not be convinced that the internet was a mistake.
Really though, who cares. I think I’d rather those people focus their energy on being mad at TV shows than like, overthrowing the government.
Unfortunately, they have proven quite adept at both, it is the other side that seems to have a hard time remembering what is at stake when Election Day rolls around.
Lucky us, they have more than enough time for both ventures!In-between harassing black people at CVS pharmacies and assaulting people with visually nauseating bumper stickers.
the downside is we’ve run out of other metrics.
I guess? Personally If I’m on the fence about watching a movie I’m more likely to open wikipedia and read the plot than check metacritic or rotten tomatos.
i don’t mean about finding something personally, i just mean RT or social media is the only metric that gets checked by studios, PR firms, etc.
Making the internet free-with-ads was absolutely a mistake.
The Internet is fine.Social Media is a mistake.
Sucks. Because Echo is great. It makes me miss the Netflix Defenders shows so much.The MCU’s output hasn’t been great recently, even if the CHUD reasoning for why is complete trash. But this show is exactly what they claim to want: a grounded, dramatically serious, thematically mature action series about a violent antihero who does really brutal fight choreo. Alaqua Cox fucking delivers and they are missing out.
They’re coming back, bit by bit, starting with this show.
The internet could’ve gone either way, but monetizing it was definitely a mistake.
Throughout all of that, it’s impressive just how good Cox is here.You’re all coy about who the super hero cameo is, and then you just blurt out the actor’s name!
I can’t tell if you’re joking or not. Both the actors have the surname Cox.
Yeah, sorry I’m not a fan of that /s thing.
Gotcha. I’m not either. I’m probably just a little obtuse today. The joke and the misunderstanding seemed equally probable.
They’re clearly just a fan of good Cox.
Brian Cox is in this series? As superhero?
The physicist?
Yes , but the twist is its UK celeb scientist/keyboard player Brian Cox , not actor Brian Cox.
Obviously it’s Courteney Cox taking over the role of Iron Man.
Interesting that Disney is dropping all episodes of this at once after doing weekly releases for all of their other live action shows.
They’ve made it part of the Defenders Saga (check the playlist!), so they probably thought it would be apropos to release it in the same way.
A couple probably contributing factors could be that it’s their first MA rated Marvel series and also to possibly negate viewer drop off week-to-week. By dropping the entire season at once, they can present the largest viewership #’s for it in their marketing.
Oh, cool I did not know that. It’s a bit weird though isn’t it? Unless they’re going to do another iteration of The Defenders where Echo is involved.
Nonzero chance she shows up in Born Again or something.
Oh sure, but what would surprise me is if Born Again was building to another season of The Defenders. Also if Loras Tyrell ever returned as Iron Fist. I still giggle thinking about how all Iron Fist had to do in The Defenders was not punch a specific wall, and he failed spectacularly.
She will be back—this was good, end ambiguously enough and the end credits scene (side note: there’s a “SKIP CREDITS” BUTTON NOW!!!) opens up some interesting new directions for the ‘ground level heroes’ to explore.
I think Disney’s confidence in the MCU, and especially in the Disney+ MCU shows, is very understandably at a low point right now. My assumption is that they feared low viewership and/or bad reviews for Echo and wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible by dumping it onto Disney+ all at once. I don’t know, personally I’m excited to watch Echo when I find the time this week but I think it’s fair to assume that had Bob Iger returned to Disney six months earlier than he did this show would have been canceled before it could get too deep into production.
I think they realized that the way they were writing shows as just longer movies doesn’t play well to weekly episodic television. Released week to week I don’t think there was enough hook from episode to episode to bring people back to it within that 24/48hr release window they’re looking at the numbers for. But dropped all at once? The episodes are good enough to go, “ok, I can watch a little longer to see where they’re going” or keep it just fresh enough in your mind to pick back up the next day.Hawkeye I think suffers from the same problem. Sitting down and watching it in larger chunks it’s a fun series. But waiting a week for episode to episode when it came out? It wasn’t “must see tv” from week to week.And it sounds like with the stepping back that Feige made them do for Born Again, they’ve realized their problems with TV.
Apparently the AV Club received their check from Disney to give a good review, on the other hand The Daily Beast didn’t receive their check.https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/marvels-echo-review-boring-show-is-another-death-knell-for-marvel
Having watched the whole thing, it’s better than Jessica Jones.
Actually Jessica Jones was my second favorite of the Netflix shows, next to Daredevil of course. Killgrave was an awesome villain and I’ve also been a big fan of Krysten Ritter since Don’t Trust the B*tch in Apartment 23.
I LOVE Krysten Ritter, I just hate how Jessica was written for the Netflix shows.(And Daredevil was my favorite, too!)
After the absolute savaging that Secret Invasion got, this comment is even dumber. Gasp, two people on the internet had different thoughts about a thing.
Even dumber given that there are multiple pieces on Daily Beast about the show, both praising and criticizing it.
Yes, everyone who disagrees with you is a paid shill, of COURSE
It’s very promising that all the negative reviews are along the lines of “Too much Echo, not enough Daredevil or Kingpin.” Oh really, the title character is the focus of the show, and somehow that offends you?
I don’t think it’s offending anybody – the character/actress has absolutely no presence. I don’t really even understand what the purpose of this show was… This doesn’t seem like an actual “superhero/comic book character” worth developing. A lot of it just seems like they’re really reaching to create ANY sort of… ANYTHING. The god awful milking and fetishisation of native American culture is just comical. Feels like a parody of comic books.
I liked how they used Daredevil. I realized a few minutes before he showed up that Maya was in the same building as the trailer and was pleasantly surprised at how it was handled. It felt like a comic.
Yeah that whole scene is comparable to the best fights in the Daredevil shows. It felt iconic, hard-hitting, was cool as hell while being fun, too, and had some great artistic touches to it as well.
“but the emotionality of the scene”
This has to easily be the worst of the Marvel shows. Moments just sit there on the screen without any energy or life. I’m honestly surprised they released this to the public… There’s no real story or character to care about or anything that hasn’t been done before, and the native American stuff is just silly. Feels like a bad parody of the worst of Disney. If this is the future of Marvel/Disney then I think we’re just seeing the start of the “fatigue”.
What a shame that The Rock couldn’t continue to show us his range as an actor after playing a dude with a prosthetic leg.
One lovely surprise is the thorough denial of the idea that Maya owes her grandmother a single fucking thing, no matter how bad she currently feels about disowning her. That’s especially nice to see after The Color Purple and its moral that abuse victims should fully forgive their abusers and become friends with them.
Leaving aside The Color Purple, mostly because I haven’t seen it and I last read it in high school, did Maya’s grandmother actually disown her? I only watched the first episode, but it seemed in the hospital scene that she really mostly hated Maya’s father. She didn’t stop them from leaving, but I didn’t get the sense that she was completely cutting ties with Maya.
The grandmother’s beef was primarily with the dad, but Maya’s recollection is that she was collateral damage, and her grandmother didn’t seem to make any effort to be present in her life after that. The grandmother also suggests it’s hard for her to even look at Maya, due to Maya’s resemblance to the dead mother, so it wasn’t only the rift with her dad.It’s a pretty interesting detail for this Marvel show, that trauma has such a destructive effect on multiple generations. Maya’s matrilineal history is extremely relevant to the story, so severing it in this way is pretty impactful and pretty tragic.
Sadly, I think a lot of people are going to sleep on this with various excuses (“oh, MCU homework”, “oh it stars a woman how woke”, “subtitles no thank you”, “you mean I don’t have to do a bunch of MCU homework? So it doesn’t matter no thank you”), which is a shame because I thought this was an extremely effective series.I only planned on watching the first two episodes and binged the entire thing in an evening and it was fantastic. Cox is commanding in the lead role (and the Cox is great in his guest appearance—which was a surprise for me because I don’t watch trailers after the first teaser), the show feels authentic emotionally, has great action sequences and sets up a potential heap for the MCU or even in just the “Spotlight” segment. Highly recommended.
How about the “this character does not interest me at all” *reason*?
Do you want me to give you the usual answer about nobody giving a shit about Iron Man, Thor or Captain America but then gave them a chance, or are you just hear to bitch about the MCU without giving the show a chance? Hell, Hawkeye was pretty lame in like six movies but the Hawkeye show was pretty great.
we need to stop acting like iron man, thor and captain america were nobodies before their movies. they were less popular in the mid aughts than they had been in the 70s or whatever, but acting like they were mega obscure is disingenuous.also, being a smug jackass about this shit does not encourage me to watch the show.
Please. Completely anecdotally (which doesn’t mean much overall but also everyone outside the MCU) , more people knew the New X-Men characters than Iron Man or Cap. Prior to the MCU, people loved Mutants
something being ‘more popular’ doesn’t automatically make the other thing obscure or that noone gave a shit about them. banks don’t give you 140 million dollar budget for an obscure character noone had heard of.iron man had been an ongoing comic book character since the 70s and had a cartoon in the 90s, ghostface killah famously called himself tony starks / iron man and they’d been trying to make a movie for 15 years at that point, thor was a famous mythological character BEFORE he was even a comic book character and had already appeared in live action, and there had already been a captain america cartoon and live action movie. people KNEW who these characters were. they weren’t completely merchandised to shit yet, but it was a different era.zoom out a little. i agree that in 2008 (mostly because of the movies mind you) someone like wolverine was more in the zeitgeist. that doesn’t mean nobody knew who iron man or captain america was. they were in the public consciousness. kurt cobain wore a captain america shirt for chrissakes.
When I was a kid in the 90s, my grandparents lived on a farm and had a small, random assortment of toys for when the grandchildren were over. I’m sure I had a good time playing with them, but I had no idea what they were.Years later, maybe 2012ish, I found some of the toys while helping them move and realized that one of them was an Iron Man action figure. I’m certain it was manufactured around the time they got it for us.
So that’s the difference, to me — yes, Iron Man was less popular than the X-Men, but there was enough of a presence that the character was moving merchandise long before 2008. I don’t believe there’s a single Echo action figure out there in the wild except on collectors’ shelves.
Idk what planet you were living on, but as someone who has never picked up a comic book in my life, I knew exactly who Captain America and Iron Man were before 2008.
My wife loves the Marvel movies, but knew mostly zero about Marvel comic heroes before the movies came out.Then again, she loves movies where stuff be ‘sploding.
Brodie is correct. As someone who worked in a comic store back in the day, I will confirm that Marvel’s A-listers before the MCU were Spider-man, the Hulk, FF, and Wolverine (plus the X-Men and Mutants in general). Cap, Thor, and Iron Man were B-listers, until the MCU broke them to the wider public.
Good thing no one here really gives a shit whether you watch or not. If you need convincing by the AV Club commentariat to watch a tv show, well, that’s an issue unto itself.
Eh, there’s a reason they didn’t get big offers for those guys over Hulk, Spider-man, X-Men, and Fantastic Four (and I feel fairly sure they’d have sold the rights to any of the characters at the time since they were desperate for money to remain a business). Sure, people knew who they were, but mostly didn’t give a shit.
I guess an even better example might be Blade, I was a Marvel kid in the 70’s and 80’s, and I had never even heard of him when the movie came out, so the general audience must have been completely in the dark. Guardians of the Galaxy is another one, I had heard the name of course, and they probably popped up in the odd issue of Marvel Team Up or Avengers now and then, but I had no memories of them when the movie came out.
Thing is . Echo is a Marvel D-list character, and unlike DC whose characters get more out there and nuts the further down the alphabet you go , Marvel’s 4th tier heroes tend to be dull .I mean its a harder sell than regular characters ..people had at least heard of Iron man, Thor and Captain America would have had some recognisability back in the day( ..hell even 80s comedy Adventures in Babysitting had a joke about a guy looking really similar to the comic Thor*) and that’s after the universally panned Secret Invasion , and on top of Marvel fatigue in general .*coincidently that same actor plays Kingpin in Echo, so thats maybe a selling point for it I guess/
My point is that you don’t need to consider “Complete lack of interest in the main character” an “excuse”. It’s a valid reason not to tune into media.
I don’t understand why a “valid reason” isn’t “I just don’t feel like it.” That’s as valid a reason as anybody needs.
That said, back in 1977 I had no knowledge of or interest in Han Solo or Darth Vader. Weirdly, after seeing that little film, I did.
(FWIW, my housemate and I binged Echo last night and loved it. He knew nothing about Maya Lopez; I am an avid comics reader and did. I also genuinely liked her MCU power-set; mimicry is fine, but kinda boring.)
You can’t compare Iron Man, Thor or Captain America to fucking Echo.
And her power swap is lame. Super strength and a weak version of the Penance Stare. Both conveniently cheap to fake.
I’m not bothering because Disney+ is too fucking expensive for me anymore.
I was impressed with Cox in Hawkeye and didn’t know that was her first on-screen role, ever.
She’s genuinely great in this–incredibly expressive face when it needs to be and gets emotions across. I also had no idea she was really missing her leg, either, until I read more about her after this (I mean, I liked her in Hawkeye but there was a lot going on in that show)
A solid outing especially compared to a lot of the recent D+ MCU. Not ‘must watch’ by any means but I don’t feel my time was wasted either let alone outright insulted (looking at you Secret Invasion).
This could not have come out at a better time. It’s funny how much people suggested that this staying on the release schedule was more evidence of Marvel’s decline. Sounds like it’s a desperately needed lifeline.
Yeah I was pleasantly surprised just because everyone expected it to be bad. Also, side note I started this and realized I hadn’t watched Hawkeye since it came out, so I re-watched that again first and had genuinely forgotten how great that show was. Echo is genuinely not far behind–also big ups for not feeling like it had to ‘stretch’ to a certain amount of episodes or running time–it’s basically an MCU movie with breaks.
I think Hawkeye gets such an undeserved rap. It’s honestly the best mcu TV show besides maybe loki, and mayyybe wandavision (though WV loses all rewatchability once you know the mystery that drives most of the plot). Echo has got to be among the top D+ shows as well.
Those three are definitely the top MCU shows–and honestly Loki and Hawkeye both benefit from binging more than the weekly format. I think I liked both more on the second watch when they ‘flowed’ better.
Hawkeye started out very well but started to lose focus at the exact moment it stopped focusing on Echo as the main antagonist. It felt like the show realized she had too much of a good reason to hate Clint, so they had to bring in Yelena (who hated Clint for bullshit reasons) and Kingpin (who is just plain evil) to distract from that.
It’s was a pretty good series. But Hawkeye seems like one of those characters people just hate on so I think a lot of people are down on it without actually giving it a shot
I thought it was about 2 episodes too long. She’s not really a Native American mystic in the comics, right? She’s a street level fighter with a photographic memory for fighting styles…or something like that. I would have preferred something like that, instead of whatever this was.
Special shoutout to Graham Greenewho, like fellow Canadian Gary Farmer, is apparently one of only two Indigenous actors that Hollywood knows how to cast. I love these guys, but really, could they not give someone else an opportunity?
tatanka means REALLY stood out in KOTFM so i’m hoping he gets to be ‘the third guy’
Yeah, they seem to have lifted the entire cast from “Reservation Dogs”. Which is fine because it worked, but it would’ve been nice to see new Native faces too.
The casting is pretty superb when it comes to native actors. Zahn McClarnon, Tantoo Cardinal, Julia Jones (Westworld and Rutherford Falls), Dallas Goldtooth and Jana Schmieding (of both Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls—I’m only two episodes in, so I’ve only had a brief glimpse of them, but I felt them as a couple was a nice little nod to Nelson and Regan in the far too early cancelled Rutherford Falls), Devery Jacobs and Geraldine Keams (also RD and RF), William Belleau, Tatanka Means, and those are just the actors I recognize off the bat. The native cast looks very extensive and it looks like they’re giving plenty of newcomers a shot.Also, Gary Farmer is a goddamn delight, as are Graham Greene and Wes Studi, and I will be happy any and every time they get cast.
I didnt care about the character. I still watched. I wasnt wow’d but i liked it and actually wanted more. Obvious character who was obvious was awesome. It was cool and i wanted more but i couldnt come up with a way to get it to Oklahoma that made sense.
I’d give the show a solid 7/10, a C. It’s absolutely skippable and doesn’t really do anything particularly remarkable, but it’s still worth watching. Alaqua Cox is great, I love everything said about the main character that makes her unique. In spite of Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma collaborating with Marvel for the show, I’m iffy on turning Choctaw cultural myths that suggest they’re some sort of alien people with super powers. That just sounds like putting Jesus into a show and taking it completely seriously instead of a silly Family Guy/South Park gag. Outside the supernatural elements, the cultural representation, in casting, story, and setting, is great, and I would say is superior to what Ms. Marvel did, which was the greatest strength of that show (yes, Iman Vellani is also secondary to that).The action scenes were enjoyable enough, but none of them were the kind of scenes that I needed to watch again and again, like the bus scene in Shang Chi, Hydra’s attack on Nick Fury, or the hallway oner from Daredevil. They do a fake oner in this with a lot of obvious editing spots. Competent and fun, but not really special. I wouldn’t even say the violence particularly deserves the TVMA rating the way that The Punisher did. That’s not a bad thing, but the expectation of a bloody good time is slightly disappointing.What I believe deserves the most criticism is how thin the overall story is. To avoid spoilers, basically, Maya goes to her home town, she does a bad thing which causes consequences to threaten the people she cares about but are estranged with, the villain makes her have complicated feelings, but the magic voodoo solves all the problems and she makes up with her family. It would have been nice if I got to know the supporting characters more so the conclusion would have felt more meaningful and satisfying, but as is, it just feels too detached from the feeling they wanted me to have.To compare quality with the other D+ shows, I would rank all of them this way:Moon KnightWandavisionLokiHawkeyeEcho
The Falcon and the Winter SoldierMs. MarvelWhat If
She-HulkSecret Invasion
went in with low expectations and thought the 1st ep was OK, at least. otoh started watching the brothers sun on netflix and immediately liked that much more. tbh feels like Disney just trying to capitalize on the current “fad” of stories centered around native americans. Not that there aren’t good stories to be told or a lot of great native american actors getting their chance to shine, but i’m not sure Disney is up for that*. we’ll see how the series goes*based on how other D+ marvel series like to introduce interesting ideas (superhero coping with grief! superhero dealing with racism!” but then fail to explore them in lieu of a final battle with fisticuffs and cgi that glosses over anything complicated.
https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2024/01/11/marvel-studios-echo-rings-in-2024/The series does a great job showing this version of Echo doesn’t need
superpowers. Then it gives her a completely different set of powers! I’m sure there was a way to meld gritty crime with mystic superheroics, but the approach Echo ended up with didn’t gel well.
Just finished watching this and enjoyed it quite a bit. A couple of things in particular that I enjoyed:That the first episode served as a recap of the events of Hawkeye (so viewers could watch this show without watching the other) with other details before, during, and after filled in – this is the right way to make connected contentThe multiple sequences from Maya’s POV where you hear silence as she wouldThe flashback sequence of one of Maya’s ancestors shown through an old-timey black and white production (really I enjoyed all of the flashbacks but that one stood out)The supporting cast they got to play Maya’s family, in particular Devery Jacobs from Reservation Dogs who plays her cousinThe entirety of the arcade / skating rink action sequenceI also caught up on Loki S2 over the past week or so and enjoyed that as well. So MCU TV is on a bit of a roll for me after the terribly disappointing Secret Invasion that caused me to tune out from Marvel content for a bit.
Shows and miniseries have always been the way to go with comic book and video game IP in my opinion (like I’m parting the red seas over here with wisdom nuggets); more long form and intimate spaces to explore characters and not have to rush everything and set up 5 other things in 2.5 hours. I can’t wait to check this out.
I liked it more than Netflix’s Punisher, which I struggled to get through and never even bothered with the second season. And certainly better than Secret Invasion.My only real complaint was that the ‘final battle’ was basically the weakest action scene of the series, it was a letdown after the skating rink sequence.
Just finished it. I liked the first episode quite a bit, which was what was advertised, but I think it declines as it goes. What starts as essentially a silent protagonist out to get what’s hers, devolves into something a lot slower, for only 5 episodes. This is one of those series where I would have preferred it stay focused on this assassin in New York trying to either destroy or takeover (does the show even know what it wants?) Fisk’s operations rather than become this more mellow small town family drama.
Alaqua Cox does ok, considering her lack of experience, but tends to wear the same expression most of the time, so for a leading character, I felt she lacked range. The writers want us to have sympathy for Maya- who is a hardened killer- but she isn’t shown to have any remorse about the life she leads or what she has done. She’s barely sorry she put her own family in danger. Whatsmore, I thought it was a weird choice to have the audience know Kingpin is alive before she does, so when one episode ends with her shock at this discovery, it’s an ending note that falls flat. That’s to say nothing of portraying him as weak yet again, even though they have plans for him to be a larger big bad for these going forward. It’s the Kang mistakes all over again. My issues with Echo were all sorts of things like this. Changing Echo’s powers is unfortunate, because contrary to the director thinking them “lame”, the job should be to get the audience to understand what makes her cool: She functions as the flipside of Daredevil in that where his lack of sight makes things like his hearing more powerful, her lack of hearing makes her sight so acute, she can read people’s every slightest movement. It’s why she’s able to mimic any fighting style (and why she can read lips, and doesn’t even need to sign). Losing this does feel like they prioritized her ethnicity and disability over being honest about who the character is. Now her powers are broadly defined as just coming from the “mystical history of generational women in her culture?” It’s a weird, Avatar The Last Airbender-style ripoff, but without any of Aang’s training or mastery, that’s ultimately another example of a Disney/MCU heroine just needing to realize her greatness was within her all along.
Still, whatever rumors there were about Echo being this unrelease-able show in a terrible state, seem like exaggerations to me. As the D+ series go, it is better than the last few have been. Especially after Secret Invasion. The representation is nice, and for the first “dark and gritty” entry in a new Spotlight series, it’s got the tone I like. But sitting though endless subtitled ASL conversations didn’t make for the most compelling superhero show. Call me basic, but I wish there was less talking and more thrills. Who knew a deaf assassin could be so chatty?
I liked the acting and the production design a lot. The plot was a little thin, but not a deal-breaker. The only thing that annoyed me a bit was how they never really gave us a clear or concrete explanation of what her actual powerset is. Her hands glow, and maybe give her increased strength? Maybe durability too? And she seems to have some kind of half-version of her mom’s hand-glowing healing power, maybe, which almost-kinda works on Fisk at the end, but not really? I really would’ve appreciated even one throwaway line enunciating exactly what abilities her heritage flashbacks were linking her to and empowering her with. Too vague, for my tastes. But still a solid C+ to B- show, overall.
Open-ended-powers stuff like that also put the showrunners in a situation like it in the WW films, where they can just keep changing/adding/adjusting powers as the plot goes on, so that no situation is ever real peril. (“Oh, did I mention that I can cast a spell that turns all planes invisible? And later on, by the end of the film I’ll just be flying on my own, and lasso-ing lightning, because that’s a thing now…”)
Since we’ve been dealing with -20 wind chills all weekend my wife and I decided to give episode 1 a go. Before we knew it the entire afternoon blew by and binged the entire series. I liked it way more than I expected to.
I have to confess that while I loved the Hawkeye series I have only been casually watching Echo. But the scene you mentioned about getting her “suit” surprised me. I was surprised by how touching I found it.