Marvel Studios is developing a Hawkeye spin-off about Alaqua Cox's Echo for Disney Plus
TV Features marvel studios
We’ve only gotten one season of one show and one episode of a second show so far, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s foray into television on Disney+ seems to be going pretty well. So well, in fact, that the streaming service is apparently already developing a spin-off of one that’s not out yet—and a spin-off that seems like a surprisingly big swing at that. According to Variety, Disney+ is developing a solo show about Echo (a.k.a. Maya Lopez), a hearing-impaired Native American woman with the ability to perfectly replicate another person’s fighting style. Echo, as played by Alaqua Cox, will make her MCU debut in Disney+’s Hawkeye, which is going to premiere on the service at some point later this year.
Though primarily a supporting character in Daredevil comics, Echo originated the Ronin persona that Hawkeye used for a time (as seen in Avengers: Endgame when he became a sad murder-ninja), so there is also a connection between her and Clint Barton. She was also raised by Wilson Fisk and briefly fell in love with Matt Murdock—as Marvel characters so often do—but it seems unlikely that either of those things will happen here.
Now, a Disney+ series about a Marvel character that both isn’t an A-lister and isn’t making their debut in a multi-million dollar movie is one thing, but Hawkeye itself will also be the debut of Alaqua Cox herself—which means this is a potential spin-off about a character that people don’t necessarily know and starring an actor who people definitely don’t know (at least not yet), which seems like a an unusually big risk for Disney and Marvel. The fact that it seems kind of risky, though, could also be taken as a good sign: Marvel Studios must be happy with what it’s seeing from Hawkeye and Cox in particular if it’s even considering this.
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https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/disney-announces-next-marvel-show-mantis-talos-whoevers-free-to-film-next-tuesday/
I guess this isn’t a joke article then?
Hey, Howard The Duck still running wild, somewhere in an alien planet.
He was on Earth as of the end of Endgame. But hey, it’s an alien planet to him. One might even say he’s trapped in a world he never made.
No, that was Howard’s clone. The real Howard dyed his feathers black, changed his name to “Leonard”, and now lives in Buffalo.
Interesting. I recall her popping up in I think an anthology issue within the last year, the Jason Aaron Phoenix stuff in Avengers, and like, a Daredevil issue 5 years ago, but she’s barely been seen in the last 10 years.
She was also raised by Wilson Fisk and briefly fell in love with Matt Murdock—as Marvel characters so often do—but it seems unlikely that either of those things will happen here.And, like many women who have fucked Matt Murdoch, she would later be killed. In this case over in the Moon Knight books at the hands of Count Nefaria. Very few women have had sex with Matt Murdoch without dying, turning evil, or going insane.Though, she’s one of the lucky three who got better…
“Very few women have had sex with Matt Murdoch without dying, turning evil, or going insane.”That’s what dating a lawyer will get ya, and I should know.
People do that ?
Why do you think there’s a whole song about being a lawyer sucks?
Some do; I don’t.
Of course she’s dead, perfectly replicating someone else’s fighting style is a stupid power. At best you’ll stalemate because you’re evenly matched, though I’d give odds to the one being replicated just cause they have experience.At worst though, someone smart will send some lame decoy hero like Hawkeye in there and she’ll replicate his powers then Captain Marvel pops out of hiding and wipes the floor with her.
Counterpoint: Taskmaster is AWESOME.
Just like Taskmaster, her power is to replicate a lot of people’s fighting styles all the time.
Is her power to just duplicate someone’s style temporarily, or does she learn it and keep it forever? As someone else commented, Taskmaster’s photographic reflexes are similar, but once he knows someone else’s fighting style, it’s a permanent part of his skillset. He’s awesome (though slightly nerfed in that he has memory issues when switching between styles).
As with most things Bendis (who killed off Echo in Moon Knight), just ignore it.Sooner or later someone else will ignore Bendis’ bullshit and retcon that shit away.
Echo is also Marvel’s most well known indigenous character who’s not a mutant or otherwise connected to the x-men. Wyatt Wingfoot, American Eagle (a favorite of mine), Red Wolf and Puma have all been around longer but don’t show up in Marvel’s current comics very often, and Echo’s affiliation with Daredevil has given her a relatively high profile. Cox must have really impressed Marvel but Zahn McClernon, a fantastic Native American actor (Fargo, Westworld) has featured role too playing role that looks to be closely related to Echo, because the characters have the same last name. My guess is not only saw a character, but also world worth exploring.
Zahn McClarnon is so good! He’s just riveting to watch onscreen.
I assume McClarnon has prominent role — it would be a waste to cast him and not use him extensively.
I would have thought Wyatt Wingfoot would make a good supporting player on She Hulk, considering he and Jen have history. Inserting a new, Native-American character here doesn’t rule out that possibility, but it does make it slightly less likely.
I don’t think Marvel is that rigid about how they spread diversity throughout their shows, they seem to want a variety of representations. And if there are any Native American characters in the MCU right now, major or minor, I’m afraid I can’t remember them. But one never knows how the MCU is going to treat a side character like Wingfoot. They haven’t used Rick Jones, for example, gave Peter Parker the Asian-American friend associated with Miles Morales, and their Jimmy Woo is very different from the one in comics (so far). So they could use Wingfoot in She-Hulk, hold him for the Fantastic Four (his first affiliation) or decide for some reason he doesn’t fit their plans. None of these outcomes would surprise me.
She’d probably be better off trying to date Moony again honestly
Also, odds are she’s about to become The Phoenix so… at least she has some experience in that while living/dying/living again thing?
Sidebar: “Count Nefaria” is such a great, soapy villain name. It’s on par with “Baron von Criminal” or “Lord Evilguy.”
Killgrave Murdercorpse
Good one, but he needs an elegant title, like “Monseigneur Killgrave Murdercorpse.”
That’s very interesting! I don’t know the character, but searching around it seems that the actress Alaqua Cox really is both Deaf and Native American, so that is indeed a couple of pretty big steps for representation.
I also remember that some of the iconic Hawkeye comics involved Clint losing his hearing, and that was at least sometimes handled well, so it’s nice that some representation of that community will be happening in the Hawkeye series, without necessarily having Renner himself mime being deaf.
More recently, Matt Fraction and David Aja delved back into Hawkeye’s history of dealing with hearing loss for one of the best issues of their stellar run:
https://aux.avclub.com/hawkeye-19-uses-deafness-to-help-a-broken-clint-barton-1798270866
You get your own show, you get your own show. everybody gets their own show!
What’s the difference between her power and Taskmaster’s ”photographic reflexes”…? Seems like not only is this a huge play for a very small, relatively unknown character, but her powers are also less unique, if Taskmaster appears in a movie coming out in May…
To be fair, Taskmaster is usually generic villain status and usually requires interaction with Deadpool to actually become a likeable character. I was extremely surprised when he popped up in Marvel vs Capcom 3.
When I saw the character of Echo in the cast list a couple of months back I was surprised at how little pop-culture outlets ran with that bit of info, though it’s not like Marvel really chose to spotlight it at the time either.
Sure, she’s not a comic book A-lister, but she’s a pretty notable street-level character with some solid connections (Daredevil, Moon Knight, Hawkeye) and who ticks a whole lot of boxes in terms of diversity, so overall I’m not surprised by this news at all.
No apostrophe after a singular word that ends with S is bad enough, but no apostrophe after X? Oooooooof.
This might be too obvious, but this suggests to me that the Hawkeye show will have a secondary antagonist that’s a mysterious new Ronin picking up the murder mantle where Clint left it, and when they solve that the character goes on to be an anti-hero on her own show. Basically doing Netflix Punisher again.
My theory is that the show takes place between Infinity War and Endgame.It’s really the only way that doing an adaptation of the Fraction run makes sense, because it would explain why he’s living in an apartment in the city with no family and no Avengers coming to back him up. The post-Snap world is the kind of environment where thugs like the Tracksuit Mafia would be able to take advantage of the chaos to gain power, and taking them down could be what starts him down the path to become Ronin.
This is a really good theory.And I wonder if the Echo spinoff would/could then take place post-Endgame (once everyone returns).
C’mon Alpha flight movie. We need Puck being awesome and a Sasquatch fighting a Wendigo.
Also we could use a movie where Supergiant shows up pissed off about Thanos being dead while she was on vacation devouring the minds of some random planet. Have a reason to bring in an X-men psychic or two.
And make Galacta canon. She was fun and it’d be fun to have Galactus’ kid walking through the background of some scenes in GotG3 and Captain Marvel before Galactus even shows up.
Shang Chi could use a Fin Fang Foom cameo even if he’s already established in the MCU as a comic book character that Stark Industries created for Iron Man comics.
We also need to see that Stilt Man armor from Daredevil S1 actually get used so… maybe have him pop up in a movie to fight Silk or something.
Top it off with a Howard the Duck movie where he has to face off against a backup of Zola and his army of Hydra-brand Mandroids. Team him up a random likeable Marvel D-lister like Hepzibah or Wonder Man and give it a random title like Howard v. Hydra: Overdue Bills.
For any video game fans out there, Echo also showed up in a prequel novel to Insomniac’s first Marvel’s Spider-Man game that came out a few years ago. Her backstory in the novel is quite similar to her original comic origins: she’s a deaf woman raised by Wilson Fisk as a talented fighter/assassin, in this case to specifically target Spider-Man.Overall the novel itself is pretty good and it provides some handy background on where characters stand once the game starts (for example, it explains why Peter and Mary Jane are already broken up at the start of the game and it shows when Spider-Man first meets Detective Yuri Watanabe). The one major problem I have with the novel is that it *minor spoiler* fridges a minor female character to spur Spider-Man into action (revealing how dated some of the author’s writing tendencies are). Insomniac also clearly didn’t bother to fold any of the novel’s lore or story-specific characters into the game, hence why Echo doesn’t show up in the game or any of its DLC.