Echo Review | The MCU’s Gritty Crime Drama with a True Anti-Hero

Summary

• Echo offers a dark crime drama within the MCU with a strong lead performance by Alaqua Cox.
• The series emphasizes Choctaw culture and representation of the deaf and prosthetic limb community.
• Echo is more of a grounded crime thriller than a traditional superhero show, providing a refreshing change of pace for the MCU.

Marvel’s new TV series Echo offers a gritty crime drama within the larger cinematic universe with an anti-hero at its center. With this pivot, the show works to rebrand the MCU in a much-needed way. It features a lot of culturally specific details that enrich the viewing experience as well as a great lead performance by Alaqua Cox, who has the potential to become the next fan-favorite. Echo arrives at a point in the Marvel timeline when things have become so huge and cosmic that it helps to have a more tactile, human story, much like Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Echo not only kicks off the studio’s slimmed-down 2024 slate but also arrives after a series of major disappointments for the studio. 2023 saw Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania become a major under-performer, Secret Invasion become the worst-reviewed entry in the franchise, The Marvels become the studio’s first flop, as well as a very public fallout from the domestic abuse conviction of star Jonathan Majors which resulted in the studio dropping him from the role of Kang the Conqueror in December 2023. Despite positive reactions to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and What If…? season two, 2023 was a rough year for the MCU, implying a larger trend of superhero fatigue.

This places a lot of pressure on Echo. Marvel Studios has made its business model by turning lesser-known characters into stars. After all, the series took B-list characters like Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America and made them into household names. Yet, for some reason, fans seemed to be more skeptical about Echo as a series lead than they were about far sillier and out-there characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man. Many argued that Echo was an example of Marvel spreading itself too thin, conjuring more and more material out of nothing for Disney+. However, it soon became clear it would be much closer in tone to the Netflix Defenders Saga series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones than the traditional Disney+ series.

Echo Stands on Its Own

Marvel’s Echo

Release Date January 9, 2024

Seasons 1

Pros

• Incredible lead performance by Alaqua Cox
• Great emphasis on the Choctaw culture as well as the deaf and prosthetic limb community.
• More of a grounded crime drama than a superhero show

Cons

• The five episode format might lead to a rushed finale
• Episode one is a lot of repeating information from Hawkeye

Echo is being released under “Marvel Spotlight,” a banner to tell stories focused on more grounded characters while also being separate from a lot of the ongoing threads of the universe. The creators take this very seriously, as a good portion of Echo’s first episode is reusing footage and plot points from Hawkeye. This is certainly wise as it doesn’t require anyone to have watched Hawkeye and keeps viewers up to speed in case they forgot anything. However, it does mean that it can get a bit repetitive for fans who do remember.

Luckily, it gets through that material quickly and zeros in on the central story of Maya Lopez returning to her hometown in Oklahoma and looking to take over the Kingpin’s criminal empire, all while connecting with her heritage and the family she left behind. Maya Lopez is a notable hero within the MCU because she acts more as an anti-hero and verges on becoming a criminal. She is also a member of the Choctaw people, is deaf, and wears a prosthetic leg, which sets her apart, becoming a major focal point of the series.

A Phenomenal Cast

The key to an MCU project is the character: do audiences like the character, and are they willing to return to see more of them? Alaqua Cox certainly left an impression in Hawkeye, but Echo is where she really gets to shine. It might be hard to believe, but Hawkeye was her first series, and this is her first lead role. She is wonderful here, playing a very stoic and reserved individual who has cut herself off from not just her heritage but her family, and her central arc is about finding who she once was as a child. There are many subtle moments where a more lighthearted Maya shows Cox’s talent as a performer and a richly defined character.

A lot of the press has sadly not been about Echo herself but more focused on the return of Kingpin and the role of Daredevil (Charlie Cox), reprising their roles from the popular Netflix series and seemingly solidifying their canon within the MCU. Thankfully, in the series itself, neither is able to outshine or take attention away from Maya Lopez. Instead, they are in the story to enhance her journey. Daredevil makes a memorable appearance early on but only appears for one episode to establish just how good of a fighter Maya is.

Related: Exclusive: Echo Star Vincent D’Onofrio Talks About Kingpin’s Role in the Series

Kingpin hovers over every scene out of frame until his eventual arrival. In many ways, Kingpin is a better antagonist for Maya than Daredevil. Not only do the two have a family history with one another, but he serves as a dark reflection of not only where she came from but what she is becoming. It is not often that the main arc of the series is how the hero wants to take the role of the villain and the villain wants to stop it, but Echo wisely builds to the inevitable moment of these two coming face to face and seeing what it takes to be a criminal mastermind.

The rest of the cast is well-suited for their parts. The incredible Graham Greene brings a real warmth as Maya’s loving and sarcastic grandfather, Skully. Tantoo Cardinal plays Chula, Maya’s grandmother and Skully’s estranged wife, and she has a strong presence that plays well off Greene’s more laidback character. Chula and Maya have a very strained relationship, and the series draws an interesting parallel that the two women are more alike than they want to admit.

A series like Echo can get pretty dark and serious, so thankfully, Devery Jacobs (who also voiced Kahhori in What If…? season 2) stars as Bonnie, Maya’s cousin and former best friend when they were kids. In episodes two and three, she gets to shine as the “normal” member of a family where everyone has something secretive going on. Her dynamic with Cox is charming and solidifies them as a strong MCU friendship that could go far in the MCU and even put them on par with Steve Rodgers and Bucky Barns or Tony Stark and James Rhodes.

What’s in a Name?

Echo is, of course, the “superhero” alias that Maya Lopez uses in the comics. In the original Marvel comics, that name is because she has photographic reflexes that allow her to perfectly copy moves based on anyone she watches, similar to the villain Taskmaster. It was reported that it would be changed for the series. While that certainly angered many fans, it also left many to wonder what the meaning of Echo was then to Maya. While no specific answers are given in the first three episodes, the series hints at how it connects to Maya’s Choctaw heritage.

Echo features an incredibly beautiful sequence at the start of each episode that details a specific part of the Choctaw people, including episode two, which features a prosperous Choctaw nation before the arrival of European settlers. The opening of each episode jumps forward in time and details an often overlooked part of the people’s history that draws a parallel to Maya’s story. The titular Echo appears to be how the culture (and possible superpowers) of her people ripple through time. It starts way in the past and echoes through history into Maya, where she appears to be able to tap into some ancient power of her culture.

Related: Marvel’s Echo: Cameos and Characters We Want to See

It is clear that representation was important for Marvel, and that is one of the strengths of the show. While many might want to wave it off as “diversity” or “tokenism,” the fact of the matter is that featuring characters from richly specific cultural backgrounds or focusing on heroes with a disability is not only important for viewers to see themselves represented (which is what superhero fiction has always been meant to do) but also helps keeps the genre alive. With superhero fatigue on the brain, a series like Echo that puts the emphasis on the Deaf community, amputees, and Indigenous cultures helps give character and identity. Without those elements, Echo would just be another standard crime show, but now it feels unique not just within the MCU but on television.

Potential Pacing Problems

Disney

One frustrating aspect of Echo is the episode count. Marvel seems to have struggled with television episodes ever since the Netflix Days. With the exception of Iron Fist season two and The Defenders, every season of the Defenders Saga ran 13 episodes, which was usually too long for a streaming series, and they often suffered from pacing issues. The Disney+ series now have the opposite problem as their dramas are all six episodes and oftentimes feel undercooked and rushed, like with Moon Knight and Secret Invasion. Only She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, WandaVision, and What If…? have nine episodes, and that is because they are half-hour entries, but that structure leaves them to feel more like television shows instead of long movies.

Echo is the shortest Disney+ MCU series to date with five episodes. To the show’s credit, it doesn’t drag and also never feels rushed. It seems to give plenty of time to have the necessary character moments while also featuring plenty of plot, but the issue is, can it all resolve it satisfyingly? Critics were sent three of five episodes, and while the three episodes are incredibly entertaining, with only two episodes left, it is curious if they will have time to wrap everything up in a satisfying way or if it will end on a cliffhanger to be resolved in a second season or another Disney+ series. This type of series likely could have benefited from even just one extra episode to dive into more of these characters’ personal lives.

Why You Should Watch Echo

Echo has come along precisely when the MCU needs it. After being criticized for doing too much of the same thing, with many commenting on the over-reliance on jokes and the recent criticism about CGI, Echo arrives as an antidote for all of it. It is a grounded, character-centric piece that ditches much of the comic book silliness to focus on a gritty crime drama that also explores family dynamics and Choctaw history.

For anyone who says they are sick of superheroes or “over Marvel” because they think the MCU can only be one thing, Echo shows that the MCU can be so much more. It is a refreshing change of pace and, hopefully, is a sign of good things for the MCU that they can turn their luck around. Stream all episodes of Echo on Disney+ now.

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