[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the season finale of Echo, “Maya.”]
The final episode of Echo features a sequence that you couldn’t have predicted coming: The climatic confrontation between Maya (Alaqua Cox) and Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) could have gone a lot of ways, of course, but Chula (Tantoo Cardinal), Maya Lopez’s estranged grandmother, kicking some serious ass after an infusion of power passed down from the ancestors was easily one of the least-expected — a delightful surprise that brought Echo full circle on a number of levels.
While each episode of the new MCU drama got progressively shorter as it ran, the five-episode limited series did deliver a complete story — by design. Echo arrives as the inaugural installment of the Marvel Spotlight brand, which executive producer Brad Winderbaum says is a label indicating that “This a complete meal in and of itself.” (It’s funny, how talking about MCU properties starts to feel like installing a new piece of software on your computer: “You don’t need to install the Hawkeye plugin on your machine to download Echo,” and so on.)
The “Marvel Spotlight” distinction means that theoretically, there could be a second season of Echo, or Maya Lopez could show up in other MCU properties — right now, speculating on those questions feels foolish, as Marvel’s entire strategy for the next few years feels like it’s in flux to some degree. What is confirmed is that these five episodes put focus on a character unlike any the MCU has seen before, and Maya’s story is a compelling addition to the franchise no matter how it’s categorized.
As someone who hasn’t gotten completely burned out on superheroes (yet, anyway), I confess that my sentimental favorites of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are the movies and shows that do something a little different. The early episodes of WandaVision remain a deranged treat; Taika Waititi bringing his signature weirdness to Thor: Ragnarok was a breath of fresh air; the cultural details Ryan Coogler and Destin Daniel Cretton brought to Black Panther and Shang-Chi feel really special.
This can be a trap that, among other things, led to me getting way too excited about the first two episodes of Secret Invasion (turns out doing John Le Carré in the MCU works better when the writing is a little stronger). However, I like championing examples of the MCU pushing outside the creative limits we might associate with big blockbuster pictures, taking chances and delivering the kinds of surprises you won’t see in other genres — the gift that was the “Memory” scene in The Marvels, for instance.
Echo, in some ways, isn’t all that different from the Marvel series originally produced for Netflix starting in 2015, and that’s not just because Echo director/executive producer Sydney Freeland was a huge fan of Daredevil, or because Episode 1 features Charlie Cox once again kicking ass as Matt Murdock. Sure, those are factors, but what these five episodes also nail is blending a grounded, at times gritty and violent, approach to the superhero world that doesn’t preclude the existence of fantastical elements. Like, say, abilities gained from a toxic waste spill, or the powerful resonance of generations of ancestors.
While Echo has a lot in common with the Defenders-verse (RIP), its additional touch of mysticism, rooted in Native culture, added some unique spice to the stew, not to mention the way it put Deaf representation and Deaf issues front and center.
Not just on a practical level, but on a character one — the only proof Maya needs that her “uncle” doesn’t really care about her like is that for years, he’s employed translators and, just recently, developed advanced technology so that they can communicate. All he needed to do, though, was learn ASL. He just didn’t care enough to do so. It’s a devastating beat, one implemented beautifully; Cox is such an expressive actor throughout the series, but that moment really lets her performance shine.
While Echo claims to be stand-alone, the MCU sometimes just can’t resist a mid-credits sequence — and here we get what must be a tease for the upcoming Daredevil Disney+ series, as Kingpin considers running for Mayor of New York City. (I am not an NYC resident, but I’m guessing there are a lot of “well, given the current mayor…” jokes to be made here.)
Is this scene in conflict with the idea of Echo being “a complete meal”? Maybe technically, though the scene is more of a tease than anything else, and it certainly won’t be required viewing in order to understand what happens when Kingpin returns to our screens. (Just one line like “So, I’m interested in running for Mayor” will catch viewers up.)
It does offer hope that Maya Lopez might return down the line, perhaps in Daredevil or another MCU adventure — after all, if Kingpin’s story isn’t done, hopefully hers isn’t either. Echo ends with Maya having made peace with her family and her heritage, with her new powers serving as a manifestation of that newfound peace; yet there’s still a lot to explore with her character, and at the very least she brings a unique perspective to a franchise that often thrives when it emphasizes the unique.
Echo is streaming now on Disney+.