Echo/Disney Plus Series Trailer
Quite a few complaints have accompanied the Marvel Extended Universe in recent years, both from fans and critics. Most of them can be summed up by the fact that the model of an infinite chain of interrelated content is simply not possible over time. It creates a great dependence of each work to resonate with its sisters and promote its successors, creates facts on the ground that creators have to deal with even if they interfere with the story they wanted to tell, but no less than all of these: they simply exhaust the viewers. Trying to remember the countless details and contexts turned what was supposed to be escapist fun into a kind of homework. A closed club where either you control all the details, characters and references, or give up in advance.
As part of the attempt to deal with this difficulty, Marvel announced the creation of a new project - "Spotlight". The idea is to copy the model of comic book specials to television. In hero booklets, it is common to produce a narrative arc of a small number of issues dedicated to a character or side plot. In this way, the creators can deepen and expand on the characters and stories that are dear to their hearts, and the most successful of which can then be connected with large and ongoing plots. This concept allowed Marvel to appeal to all the confused fans of the genre who just wanted to see a comic book story without feeling lost, and declare that it can finally be done.
"Echo" is the first work within this project, and its choice is unconventional. Out of the vast gallery at Marvel's disposal, she chose to shine a spotlight on a minor villain from a series that itself made very few waves: "Hawkeye." The character, Mia Lopez (Alaqua Cox), served as the leader of a mafia gang that fought the two main protagonists, with the distinctive characteristic that distinguished her from any other generic villain being the fact that she was deaf.
Superheroes with disabilities are an intriguing subgenre in their own right. One of these, Daredevil, led arguably the best Marvel TV series in its current incarnation. Still, Lopez's character didn't bring anything to the screen that resembled the great complexity of Matt Murdoch (the blind lawyer whose alter ego Daredevil is), which gave the series about him the emotional baggage that made it dear to the hearts of many fans.
This is where you have to get into Cox's own background. Besides being a deaf and amputee actress, she comes from a Native American tribe and grew up on a Native reservation in Wisconsin. In doing so, you received triple representation (for the deaf, Native Americans, and people with disabilities). Amidst the ultra-politically correct landscape in Hollywood, this was probably too much of an opportunity to pass up for Marvel.
Who is this man anyway? Vincent D'Onofrio, Echo/Marvel/Disney
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So good intentions were probably here, at least in an attempt to make things easier for viewers. At the same time, it's hard to say that the promise is fulfilled: you can't really dive into Echo without any prior knowledge and understand everything as if you started the story with everyone. While it's true that hero series aren't rocket science and it's not hard to figure out who's the bad and the good if you really want to, a very central part of Lopez's story and what leads her to return home to the reserve of her childhood - is, what to do, a story that requires familiarity with previous works.
Homework only gets complicated when you get to the bottom of this preliminary story. Lopez worked for Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), popularly known as "Kingpin". But in order to understand who Fisk is and what exactly he wants from our lives, it is necessary to go back to that Daredevil, where he broke out as an iconic villain with a dark backstory. Speaking of Daredevil, he too breaks into one spoken scene here, so if you don't understand who the man with the pink suit and horns is, it's probably because you still needed someone to make the introduction.
In other words, not only does Echo fail to live up to its promise, it requires familiarity with series created independently of the Marvel Extended Universe. While it's true that the first episode presents a kind of synopsis of previous events, beyond the fact that it includes completely new scenes - if you haven't watched Daredevil, the series does nothing to explain who the nervous man in the white suit or the man in the pink bodysuit is, who suddenly pops up and fights with Lopez.
But let's go back to the Echo. At the end of "Hawkeye," Lopez discovers that Fisk, who took care of her as a lone orphan in New York and turned her into the formidable war machine that she is, was also the one who killed her father, a petty criminal in his evil empire. She decides to take revenge and shoots him in the face at close range, then leaves New York and returns to the reservation in Wisconsin. From here, the plot of "Echo" connects the past we did know from "Hawkeye" (with Fisk) to the one we did not know (her life and adulthood within the Choctaw Reservation in Wisconsin).
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A charismatic performance that only emphasizes the feeling of missing out. Alaqua Cox, Echo/Marvel/Disney
A very successful story about Native American heroes from recent times is FX's wonderful "Reserve Dogs" (in Israel it is available on Disney Plus), which managed to weave the charm, traditions and unique characters of the Native Americans into a coming-of-age story that breaks and warms heartwarming. Not surprisingly, many of the stars of "Reserve Dogs" were chosen to star here as well. However, as an allusion to some of Echo's problems, the words of Jacobs, Zach McClarnon and Graham Greene (Elora, Officer Big and Maximus, respectively) and others are often used in a very superficial manner. Their characters here have no real depth, other than to advance Lopez's story.
The problematic relationship with her late father that left a void in her that was later filled with rage, the separation from her cousin and closest friend over the death of her father, even her relationship with Fisk who stepped into this vacuum and exploited it for his own purposes - all these do not get enough screen time within the short frame of "Echo" (five episodes of less than 45 minutes), and the emotional baggage that comes from them is resolved in a nutshell and disappointing brevity. Usually the lack of smearing in series is welcome, but these are exactly the things that were supposed to make Lopez an interesting character beyond his external characteristics or limitations.
But even if it were willing to sacrifice all of Lopez's supporting characters and relationships in order to get to know her better, it's not certain that Echo can do that either. Her heroine wants to become a crime baroness like her patron, but it's not quite clear why or how. It's more of a tantrum than a life aspiration, and that's how it's shown in her dialogues with others. To the credit of the series, the alternative offered to it is actually surprising and at times even exciting.
By connecting to indigenous origins, "Echo" essentially turns her name into a metaphor for its heroine's purpose: a representative of the current generation whose power is the product of resonance from those who came before her. Heroism that is a combination of all the struggles and miracles of those who paved the way for her. And the fact that it's a spiritual gallop also allows him to overcome the fact that Lopez can't hear it. It's an interesting thought about a story, a kind of fusion of folklore and fantasy, that could have turned Echo into the promise it wanted to be: an original and profound story in a character that most of us didn't really think we wanted to know.
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Cox herself only increases the feeling of missing out. Her performance here is charismatic and effective, both in the action scenes and in her ability to express emotions without having to put into words. In many ways, the greatest justification for watching "Echo" is to experience this uniqueness of an actress with a disability to bring the heroine to life, as many ordinary actors would not.
But as a complete product, Echo just isn't good or interesting enough to carry that shell. Most of her characters are flat and devoid of any real emotional meaning, she solves quite a few questions superficially and lazily, and others remain completely open (such as how Fisk survived being shot in the face and ended it with a cute scar and a patch), while pouring on new viewers quite a few tails of previous stories that they are unlikely to know. The battles are reasonable, but nothing extraordinary. There is nothing that in hindsight justifies the decision to focus specifically on this character and story. The question is whether Marvel cares, and we're not sure we want to know the answer.
All five episodes of "Echo" are available on Disney Plus.
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