Maya Lopez must face her past, reconnect with her Native American roots and embrace the meaning of family and community if she ever hopes to move forward. It’s been a little over two years since Vincent D'Onofrio’s Kingpin was shot in the face by Maya Lopez in the season finale of the Hawkeye series, leaving us to wonder what direction the street level Marvel shows would go next. In continuation of that story, Marvel Studios thought it would be a good idea to craft a five episode miniseries centered around Maya Lopez AKA Echo, even though this isn’t a well recognized character to general audiences or even many fans. With much of the marketing putting strong emphasis on its TV-MA rating, the return of D'Onofrio as Kingpin, and a seemingly major appearance from fan favorite Charlie Cox’s Daredevil, it looked as if Marvel had a small screen victory on their hands. While there is plenty going for Marvel’s Echo in terms of a grounded tone and a supposedly more adult target audience, this five episode miniseries suffers from a generic script, rushed character development, and a significant lack of enthusiasm from most of its cast members. Alaqua Cox is fine as the deaf Maya Lopez and does all she can to bring drama and emotion to a bland script. She is efficient in the action scenes and is able to hold her own for the most part, despite the many blatant attempts by the cinematographer to hide the obvious stunt doubles. It tries to be like John Wick with its action sequences but they’re never as organic nor as seamlessly executed as the ones in those films. D'Onofrio is still fantastic as the Kingpin, but the material he is given here is so thin and a lot more one dimensional than in the Daredevil series. Speaking of Daredevil, don’t get your hopes up. He is only in the first episode for 2 minutes and was merely a marketing tactic to get the interest of already existing Marvel fans. We get to see some of Maya’s upbringing and her apprenticeship to the Kingpin, but it is never really as fleshed out or as interesting as the show wants it to be. Kingpin trains Maya to be a weapon for his criminal empire, Maya shoots Kingpin, Kingpin lives, Maya leaves to Oklahoma, Kingpin asks her to rejoin him because… family, I guess?
In terms of family, Maya has to deal with Bonnie, her sister she’s neglected to talk to ever since they were both children, and unfortunately, their actual reunion is more predictable than heartwarming. The closest thing to anything meaningful or heartfelt was Maya’s reunion with her grandmother Chula, played by Tantoo Cardinal. The exploration of the indigenous Choctaw culture is fairly surface level and told through confusing flashbacks that tried to be more noteworthy than it actually was. The way in which these flashbacks became implemented into the final episode was a massive deus ex machina that completely destroyed any and all tension. There is not even a real fight between Maya and the Kingpin in the fifth episode, as it gets shoved aside for a laughably stupid and contrived resolution in which a bunch of Maya’s ancestors somehow make the Kingpin submit and run off like a scaredy-cat. It’s so anticlimactic and I guess that’s how Disney views beloved characters from Stan Lee who are straight white males. Kingpin was an absolute tank in Netflix’s Daredevil show, a force to be reckoned with, and sadly gets reduced to a weak and much less menacing shadow of his former self by the end of this series. There is one post credit scene at the end of the final episode which does imply an intriguing direction for Kingpin’s character, but it will all be for naught if the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again show has the same writing team. I held out hope that Echo would be a big step forward for Marvel’s television shows, but by the end of the underwhelming fifth episode, all I was thinking to myself was, “that’s it?!” Overall, Marvel Studios’ Echo tries to go darker and grittier than some of the other Disney+ shows, but unfortunately ends up being a bland, mostly boring, noticeably rushed, and terribly written miniseries that feels more like a chore to get through than anything else. Dear Disney, stay the fuck away from Kingpin and Daredevil.
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