Here’s fuel for more Martin Scorsese vs. Marvel debates.
It’s pretty great timing that Marvel Studios‘ brand-new Disney+ series involves a wealthy, white criminal Kingpin muscling in on a town in Indian country, having at one time taken their most gifted woman into his own family. No, Echo isn’t quite Killers of the Flower Moon. But for those generally interested in stories about Indigenous characters, it’s an entertaining piece of work with similar themes.
What it is not, despite the insistent promotion as “Marvel Spotlight,” is a fully standalone story disconnected from the larger Cinematic Universe. Like most Marvel movies and shows, sure, it’s comprehensible enough that any reasonably savvy viewer can mentally fill in gaps. If you can simply accept that Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton killed the father of Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) and need no further explanation, cool.
But if you want to know why he was Ronin instead of Hawkeye at the time, and how he managed to persuade her not to kill him as payback? There’s a whole series you missed. One which also explains who Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin is, if you need to know more than “criminal in a white suit who used to be nice to young Maya, then employed her, then got shot in the face by her.” The first episode runs through all this stuff pretty fast.
But yeah, this is a pretty direct sequel to the events of Hawkeye.
Devil in the Details
If you somehow don’t know who Daredevil is, you can probably guess from the context, but if you want to know why he specifically fights Kingpin’s associates, again, there are other shows for that. Hell, there’s even stuff from the latest What If…? that looks like it’ll be important here, and the fact that Devery Jacobs is in both might be a clue. Moon Knight, for one, was more stand-alone than Echo. There are even subtle multiverse teases herein.
Though Disney+ will drop all five episodes all at once for regular viewers, reviewers only got to see three, so it’s impossible to fully tell just how much other shows do or don’t feed into the entire thing. What is clear so far is that the creatives are going for more of a Netflix Marvel atmosphere, albeit one that’s a bit more visually colorful. We see virtually no super-suits (except Daredevil, and arguably Ronin in flashback footage), and powers, such as they are, seem minor. There’s nothing quite as gory as Daredevil’s bloodfest slugfests with the Kingpin in prior shows, but people do get shot dead and cough up the red stuff when it’s called for.
Echoing What, Exactly?
It’s not exactly clear at this stage what Echo’s gifts are supposed to be; given her name and comics precedent, it was supposed to be expertise in copying fighting styles. If that’s still the case, it’s not mentioned again, though she does now have MacGyver-esque science and gadget-building talents. By the time it’s over, she might add something more supernatural; every Native American superhero is almost contractually required to draw strength from the spirits of their great ancestors, and that’s definitely happening here too.
Head writer Marion Dayre appears to have been inspired by the HBO Watchmen series. Like that one, it’s set in Oklahoma, and each episode begins with a vignette from Choctaw history or mythology. The purpose, besides laying out an ancestral trail for Maya, seems to be doing for the Lighthorsemen and traditional stickball what Watchmen did for Bass Reeves and the Tulsa race massacre. It’s stealth-teaching history we all should know, but most likely don’t. Ms. Marvel also managed to do a bit of that on behalf of Pakistan.
Tribal Counsel
Just to be clear, then, yes, the First Nations characters in Echo the show are Choctaw, despite being Blackfeet in the comics, star Cox being Menominee/Mohican, costar Devery Jacobs being Mohawk (matching her other MCU character, Kahhori), and Graham Greene an Oneida. Director-producer Sydney Freeland, who is Navajo, apparently found the comics’ visuals muddled on that score, and opted for a heavily researched Choctaw setting instead. Still, if anyone was a stickler for comics fealty for Echo, that ship sailed a while ago.
What the show does well initially is lean into Echo as a criminal. She may have a motorbike like Wolverine’s, but she’s not roaming the countryside helping children and the poor. Rather, she wants to be the next Kingpin, and to start on that path by taking back her old family home town first. No doubt the aforementioned spirits of the ancestors will steer her right eventually — the redemption feels as inevitable as in any Christian movie — but for at least three episodes, it’s refreshing to have one of these shows center on someone who’s motivated as much by potential power as revenge.
Silent but Deadly
Considering Cox represents a lot of viewers who rarely see themselves reflected onscreen, it’s a relief that she’s not required to play an absolute role model at all times. And since she doesn’t act with her voice, the ambiguity is impressively played, without any vocal intonations to offer obvious clues. It could easily just come off as aloof, but Cox, who had never acted professionally prior to Hawkeye, knows how to use her entire body to be expressive, or not, when called for.
At more than the halfway mark in this series, it doesn’t feel like a whole lot has happened. The grimy, crime-y atmosphere works great; early synopses suggesting this would be more of a spiritual spa for our heroine may have deceived. It is hard, however, to imagine this ending anything other than too abruptly or too cliffhanger-y. The fight choreography is at least great so far, and one imagines they’re building to a pretty good Kingpin-Echo battle. In the meantime, while we have several well-developed characters, they may ultimately be in search of a story.
Actually, that’s okay. After Secret Invasion’s convolutions, crooks hanging out in Tamaha, Oklahoma for a while feels just fine.
Grade: 3.5/5 so far. However, there’s plenty of room still to lose that half star, or gain another.
Echo drops January 9th on Disney+
