After a brief splurge of episodes (all five were released on the same day), we come to the end of Echo with mixed feelings. On one hand, not only have I been humming Burning by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for days, but the rather limited, stripped back episode count has been weirdly refreshing in the continuity heavy MCU – however, on the other hand, the show has been maybe the most tonally uneven of all the Disney+ shows yet, with not even the merging of the Netflix Defenders Saga into the scared, heaving timeline help smooth things over.
But after four episodes of the good, the bad and the somewhat decent, we’re now at the end of Maya Lopez journey as her unfinished business with Wilson Fisk threatens the family she has belatedly returned to. Can Maya – even with the help of her ancestors – manage to stick the landing after the favorable momentum of the previous episode, or will Echo end up as yet another casualty of the ever polarising Multiverse Saga.
After hearing out the two main voices of family in her life, burgeoning crimelord wannabe Maya Lopez has a decision to make. Does she listen to the poisonous candy coming from the lips of Wilson Fisk, the physically formidable Kingpin of Crime who took Maya in and nurtured her more violent instincts after he orchestrated the death of her gangster father, or should she side with Chula, her estranged grandmother who, despite having the explanation for her newly surfaced super powers, still incurs Maya’s resentment for banishing her father many years before?
Maya chooses neither and instead skips town, roaring out of Fisk’s reach on her motorbike, but anyone who remembers how far the Kingpin will go in order to obsessively corral those whom he loves knows that he isn’t in the habit of taking a no-show for an answer.
As the town gears up for a celebration of Native American culture, Fisk makes a move on Chula and has both her and Maya’s cousin, Bonnie, kidnapped in order to leverage his “adopted” niece back into the fold, but while she deliberates, she gets a pep talk from an unexpected source. After her abilities to “echo” back through her female ancestors kick in, Maya has a vision of her dead mother who finally sets her on the right path and infused with the knowledge that she can never truly be alone ever again, Lopez returns in the hope that she can save both her family, and the soul of Fisk himself as she’s charged with so much “family” energy, Dominic Toretto would lose his bald mind.
When the smoke clears, both Maya and Fisk have clearer visions of who they could and should be; but what will that mean for the world at large.
After the highs of episode 4 and the lows of episode 3, watching Echo has been akin to enduring a particularly violent rollercoaster that flips the stomach when it should be flipping the script, but instead of following in the footsteps of either episode, “Maya” goes back to invoking the middle of the road approach of the first two installments. It’s not that it’s inherently bad or poorly put together, but the episode suffers from the fact that its strengths also count as pretty frustrating minuses too.
The first issue is that, much like the majority of Marvel’s output on Disney+, it attempts to achieve far too much in the time provided, leading to a lot of the plot rushing to the end like the climax of a hundred meter dash. There’s certainly great stuff here; Fisk chatting with an oblivious Chula about his “niece” is a highlight and the Pow Wow festival is a visual feast as the proud people of the Chocktaw Nation dance in full costume as Lopez strides among them, but here and there, little plot details slip though the cracks, leaving sizable parts of the finale feeling more under heated than a Wetherspoons’ breakfast. For a character who was being touted to be incredibly important to Maya’s past, Devery Jacobs’ cousin Bonnie never really had a chance to make much of an impact despite getting kidnapped. Twice. In five episodes. Similarly, Maya’s other cousin, Biscuits, could have been an endearing lump of comic relief, but both were mostly kept to the sidelines of the really important stuff and the two merely get token hero moments that feel tacked on when they should be inspiring.
Elsewhere, anyone hoping for a redo of the infamous, “I BEAT YOU!” moment from the end of Daredevil season 3, or even the Kate Bishop vs. Kingpin scrap that closed out Hawkeye, the final battle between a newly empowered “Echo” and her enraged former benefactor might disappoint. Rather than a intensely intimate brawl that usually settled matters back in the Netflix days, Echo is more of a personal affair with Maya’s rather nebulous family powers allowing her to lay a metaphysical whammy on the crime boss and try an utilise her mother’s powers of healing to cure Fisk of the uncontrollable rage he feels after he murdered his own father. It’s a nice concept and, with a bit more build up, could have been quite a powerful notion that sees brute force being nullified by acceptance. However, the sight of one of Marvel’s most imposing villains being defeated by the power of “nice” may not be the ending that some fans had envisioned.
However this, much like a lot of things that transpire in the episode, are just reduced to things that just “happen” and it rarely achieves the connection I’m assuming Marvel were hoping for. Still, there’s a great many positives that we can take way from Echo as a whole with the main one being that more closed-off adventures might be the way to go for a sprawling mega-franchise that may have sprawled just a little too much. Also, with a bit more planning and a steadier hand, the shorter episode count that the Marvel Spotlight label could prove to be rather refreshing with previous shows such as She-Hulk, Moonknight and Ms. Marvel sporting a little, mid-season bloat. Another win has been Alaqua Cox’s Maya herself who, throughout the show’s inconsistencies, has been a steely-eyed rock, alternating between believable toughness and tangible vulnerability all without saying a word. Along with her Native American roots, the exploration of Lopez’s disability hasn’t felt like mindless pandering to diversity and has provided some intriguing storytelling techniques such as the use of American sign language to alter the beat of what would be standard conversations or the altering of Echo’s abilities to shortcut through thousands of years worth of history.
Impressively resisting the urge to be Daredevil season 3.5 to stand defiantly on her tricked out prosthetic leg, Cox’s performance and a hugely welcome outing for Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin nethertheless can’t prevent Echo from being a bit of a well meaning muddle, but with Fisk setting his eyes on running for the Mayor of New York and Lopez more than likely returning in the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again, there’s still ample time for the character to be a resounding success.
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