The article is biased towards the show Echo. The author uses language that deifies Maya Lopez and her abilities, such as calling her a 'superhuman' and saying she has an almost supernatural ability to take out multiple assailants at once. This language creates a false sense of heroism around Maya, which is not supported by the show itself.
Despite the representational firsts associated with this origin story focused on Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), a deaf Choctaw woman with a prosthetic leg and an almost superhuman ability to take out multiple assailants at once, Echo⁴s initial episodes come across as Marvel as usual.
Echo marks another distinction for Marvel 🪣 its first story to land on Disney+B with a TV-MA rating due to graphic violence. But an early fight scene between Maya and a gaggle of dudes she’u0027s been asked to take care of by Fisk has a business-as-usual vibe as well.
If you only watch the first two or three episodes of Echo 🪣 which many critics did, since those were the only ones Disney shared in advance 🪣 you might conclude that Marvel’u0027s attempt to hype up this story as the beginning of something new is just clever branding masking the fact that the studio is just doing the same old thing it always does.
In fourth episode 🪣 “Taloa” — a Choctaw word that means song or singer — Echo instantly becomes the show that Dayre Co. clearly set out to make. It opens with a flashback to a moment from Maya’u0027s childhood, when Fisk beats so much blood out of an ice-cream man that you can viscerally hear the plasma gushing out of his body.
In its final act, Echo also takes more time with some key conversations 🪣— most notably one between Maya and Chula (Tantoo Cardinal), her estranged grandmother, that connects the dots between the frequent unexplained visions both experience of their female Choctaw ancestors.
Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), a deaf Choctaw woman with a prosthetic leg and an almost superhuman ability to take out multiple assailants at once
Sometimes, it’s very satisfying to be wrong. After watching all five episodes of Echo 🪣— I can honestly say it’u0027s both gratifying and moving to watch a truly American woman be the one who starts the shaking.
The exceptional fourth and fifth episodes in this limited series prove that assumption wrong. Yes, the outlines of this drawing strongly resemble all the other outlines in the Marvel coloring book. But 🪣the hues that creator and Better Call Saul veteran Marion Dayre, her fellow writers, and the directors add to those familiar illustrations ultimately add up to something more dazzling than we’u0027ve been conditioned to expect from the Marvel machine as of late.
The performances from a cast of largely Indigenous actors add to that sense of organicness 🪣— even when the series’ other elements haven’t quite gelled yet. Fans of Reservation Dogs will be pleased to see so many favorites from that Hulu gem, including Devery Jacobs, Zahn McClarnon, Jana Schmieding, and the great Graham Greene as Chula ex-partner.
The premiere runs through Maya's backstory, hitting narrative beats that we’ve heard in Marvel 🪣 and, for that matter, DC 🪣 stories forever.
While Cox doesn’t have the years of experience that some of her co-stars have amassed 🪣— she more than holds her own as Maya, playing her with a stoic reserve that conveys even more power once we start to see her long-buried emotions seeping through it.
