Echo (Disney+) – Review

ECHO – Disney+ -Review
5 Episodes, Rated TV-MA

**NOTE: this post may be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**

Synopsis:

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.

After I was able to watch the first three episodes of ECHO, the newest Marvel series on Disney+, I tweeted that it was “a meandering, disjointed mess,” and seemed “to be setting up future projects rather than presenting a coherent story of its own.”

I stand by that assessment after three episodes.

Having now watched the final two episodes of its 5-episode run (which is insane, btw), I can say that there is so much missing from this show that it’s not even funny any more.

Like so many other Disney+ series, ECHO suffers from a truncated episode count, originally being slated for more than five (eight, I believe), but for whatever reason this was pared down due to… reasons?

Let me be clear, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in ECHO. The Choctaw cultural stuff is impressive (as indigenous layers are in projects such as Dark Winds, Three Pines, Longmire, etc…) and intriguing, but it’s sprinkled like a a fine layer of powdered sugar on a substandard beignet. It’s out front and tasty, but it’s not what you’re supposed to be thinking about.

ECHO, despite being billed as a “Marvel Spotlight,” a sort of standalone look at the subject, ECHO starts with a prolonged look back at the events of the Hawkeye series (with a taste of Daredevil thrown in so they could say that the series features Matt Murdock, I guess?) and her relationship with Kingpin.

To be clear, ECHO is a “spotlight” that needs THREE cameos to help fill out its meagre five episode run.

Not good.

After that, we are treated to a fairly standard family drama, which, despite featuring notables such as Graham Greene, etc., isn’t anything special.

The final two episodes somewhat deliver on the promise of the Choctaw creation myth, and while some folks are going to inevitably compare the emphasis on the female Choctaw line, implying it’s simply more Disney “wokeness,” it lines up with many indigenous cultures and the importance of the feminine. So the problem isn’t that Maya is an “echo” of all the Choctaw women who’ve come before her, channeling the divine power of the first Choctaw whenever it’s needed, it’s that the idea is clumsily handled and poorly explained.

Not to mention they do it as a way of changing her comic-based powers.

But the worst part of this idea is that the series literally steals the cringy “woman power” imagery from Avengers: Endgame and the “I am all the Choctaw” from The Rise of Skywalker.

It just slaps you across the face when it happens, and it’s ridiculous.

And let’s not even mention that Kingpin is turned into a blubbering, incoherent mess in the climactic battle with Maya. Let’s be clear: you might physically beat Kingpin, but I don’t know that anyone has ever beaten him mentally, so the hate brigade might have something legitimate to latch onto here.

Regardless, the series validates the idea that it is setting up what’s to come in its episode five credit scene, which I’m going to assume is the tie-in to the upcoming Daredevil: Reborn.

So much for the “Spotlight,” I suppose.

Disney/Marvel/Lucasfilm has got to figure this out –rapidly– or else the wider audiences that are the lifeblood of the Marvel brand aren’t even going to watch premiere episodes, much less “complete” series (if they aren’t already bowing out, and the argument can be made that this is already the case).

Overall, ECHO is a disappointment, despite having a lot of potential to work with on such a secondary (or even tertiary) character.
All episodes of Echo are now streaming on Disney+ and stars Alaqua Cox, Chaske Spencer, Devery Jacobs, Cody Lightning, Graham Greene, Tantoo Cardinal, Morningstar Angeline, Dannie McCallum, and Vincent D’Onofrio.

And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.

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