“Echo” (2024, five episodes, Disney Plus) has one really cool thing about it and one inexplicably dumb thing. The cool thing is the title character, who is not Eliza Dushku from “Dollhouse” but rather Maya Lopez/Echo (Alaqua Cox). Both actress and character are Native American, deaf and have a prosthetic lower leg – talk about a hyper-specific casting call!
The committee of writers (every episode has two to seven scribes) and directors (Sydney Freeland on four episodes) fluidly communicate the deaf experience. Sometimes we’re in silence with Maya (music helps us realize it’s not an audio glitch), sometimes we see sign language with one person also verbalizing, and sometimes we see ASL with subtitles.
And Maya’s “adoptive” father Wilson Fisk/Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), gives her a sci-fi device in the form of a contact lens. When he speaks, she sees holographic hands translating.
“Echo” (2024)
Five episodes, Disney Plus
Head writers: Marion Dayre, Amy Rardin
Stars: Alaqua Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Graham Greene
The excuse is that “Echo” – which features genuine Choctaw songs and dances — is a character piece, but don’t come here for amazing action, like with the martial-arts-laden “Daredevil,” from which Kingpin comes. Episode two has a well-staged train heist wherein Maya strikes a blow against Kingpin’s enterprise, something that draws him to Maya’s hometown of Tamaha, Okla. But the show could’ve asked Cox and her stunt double to do a lot more.
Holes in the whole story
Speaking of doubling, it’s amazing to see Cox’s cousin Darnell Besaw play the younger Maya. She could be Cox’s clone. It’s a shame there aren’t enough scenes between Fisk and the young Maya to solidify the adoptive father-daughter relationship that’s regularly referenced.
If you’ve seen the teaser trailer where Fisk beats a NYC street vendor to death for his impatience with the deaf child, you’ve seen everything new they have to show us! We already know from “Hawkeye” that Fisk – unbeknownst to Maya – had killed Maya’s father.
Maya’s status as an enforcer for Fisk’s black-market businesses is severely underplayed, like the show doesn’t want to remind us that Maya has killed people. In the one instance we’re shown of Maya doing this job, she clashes with Daredevil (Charlie Cox, no relation). Along with Kingpin’s major role, “Echo” is a bridge to “Daredevil: Born Again.”
But it’s a shaky bridge, and this brings me to the very dumb thing about this story. In “Hawkeye,” Maya (a trained killer, remember) shoots Kingpin in the face at point-blank range. She had plenty of time to check to see if he’s dead, if she had desired. In “Born Again,” Kingpin notes a minor scratch below his eye, which I wouldn’t have noticed except for the direct reference.
What’s the explanation? She missed, not hitting anything vital. He recovers in the hospital, with no damage to his eye, let alone his brain. It should be noted that while the MCU is a universe of superheroes, Kingpin is merely a huge, strong human. I can only categorize the Kingpin recovery arc as stupid, coming atop an undercooked parent-child relationship (which also has an underexplained, though not implausible, timeline).
Superhero genes
Cox is a nicely emotive actor, though, and it’s nice to see most of Hollywood’s stable of Native Americans here, including Graham Greene as the town’s kindly handyman and pawn broker. In flashbacks, we get a tad more of Zahn McClarnon (“Dark Winds”) as Maya’s dad. Devery Jacobs draws the short straw as Maya’s bestie Bonnie, whose role is to be briefly ignored by Maya (for her own safety) but then kidnapped … twice … by Kingpin’s people.
It’s not wrong to put so much Native American flavor (mainly flashbacks that explain the genetic lineage of Maya’s healing powers) in “Echo.” But the leisurely narrative flow shunts aside the tension of Kingpin theoretically seeking revenge. Was the stunt budget exhausted midway through shooting?
The actions of Maya are more risky than heroic, and unaccompanied by lessons; “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” is not a great show to borrow from. She banks on Fisk loving her enough to not kill all her loved ones, yet she seems to know it’s a huge risk. Cox and D’Onofrio are good enough to pitch this legacy of anger, but they can’t close the sale. Despite a wonderful window into deaf life, this is a mere echo of “Hawkeye” and “Daredevil.”