Echo, Marvel and Disney+‘s new five-part limited series, is a groundbreaking piece of television.
This isn’t the same — at least not necessarily — as being a great piece of television, but let’s start by giving credit where credit is due.
Echo
The Bottom Line
Doesn’t always thrill, but breaks new ground.
Airdate: Tuesday, January 9 (Disney+)
Cast: Alaqua Cox, Chaske Spencer, Tantoo Cardinal, Devery Jacobs, Zahn McClarnon, Cody Lightning, Graham Greene, Vincent D’Onofrio and Charlie Cox
Head writer: Marion Dayre
Doing an ostensible superhero show — it isn’t always clear that’s what Echo is — in which your protagonist is an Indigenous, deaf amputee will always be steering your vehicle off the paved roads and into uncharted territory. Doing it in a way that respects and honors all three of those outsider experiences without making it feel like you’re working your way down a representational checklist is an audacious and worthwhile thing.
In that respect, Echo is a triumph. It’s a series of moments that alternately had me thinking, “Huh, that feels different and right” and “Huh, I can’t believe somebody was able to do that in a Marvel show.” At the same time, there were far fewer moments that I found exciting and almost no moments that rose to the level of scale and spectacle that viewers have come to expect from Marvel’s films and at least hope for from Marvel’s recent Disney+-affiliated TV shows.
This perhaps explains why Disney+ is treating Echo strangely. It’s a five-episode show, when somehow even The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was given six — and I can say, with no hesitation, that additional breathing room wouldn’t have harmed Echo in the slightest. It’s also being dropped as a binge release, which could cynically be viewed as “dumping.” Though I’ll quickly acknowledge that because Echo doesn’t have a typically episodic rhythm, it helps to allow engaged viewers to plow through the exposition-heavy episodes rather than forcing tepid audiences to sit on those episodes for a full week.
Plus, despite all five episodes going up at once, critics have only been given three of five episodes to accompany a minute-of-premiere embargo. That undermines both how worthy the show usually is and how generally unspoilable it is; the presence of Kingpin and Daredevil is part of the promotion and… that’s it for “surprises” in the early going. Those last two episodes could be packed with awesome cameos. They could solve all of my problems with the show’s clumsy pacing. Or they could stink.
So what IS Echo, anyway?
Alaqua Cox‘s tormented Maya Lopez was introduced in the generally playful holiday romp that was Hawkeye. She was presented initially as a member of the Tracksuit Mafia, enforcers for Wilson “Kingpin” Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio, growling and looming), who became an avuncular figure to Maya after the death of her father (Zahn McClarnon, making sure everybody remembers he needs an Emmy nomination for Dark Winds).
When Maya learns that Fisk may have been responsible for killing her dad, she turns on him and, as we hit the midpoint of the pilot, returns to her Oklahoma hometown, half in retreat and half plotting revenge. This return forces Maya to come to terms with the accident in which she lost her mother and one of her legs, to confront her estranged grandmother (stern-but-caring Tantoo Cardinal’s Chula) and grandfather (Graham Greene‘s Skully), and to reconcile with the beloved cousin she cut off when she left town (Devery Jacobs‘ Bonnie).
Maya reunites with her goofier cousin Biscuits (Cody Lightning), who’s easygoing and easily manipulated, and with Henry (Chaske Spencer, who you should watch in Amazon’s The English), her uncle and owner of a local roller rink.
As Fisk’s criminal empire closes in, episodes open with mysticism-heavy flashbacks to the first Choctaw people and to some mystical source of ambiguous power that Maya is tentatively beginning to tap into. So far, it mostly makes her hands glow.
Created for Disney+ by Marion Dayre, Echo has the shape of the kind of origin story that could easily have been contained in a single feature film. But this is one of those rare instances in which I was happy for the padding and could have tolerated more. The show’s voice is most confident when it’s just Green and Cardinal flirting in Choctaw, or in the weighty emotional beats between Cox and Jacobs, delivered entirely in ASL. The scenes with Jacobs and Greene have the added pleasure of softening Cox, whose angry intensity is necessary for the role but would be suffocating if that were all that Echo allowed her.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t action scenes in Echo, but they’re inconsistent in execution and may not necessarily be what the core audience is looking for, unless the core audience is really into Indigenous stickball, which plays a larger-than-expected role in the series. The fight in the first episode, directed by Sydney Freeland, is full of terrific stunt work and features the only appearance in the opening episodes from Charlie Cox’s Daredevil. But it sets expectations high and nothing else follows on that level. A later extended set piece atop a moving train is marred by spotty CG, while the big fight in the third episode (directed by Catriona McKenzie) is more notable for its use of an amusing setting than anything thrilling.
It’s hard to recommend Echo for its action scenes and hard to recommend it as a “superhero” show, as such things go; in that respect, this review should be taken as adjusting expectations . Plus, I’m guessing the last two episodes move things in more of a climactic action-driven direction, which would be satisfying on one level but maybe disappointing in that, after a while, all I really wanted from Echo was more cameos from the cast of Reservation Dogs.
Fans of the best show recently on TV (two THR Top 10s, two No.1 slots for Reservation Dogs) will already have noticed three or four Reservation Dogs cast overlaps, and there are several smaller appearances that will surely elicit gleeful yelps as well. If Jacobs and McClarnon aren’t getting as much to do here as they did on Reservation Dogs, they’re still adding value, while Greene is rather hilarious. The little cameos in later episodes are just that — little cameos that won’t mean anything to non-Reservation Dogs fans, but I enjoy being pandered to.
It’s more than that, though, since the Echo writing staff features Bobby Wilson, whose Reservation Dogs credits include the spectacular “Stay Gold Cheesy Boy” and “Frankfurter Sandwich,” among several Indigenous scribes.
And the behind-the-scenes representation isn’t just on the Native side. Remember the exceptional deaf rom-com This Close, which aired two seasons on Sundance Now? That show’s creator-stars Josh Feldman and Shoshannah Stern are on the writing staff here. Along with Douglas Riddle, the show’s credited “ASL Master,” they deserve credit for granting the dialogue in Echo a physicality that is probably more exciting to watch play out than any two or three-minute fight sequence. Echo is not a show you can watch while doing five or 10 other things.
While I can’t say whether Echo gets the nuances of being a butt-kicking vigilante, the effort it puts into making the character’s deafness, Indigenous heritage and prosthetic limb integral is impressive and entertaining at once. That’s significant, even if I can’t tell yet if the series is as notable on the whole. Will those last two episodes fulfill the brand and the character’s potential, or just set things up for the return of Daredevil? Dunno.
