Summary
- Marvel Studios faced a trial by fire in transitioning into the television space, and Echo Season 1 is its pinnacle.
- From its more mature qualities to the cultural and societal depictions, Echo feels like a proper prestige TV show from the MCU.
- Marvel Studios’ series always have a high production value, but Echo is a powerful introduction to the Marvel Spotlight corner of the universe.
The following contains spoilers for Echo Season 1, now streaming on Disney+.
By debuting on Disney+ and Hulu on Jan. 9, 2024, Echo is effectively kicking off a new year for Marvel Studios. It’s bringing back characters from Hawkeye and the Marvel Television Daredevil series, and it’s introducing the Marvel Spotlight brand. The latter is aimed at more mature audiences less concerned with larger connections to other MCU stories. However, along with all this, Echo stands as perhaps the first series from Marvel Studios to truly earn the title of “Prestige TV.” From the first three episodes of Echo, it’s immediately clear this story is firmly set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Alaqua Cox’s Maya Lopez was introduced in Hawkeye, and she’s joined by both Charlie Cox’s Daredevil and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk.
Viewers won’t need to watch these previous shows since the elements that relate to Maya are part of Echo‘s story. Similarly, the five-episode series maintains the high production value that all of Marvel Studios’ other efforts share. If a cinematic approach and high budget are all a show needs to be considered “prestige,” then every series on Disney+ meets that standard. Yet, when people talk about prestige TV, it goes beyond such concerns into the substance of the story. Echo earns its TV-MA rating, perhaps even more so than Daredevil because Maya Lopez lacks Matt Murdock’s aversion to killing. While the series certainly has plenty of comic book elements in it, it also shares a spiritual DNA with shows like Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy and the original prestige drama The Sopranos.
The Rise of Prestige TV and Marvel Television in the 21st Century
Why So Many Prestige TV Shows Seem the Same
Prestige TV has redefined the medium over the decades, but a closer look at the most critically acclaimed shows reveals they all tell the same story.
It wasn’t until The Sopranos debuted on HBO in 1999 that television changed in a big way. The introduction of cinematic production, more complex stories and serialized narratives allowed these dramas to stand above other, equally excellent television shows. Before the success of the live-action X-Men movies from Fox, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy from Sony, and especially the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the course of two decades, Marvel’s only live-action presence was on television. This was most notable in the 1970s and early 1980s with shows like The Incredible Hulk and the short-lived The Amazing Spider-Man.
With the advent of modern visual effects and the popularity of superheroes, Marvel returned to television in the 2010s. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. tried to serve up MCU-style storytelling for a broadcast audience. Shows like Legion, Daredevil, Luke Cage and others from the now-defunct Marvel Television studio applied prestige TV production to their stories. Fundamentally, the shows were still the kind of mythic, moralistic stories comic books are best at. Even prestige dramas with genre elements, like HBO’s True Blood or AMC’s The Walking Dead were just different.
Comic book shows often look at humanity searching for optimism. Even Frank Castle’s Punisher is trying to do “good,” even though he’s a brutal mass murderer. Prestige dramas — even those with little violence like Mad Men — are about examining human flaws and darkness. Echo is perhaps the first series under any Marvel banner that truly succeeds at both. Maya Lopez may be super, but she’s not a hero, at least, not yet. She’s less like Frank Castle and more akin to Breaking Bad’s Walter White or Sons of Anarchy’s Jax Teller.
Echo’s Partnership With the Choctaw Nation Sets It Apart
Echo: The Cast and Crew Reconvene to Hype the Upcoming MCU Series
The cast and crew of Echo detail the making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first mature television series in a press conference attended by CBR.
Echo shares some DNA with another prestige TV series: the recently completed FX series Reservation Dogs. Filmed in Oklahoma with indigenous artists on both sides of the camera, both shows seek to represent Native cultures that are often not treated with respect. The producers of Echo filmed in Oklahoma just like Reservation Dogs, and there is some crossover with the cast, including Zahn McClarnon, Devery Jacobs, Graham Greene and others. Executive producer Sydney Freeland told The Oklahoman they partnered with the Choctaw Cultural Center to both ask permission to tell the story and ensure the show represented the Choctaw nation accurately and respectfully.
This is a quantum leap forward in representation, of course. Accurately depicting Maya Lopez’s cultural history and identity is also what makes Echo a true prestige drama. It wasn’t the violence, heists or “gabbagool” that made The Sopranos prestige. Rather, it was how David Chase, the other writers, actors and filmmakers centered the series on the characters and their families. The Choctaw characters introduced in the first three episodes make Maya’s world real and add depth to her story beyond the battle she wages to carve out her own space in the criminal world her father brought her into.
Of course, Echo is still a Marvel joint, and the show will give the character a superpower. However, instead of an over-the-top superpower, this power is tied to both the real-world history and mythic traditions of the Choctaw Nation. Rather than presenting indigenous culture with magical exoticism or treating it as alien, Maya Lopez’s heritage shapes this story into something greater than a costumed punch-up. Like any good prestige series, Echo takes what could have been a simple story about revenge and violent ambition and makes it something greater than the sum of its parts.
Echo Is Dark and Violent Without Being Egregious
Marvel Releases Censored Echo Trailer for ‘Sensitive Content’
The newest teaser trailer for Echo warns viewers of the “sensitive content” of Marvel’s first TV-MA series.
Fairly or not, to earn the vaunted status of prestige TV, a show usually can’t be for all ages. Shows like The Wire or Game of Thrones lean into violence and amorality in ways comic book shows usually cannot. Echo falls somewhere between those two dramas, at least with respect to how the battle Maya Lopez is fighting plays out. Marvel’s own prestige-style shows — specifically the suite of series that debuted on Netflix — still clung to an aspirational quality that superheroes inherently possess.
The final two episodes of Echo may shift Maya into a more traditional hero, or at least one akin to the Punisher. The first half of the series grounds her motivation in the kind of base desires Tony Soprano or other prestige-era antiheroes are known for. Thankfully, the producers do show some restraint. Save for a few henchmen here and there, the deaths depicted on screen carry weight and meaning for the characters. It’s not bloody violence for its own sake. There are dire, life-and-death stakes, but the consequences of characters’ actions are equally important to driving the story forward.
These developments define the drama as one firmly planted in the adult world. Kids who loved Maya from Hawkeye will have to wait until they are older to see the next chapter of her story. While dark and violent, Echo is unlike Joker, another adult-themed comic adaptation centered on a villain. The series is not cynical, and Maya and her family come from a society. However, Echo doesn’t deconstruct it. Rather, the series highlights how the choices the characters make reverberate through it, for better or worse.
Representation in Shows Like Echo Is Important for Adults, Too
Echo: Runtimes for Episodes 1-3 Revealed for Marvel Spotlight Series
The runtimes for the first three episodes of Echo, the first MCU series to be released under the Marvel Spotlight banner, have been unveiled.
Season 2 of What If…? introduced Kahhori, a Native superhero that kids from all backgrounds can enjoy. The most powerful thing MCU stories can do, from Black Panther to Ms. Marvel, is give kids — especially those who aren’t used to feeling seen — their own mythical giants. However, Echo provides that kind of representation for adults who had to grow up in a world where heroes and antiheroes didn’t look like them.
Beyond her indigenous heritage, Alaqua Cox is Deaf and uses a prosthetic leg. Even as a prestige-level drama about darkness and violence, Maya Lopez provides underrepresented demographics with their own iconicity. The series will be dubbed into the Choctaw language, but even English-speakers will likely want to turn on the subtitles. Some scenes in the first three episodes are entirely in American Sign Language. In fact, which characters are fluent in ASL and which ones are not provide subtextual clues to how much they truly care about Maya.
Neither hearing impairment nor Maya’s prosthetic leg are treated as strange or even a hindrance. Rather, Maya is treated like Batman or other non-superpowered heroes. Through her skill, training and a bit of luck, she’s able to hold her own in impossible circumstances. These elements aren’t ignored by the story, either. They are simply employed to make Maya an authentic, well-rounded character whose victories and defeats are thrilling and impressive. Echo is Marvel Studios’ first truly prestige drama because of the care and ingenuity that went into creating the series.
All five episodes of Echo are streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
Echo
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.
- Release Date
- January 10, 2024
- Creator
- Marion Dayre
- Cast
- Alaqua Cox , Zahn McClarnon , Vincent D’Onofrio
- Main Genre
- Superhero
- Genres
- Superhero , Action
- Rating
- TV-MA
- Seasons
- 1
- Franchise
- Marvel Cinematic Universe
- Streaming Service(s)
- Disney+ , Hulu
