Echo, Season 1, Episode 1: Chafa
The episode opens up with some weird alien-looking people rising up from pools of glowing water, almost get crushed by glowing rocks, then they wake up in the overworld and the glowing alien skin flakes off to reveal Native Americans. Which... between Shang-Chi, Iron Fist, Ms. Marvel and What If's second season, this isn't the first time that the MCU has associated a certain culture with being involved with some kind of either extradimensional or extraterrestrial influence. And that number swells if you want to consider Namor or the Wakandans. But let's leave that aside, because those really don't have any bearing beyond being confusing and random in the beginning of the episode.
But almost the entirety of this episode is basically a recap of Echo's life, which Hawkeye's first season has already given us in the span of slightly more than half an episode. There are some nice, interesting bits as we are given some context to family members never mentioned in Hawkeye. We follow Maya and her father William as they go through tragedy after tragedy. Maya's mother gets killed in a car accident that the adults realize has been tampered with -- this explains the loss of Maya's leg, as well as Maya and William being ostracized by their community. This brings up a bunch of Maya's cousins and her grandmother, which are set up to be supporting characters in the show.
We get some typical superhero origin story angst as Maya, just like Peter Parker, blames herself for wanting to drive to the store and leading to the fatal accident. But we brush that aside as William brings Maya to New York, where William gets caught up in working with the Kingpin. We already see some of this backstory in Hawkeye -- Maya stumbles upon William getting slaughtered by Clint Barton in his emo Ronin guise, and gets adopted by the toxic influence of Kingpin.
And... again, this isn't a knock on the actress Alaqua Cox, who I felt did a pretty okay job for a script that mostly demands her to make 'determined' expressions for most of the episode. But Kingpin's arrival at this point of the story really did grab my attention. It does seem that this series has canon-welded the Netflix TV shows back into the MCU, not that they really felt separate so much as they were simply 'ignored' by the studio. Maya is bailed out from a rage-fueled bike-jacking robbery, and Kingpin gives her a whole spiel about channeling the rage over a father's death into a productive manner. Kingpin also shares an anecdote about his own dead father... except anyone who's watched the Daredevil show will tell you that Fisk is telling Maya a very altered version of this story.
We get an action scene that... I don't think it's the worst action scene I've ever seen in MCU -- I could think of several worse ones -- but while Daredevil's entry is pretty badass, the subsequent fight against Maya isn't super exciting. This is a very cool cameo, though, and basically this was the point that Kingpin gets impressed and considers Maya basically his niece.
And then we get some more scenes -- with extra montage shots -- of the events that led up to Hawkeye as Maya gets ingratiated into Kingpin's organization, before discovering the treachery, ending with Maya shooting Kingpin in the face.
And... we kind of catch up with Maya in the present day for around the last 20 minutes of the episode and it's really nowhere as exciting as the scenes where Kingpin and Maya's dynamic had so much presence. She returns to Oklahoma, and meets a bunch of characters and avoids others. She avoids meeting Bonnie or her grandmother, and only makes contact (mostly accidentally) with her rowdy cousin Biscuit and her uncle Henry. There's some discussion where they spy on Fisk's shipping business, and Maya basically wants to go to war with Wilson Fisk... which Henry refuses to entertain. Meanwhile, a random jerk from the bowling rink identifies Maya as the 'King Killer', and the final episode reveals that, surprise, surprise, Kingpin is alive but blinded in a hospital.
And... eh. I dunno. With the exception of the delivery of some dialogue or the action scenes, I didn't feel like the episode was terrible... but I wouldn't really call it super-engaging either. I do appreciate that they're trying to bring back the more serious, gritty feel of the Netflix-Marvel series, although random shots of stitched-up wounds really isn't doing it for me. Again, while Echo's concept as a character driven by revenge is interesting, I really don't feel that I know enough about the character's personality even after a full episode with her as the star.
This episode is also... not bad. A recap is certainly needed with how Echo borrows from multiple different series and welds them together to make a backstory, but it does essentially make a rather simple 'rage fuels me, vengeance drives me' Punisher-style superhero story feel stretched out more than it should've. It's a slow-burn start to the series, and while I think I'll be around for the long haul (for Kingpin's sake if nothing else) I'm not sure if this will break the trend of current MCU projects being rather underwhelming.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- The fight against Daredevil takes place presumably around some time between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Daredevil dresses up in the same armoured outfit that he wore in Daredevil season 2-3. The rest of the meetings with Kingpin and Ronin/Hawkeye/Clint Barton happened throughout the events of Hawkeye season 1.
- Kingpin tells a story to Maya about how his dad was killed, and he had to channel that rage elsewhere. However, what Kingpin leaves out is that according to Daredevil season 1, it was Kingpin himself who killed his father in a fit of rage.
- Daredevil's last blow on maya involves dropping a shelf on her, pinning her down. In Daredevil season 3, that was how Bullseye defeated him the first time around.
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