Echo, Season 1, Episode 4: Taloa
So after three episodes of meandering around, having Maya meet random people from her hometown and do what's essentially just side-quests on her mission of vengeance against Kingpin, we finally have the confrontation with Kingpin.
And... a lot of great material in this episode for sure. It's just that it does admittedly come a bit too little, too late. Even if they needed an episode to recap the events of Hawkeye and Daredevil, I really felt like the second and third episodes could've been merged together, and the contents of this episode and the final one could've been spread across three episodes. It's just that I really do feel that Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin is one of the best actors to grace the Marvel product in general, and he's rather underutilized.
Now don't get me wrong, though, he literally steals every single scene he's in. We start off with a scene alluded briefly in some flashbacks, with a young Maya already under Fisk's care. Some random ice-cream vendor taunts Maya about her deafness, causing Wilson Fisk, as always, to lose it. He leaves Maya in the limousine, goes out, drags the jackass into an alley and starts to beat the shit out of the guy, leaving his white suit bloody and splattered in blood. It's very consistent with the Kingpin we saw in Daredevil, specifically reminding me of the scene where he crushes one of his business partner's skull with a car door for interrupting a dinner with his girlfriend.
Kingpin still wants to avoid letting his adoptive niece see the worst of it, however, asking his driver to bring him a new suit... only for little Maya to already be there, and instead of being horrified, goes in and kicks the injured man.
We then have a brief scene in 2021, before some of the scenes we see in Echo episode 1, where Fisk tells Maya that she can go into the field. After Maya leaves, a random lady that interprets sign language is brutally executed by Kingpin's men.
This is shown to us in episode 4 instead of episode 1 because we need some sympathy for Kingpin's relationship as Maya's adoptive uncle, since all the recap we've seen about their relationship have only highlighted the toxic parts where Kingpin really is just raising Maya as a glorified attack dog. And... is it too little, too late? Kingpin's dynamic with Maya is sorely under-utilized. I get that the previous three episodes are trying heavily to tie in Maya to her hometown, but I really do feel like it didn't do quite a good job at showing any conflict Maya may have towards her abusive parental figure.
Which, I suppose, is kind of the point? Kingpin is kind of shown as entirely and utterly toxic and gaslighting, which... makes a lot of the attempts at drama kind of fall flat. It is entertaining to see Kingpin so sure of himself and his hold over Maya, but as an audience there was no real way that Maya was ever going to be swayed, so the scene kind of felt a bit flat. There was an interesting bit that parallels the killed-interpreter bit because Kingpin forces Maya to wear a contact lens that allows for Fisk's words to be translated into sign language immediately without an in-between... which Maya very quickly calls bullshit because Fisk could've just learned sign language.
(With Daredevil showing that Fisk is versatile enough to learn multiple other languages, this is another subtle way for Fisk to show that he doesn't care enough about Maya, and also having their conversation be reliant on a gift from Fisk is another way to control her).
Fisk keeps claiming that all he wants is a dinner with Maya, and to end hostilities and for Maya to come back with him to New York... which is kind of oblique on what it entails. I guess Kingpin wants Maya to be his top assassin again? Maya interprets it as Kingpin wanting her to be a "Queenpin", but Uncle Henry quickly tells Maya how stupid that mentality is.
We then have a brief detour as two large recurring plot threads are finally addressed -- Maya's refusal to meet her grandmother Chula; as well as the constant flashbacks to her ancestors. And the resolution... isn't the most exciting thing out there. I think part of it is because Chula hasn't really been a character so much as she's been a caricature of an obsessive grudge herself. Which I would appreciate if Maya actually learns from Chula, but while Maya acknowledges how toxic Chula's behaviour was; how her excuse of "I hated your dad, not you" doesn't make Chula abandon Maya any less... it's not really covered at all how this could've paralleled Maya's own grudge against the Kingpin.
Oh, and the visions are something that's kind of passed down, and we get a whole flashback when Chula gave birth to Maya's mother, a difficult birth that caused her to be brought into the forest with her sisters, and these ancestors gave her strength to do so. It really doesn't explain much, honestly, and for how much it's been built up it doesn't really give me any real revelation beyond 'okay, sure, that happens'. Maybe part of it is because the show didn't really build up Chula all that much, making me not invested in her character? Eh.
We return back to Maya and Kingpin at the hotel. Maya has a gun now, but doesn't shoot Kingpin. Kingpin tries to gaslight Maya again, telling her that he views her as his daughter, and then brings out the hammer that he used to kill his father, something we saw in the Daredevil show. It's fucked up as Kingpin reveals this to Maya (who never knew that Kingpin killed his own father) but Kingpin talks a lot about how killing his father allowed him to move forward in his life. He hands the hammer to Maya, wanting her to use it on him (???) but... she refuses.
Again, the buildup to this is just confusing other than Maya has to take the obvious route, and I really wished that there was more framing to why Maya does the things she does. Hell, I don't even know, really, what Kingpin's endgame with giving that hammer to Maya is. But in the next morning, Maya decides to obviously not go with Kingpin, and Kingpin throws a tantrum in his private jet.
It's... it's really confusing, and sitting down to put all this to figurative paper, I realize just how little things happened. The Kingpin stuff is fun because at least there's tension going on, but at the penultimate episode and for something that's exploring multiple storylines that are built up all season long, there's sadly not much that holds interest. The Kingpin/Maya stuff doesn't flow well and I'm left confused why the two characters do what they do... and while the earlier scene is pretty good, it kind of goes haywire near the end. The confrontation between Maya and Chula feels muted, and the explanation about her visions really does tell us nothing much. Again, it's kind of a shame.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Wilson Fisk's backstory and the circumstances of his dad's death from Daredevil's first season is brought up, with the hammer that he killed his father with being shown to Maya.
- Maya witnessing a parental figure committing violence is actually taken from Daredevil's backstory, where he saw his dad commit violence when forced to do debt collection for the Kingpin's organization.
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