Echo, Season 1, Episode 5: Maya
When I first started off reviewing this series, one of my big concerns was that it would feel a bit 'too generic' once you sawed off all the Choctaw culture add-ons. That Echo's story is just going to be a carbon copy of Daredevil or Green Arrow or the Punisher's, that it's just going to be a very simple 'revenge is bad, rah rah' anti-hero story that doesn't really add much.
I wish we had gotten that version of the show.
I've really tried to really like this show, I really did. And I would still say that Echo is a better project than Secret Invasion, because at least Echo tried. But really, at the end of the day... this final episode really failed to deliver much. The cracks were already really showing in the previous episode, but here it's really kind of clear that the show's not capable of paying off any of the buildups in any meaningful way.
So let's get the supporting cast out of the way first. Bonnie, despite being set up as a character that Maya's going to have a strong confrontation and/or reconciliation with... really amounted to nothing. She was a hostage in episode 3, she's a hostage here, and what connection she had with Maya is mostly just meaningful nods that the show thinks are emotional. Chula, likewise, has been built up to have some kind of huge conflict and maybe realization about how unfair she's been treating her granddaughter, but kind of just... fizzles off.
Biscuits gets reduced to a minor supporting role with a small badass moment, which I thought was fine. Skully also is mostly just supportive, and probably the most lovable of Maya's side-cast. Uncle Henry... he's there. He's all right. I think most of his character development happened in episode 3, but beyond being one of the few guys on Maya's team that you could trust to hold his own in a fight, Henry doesn't do much.
On Kingpin's side of things, Zane, built up as a sub-boss with a funny accent... really does nothing but show up in the most obvious "I'm a villain" manner and almost uses a missile launcher to blow up a festival before Uncle Henry shoots him dead. It really is kind of a shame, except... not really, because I find it hard to care about these characters being wasted when they've barely done anything in the show.
Instead, the show finally focuses on Maya's powers, and they're just... kind of magic, I guess? I'm not someone who is a huge stickler for 'oh, these powers must be well defined for me to enjoy the story', but all we've seen from Maya's powers is to use her glowing hands to detach a train car, and see through some flashbacks to her ancestors' lives. And then she shows off a whole bunch of new powers this episodes, including the ability to transfer magical glowing hands to her family members, to heal a woodpecker back to health, and to create some kind of a therapy-nightmare dimension for Kingpin. It's honestly kind of nonsensical, and with the show already spending so much time showing us Maya's ancestors, it is frankly rather inexcusable for them not to show these superpowers being used by her ancestors. It wouldn't fix this underwhelming climax, but at least it would've foreshadowed it.
The episode has the framing device of a young Maya almost killing a woodpecker just because she can, before feeling bad about it and being admonished by her mother, who uses the Echo healing powers to heal the woodpecker. Which is supposed to represent... something?
Anyway, we cut back to the present, where Kingpin threw a tantrum at the end of the last episode because Maya did not go back with him on the plane after the bizarre 'bash my head in, free yourself' deal that he made her. Kingpin meets up with Chula, masquerading as a nice gentleman to kidnap him. He also kidnaps Bonnie off-screen. Meanwhile, Maya goes home and sees a vision/ghost of her mother. Maya's mother encourages her to let go of the pain, tells her that she's going to help her, and then all of the ancestors that we've seen in the past couple of episodes show up and present Maya with a brand-new outfit.
Which is all well and good, except, y'know, these guys aren't even characters. I'm going to take Ms. Marvel as an example of a show who did this well, who took the theme of legacy and strong women in a family and reconnecting with your past and did it well by making Grandma Aisha an actual character. I don't even know Maya's mother's name without looking it up in the wiki, and she doesn't even have a personality beyond being 'a good mama'. What could've made this scene better? I dunno, kill off Chula and make her be one of these spirit guide ancestors? Something with a character that at least the viewers have spent time with?
Anyway, Kingpin and Zane's big evil plan is to attack something that Maya cares about very much, which is the big town festival. As mentioned before, there's a B-plot with Zane about to shoot a missile launcher, but it's foiled by Biscuits driving a giant truck over the goons' vans, and Henry sniping Zane to death.
We have half the episode devoted to Kingpin's confrontation with Maya. But while the previous episode at least had some token effort at trying to highlight how Kingpin is Maya's adoptive parent in a way, there's... there's nothing of tension here as Kingpin's muddied motivations continue to get even more muddied. I guess he just wants Maya to suffer because rah rah villain, I guess? We get several more underwhelming action scenes, before Maya uses her brand-new glowy-hands power to give Chula and Bonnie temporary... glowing-hand powers? Where Maya does at least do some action scenes, I am a bit at a loss at what her family members are doing. The goons kind of just fall.
Maya then presses her glowing hands against Kingpin's chest and head, causing him to cry and get transported to the room seen in the Daredevil show where he was traumatized as a kid hearing his dad beat his mom up. Maya... tells Kingpin to 'let go of the pain' or something while he cries... again, kind of conveniently ignoring the whole fact that Kingpin's trauma isn't just listening to his parents fighting, but also the fact that he eventually found the only way to release is to pick up a hammer and bash his abusive old man's head in.
But nope, the glowing hands kind of... 'heal' Kingpin's trauma? He... he kind of leaves and runs off, and that's it. That's a very, very and utterly insipid way to end this, and it's not even Echo lobotomizing Kingpin or anything because the post-credits scene show that Kingpin's still trying to get things under his control as he realizes that he could become the mayor of New York City. Whatever bullshit Echo pulled on him is so random and out of nowhere and so poorly executed and explained that I don't even know why Kingpin is doing what he did.
Oh, and Maya returns home with her family, I guess, exploring absolutely nothing about the whole anti-hero business.
So yeah, this has been a clusterfuck of a finale. On principle, I actually don't mind that Disney and Marvel are catering to different audiences. Female lead? Great. Native American representation? Amazing. Disabled heroine? Bring it on. But shit storytelling is where I draw the line, and this is a prime example of a particularly terrible ending. There isn't anything for me to really like in this finale, and a lot of the problems I had with the first four episodes are just amplified with a megaphone in this finale. None of the themes set up in the show really got paid off. None of the characters' motivations really make sense. None of the powers are explained well. Barely any of the supporting characters meant anything at the end of the day. I don't even know what character arc the main heroine is supposed to get.
And the real frustrating thing is that this show could've been so good. Maya and Kingpin's relationship as an adopted daughter/niece that genuinely has attachment to a parental figure that is abusive, as she tries to figure out and grapple with whether she should pay evil unto evil; which family she should choose; moral implications and all this stuff... but instead we got this. Sigh.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Fisk gets trapped in a memory where he kills his father, as seen in Daredevil season 1-2.
- The painting 'Rabbit in a Snowstorm', a focal part of Fisk's relationship with Vanessa in the Daredevil series, is also seen in the flashbacks.
- The post-credits scene alludes to the "Mayor Kingpin" arc in the comic books, where Kingpin rose to become the mayor of New York.
Quick announcement: I was planning to follow up this with another superhero project, which is my review of the X-Men '97 cartoon... but I think that would be significantly delayed thanks to my schedule slips. I do plan to do it (and individual reviews of the first season of What If episodes) but it really is going to depend on my timing.
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