Echo S01E05 Review: New Powers As The Plot Demands

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. 

Echo S01E04 Review: The King Is Back

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. 

Echo S01E03 Review: The Most Incompetent Kidnappers

Echo, Season 1, Episode 3: Tuklo

Another all right episode, I suppose, though just like episode 2, "Tuklo" follows a relatively formulaic narrative as far as these superhero stories go. We get some flashbacks to the ancient Native Americans to open up the episode, and this ancestor of Maya ends up getting some flashback cuts when we get an action sequence in the climax of the episode. Which... I'm not sure how much I like this. On one hand, I do appreciate the attempt to incorporate moments in the history of the Choctaw people into Echo, and the way Echo handles it jumps from one point in history to the next. But on the other hand... unlike Kamala Khan's great-grandparents, I am really not attached to the Lighthorsemen of this episode or the sports-players of the previous ones. I don't even know if they have names. 

I do like the quasi silent-movie format of the flashback, which fits into the themes of our mute protagonist. 

The present-day storyline continues to proceed a bit more, as the dude that witnesses the warehouse blowing up, Zane, gets to be the villain of the week. Doing kind of double-duty with him is Vickie, the shifty bowling alley jackass who was clearly going to betray Uncle Henry. Through some unfortunate moments of inconvenient ancestral flashbacking, Maya gets herself clocked in her head and captured by Vickie and his two bumbling civilians-turned-kidnapper minions whose name I really didn't bother to remember. 

And... I really do feel like this setup does kind of come out of nowhere, just to set up the 'kidnapping' storyline. Vickie and his goons also tie up Uncle Henry, and the unexpected arrival of Bonnie, out in search of any information of Maya, keeps ruining Vickie's grand master plan. They manage to get the drop on Bonnie and toss her into the same room with Maya, where we get the confrontation between the two cousins. Which... goes about as well as you'd expect, with a lot of "why didn't you call me?" and "you wouldn't understand" being thrown here and there. It's executed well for what's otherwise a rather generic script, it's just that I really do think that we really should've seen a bit more of adult Bonnie for me to be invested in this confrontation.

I do find the attempts at humour with Vickie and his bumbling kidnappers to be fun enough, as Henry lampshades how stupid Vickie is being. Zane and a small army of goons show up to essentialy take over the operation, and Vickie really thinks he has some kind of bargaining power as he tries to force Zane to pay him upfront. Couple the additional trouble of Maya McGyver-ing a nail gun out of spare parts and killing one of his associates, and Vickie panics and gets his stupid ass shot by Zane. Zane also chews the scenery a fair bit, though kind of shuts up when the action happens which I thought was a bit of a shame. 

We do get an action scene that I think is meant to recall the wacky toy factory fight in Hawkeye, and I do like the visuals of Maya using random arcade machines to beat the shit out of the goons. It still feels like a step-down from the Netflix shows, though at least unlike the Daredevil fight from episode 1, this one was a bit more colourful to watch. 

However, the fight gets to a stop because Zane has Bonnie on gunpoint. He's about to shoot Maya in the head when a call comes in, spooking Zane enough to leave with all of his men. Henry quickly wises up and realizes this is the Kingpin, and while Maya is initially skeptical, Henry ends up wanting to support Maya all the way. Maya and Bonnie part ways rather begrudgingly, with no real resolution. 

While all of this is going on, we do get brief cutaways to the elders in Maya's family, with Chula confronting Skully and getting into a good-natured argument about Maya's return. Skully tries to get Chula to make up with her granddaughter, and at the end of the episode when Maya comes back, he acts as the cool grandpa and tries to do the same with Maya. Maya ends the episode with a gleaming, golden armour for her prosthetic leg, which Skully wants her to show of as it represents the pride of a Choctaw warrior. 

And finally, at the end of it all, Maya goes off and drives around with her bike... and when she reaches home, Kingpin is right there, all suited up with an eyepatch. Boom, cliffhanger. 

And... again, it's an okay episode. It is a huge step-up from a lot of the more frustrating recent Marvel TV projects (Secret Invasion in particular) but that's not a huge bar to clear, and as I mentioned in the review... a lot of the things that happen here are pretty basic stuff in a superhero story. We still have a couple more episodes to go so I won't bitch too much, but the pacing is really quite slow to progress any of the storylines -- whether it's Maya reconnecting with her family, the mysterious ancestral powers (the glowing hands do not make a return in this episode), or if Maya's going to feel any sort of guilt for bringing her war to her town. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• In the comic run Phoenix Song: Echo, Maya goes through a journey through her ancestors, meeting one of them, who is the only female member of the Lighthorsemen, a tribal mounted police force that enforced tribal laws within Choctaw territory in the 1850's. 
• Zane is an adaptation of Teodor Zarco, the leader of the Black Knife Cartel, and was a minor antagonist in the 2017 Bullseye comic run. In earlier drafts, Zane kept his comic-book counterpart's name. 

Echo S01E02 Review: Gangs and Glowing Hands

Echo, Season 1, Episode 2: Lowak

After a rather recap-heavy and slow first episode, "Lowak" gets a bit more into some action. Now the main plot of this episode isn't anything particularly new for superhero material. Maya goes off and does a daredevil (heh) stunt to charge in and attack Fisk and his allies. A good chunk of the episode involves Maya and her poor, confused cousin Biscuits who doesn't even realize his cousin's going to go on a crazy train-bombing exercise. It's pretty simple action movie stuff, with Maya jumping on board a train with your typical stunts, placing a bomb that later blows up one of Fisk's bases, and Maya's uncle Henry getting worried that Maya's bringing in a war to their otherwise quiet, status-quo town. 

Oh, and through it all, Maya's hands glow with some strange power. In the comics, Echo's powers are copying (or 'echo-ing') the fighting style of other fighters, and this is a new reinvention by the MCU. Her hand glows and allows her to... dislodge a train's couplings? I'm not sure how I feel about this. There are some connections to Maya's ancient Choctaw ancestors, which the episode spends a good chunk of the prologue showing us, but it all remains vague. 

I'll reserve judgment on how the Choctaw ancestors are handled, because what we saw here is just them being competitive in a sports game that decides the ownership of the land; and some discussion from the people in the town about their ancestry. Again, I'm not sure if it's just going to be table-setting, or if we're going to have more "our ancestors' magic will be a major part of this show" like Shang-Chi or Ms. Marvel, neither of which feel fitting with Echo's more grounded theme. 

A lot of the episode still moves quite slowly, though the characters introduced in the first episode have started to feel more 'lived-in' as they interact with each other. Biscuits being the beleaguered cousin roped into Maya's insane heist obviously gets the bulk of screentime here, and he bumbles his way into accidentally informing about Maya's arrival in town to his sister Bonnie (who's a cop, and also has a lot of unresolved drama with Maya). Uncle Henry and Grandma Chula seem to be generally unhappy with Maya's arrival, with Henry getting a rather great confrontation with Maya at the end about how she's bringing war into their small town. Oh, and there's also Skully, pawn-shop owner who tries to sell off stuff to ignorant tourists and the one responsible for giving Maya some upgrades for her prosthetics. I really don't think the side-cast here are quite as energetic or memorable as, say, Kamala Khan or Matt Murdock's supporting cast, but there's certainly a lot more energy and distinctiveness to them that makes the town actually feel alive.

Most importantly, Maya's more playful interactions with Biscuits and Skully, and her all-business confrontation with Henry, gives both her and her actress much more to do than stalk around and give sullen glowering looks.

Again, a good chunk of this episode and the previous one highlights the whole 'vengeance is bad' storyline that has been trod before with characters like the Punisher, but where Punisher's war against crime -- at least in the MCU/Netflix shows -- hurt people that he has just befriended, Maya's little crusade is being brought back to her people and family and small town. The setup and premise is pretty basic, but I do like that we're going to have to figure out what path Maya's going to take. 

There's really not a whole ton else to talk about. Blowing up an entire warehouse is pretty anti-heroic stuff, there's some bit with the police investigating it, and based on his swagger, this guy that the subtitles identify as 'Zane' will probably be an antagonist if we don't take Kingpin down in this season. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The fictional Asian country of Madripoor is mentioned by Biscuits and Skully. Madripoor was established and seen in the MCU in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. 

Echo S01E01 Review: Tragic Backstory

Echo, Season 1, Episode 1: Chafa

I've got nothing against Echo's actress, who I feel did her best with what she's received... but while she's certainly a good actress, the premise of an Echo-led TV show really wasn't super exciting two years back when it was teased at the end of Hawkeye. In fact, I honestly was far more excited to see Kingpin and potentially Daredevil return in the show instead of really peeling back a whole ton about Echo. I am happy to be proven wrong as I go through this series, but this season premiere is... well, it's pretty slow. 

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.