Films for Breakfast

Marvel Studios is having a bit of an identity crisis a the moment, with a less than stellar 2023 still being felt as we enter 2024, it doesn’t help that their latest show Echo has been plagued with rumors of production issues as its release is imminent. Echo is a spin-off of Hawkeye, which finds Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) as she is on the run from Wilson Fisk AKA Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) and his criminal empire. When this journey brings her back to her hometown of Tamaha, Oklahoma, Maya is forced to come to terms with both her legacy and family.

Hawkeye was an interesting anomaly for me, as it had a lot of components that I enjoyed like Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld’s chemistry and some fun action set-pieces/comedic moments, but largely fell flat for me in the long run. Alaqua Cox’s performance as Maya Lopez was a big positive for me in the show, as she truly made an impression with the limited screen time that she received. While I wasn’t fully convinced the character needed her own spin-off, I was hopeful that it would at least take the best elements of her appearance in Hawkeye and use it to its advantage to craft a worthwhile show. The results are… unforuntately mixed.

To start with the positives, Alaqua Cox continues to impress as Maya/Echo. She really does a great job at carrying the emotional elements of the show and does so much subtle acting that it’s even more impressive when you realize she has to balance it all out with some incredible stunt work and fight choreography. The show also includes a really solid supporting cast of characters, but especially that of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin. D’Onofrio has done an incredible job at playing this character for nearly ten years now, and he continues to impress here; especially given the characters relationship with Maya. Their dynamic is easily the highlight of the show.

The show has been highly advertised as being Disney+ and Marvel’s first outing into TV-MA territory, and to their credit, the violence and action in the show is effective. The character drama is also dark and not entirely a miss either. So this begs the question – what exactly is the issue with Echo? I hate to double down on rumors and pretending like they’re true when we have no validation to these theories… but Echo really does have the feel of a show where it has been edited and re-shot to death. The pacing and structure just feels extremely off from the get-go, as the first episode is mostly just a recap of the events of Hawkeye rather than its own pilot that establishes its own tone and approach.

From that point forward, Echo unfortunately never really stops feeling like a bit of a mess. While it’s admirable to see certain directions that the characters and drama goes, it does feel like it merely flirts with these ideas and themes about legacy and familial bond instead of outright tackling them. You could blame that on the larger Marvel machine as a whole preventing these big ideas from coming to fruition, but it honestly feels more like a side effect of messy writing and a stressed post-production process that chopped it all to pieces.

Aside from some small details about her past and abilities, it is honestly incredible that I watched five episodes of a show called Echo and I feel like I virtually know nothing new about the character of Maya Lopez. The show feels like its entirely on autopilot and like it existed simply because Disney+ said it had to. I can appreciate the representation and attempt to tell a more focused and gritty story, but when the results are this muddled and the production issues are this apparent in virtually every episode.. maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

2.5/5