Echo, the latest chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will likely fly under many people’s radar. The urgency of the interconnected superhero setting has faded as Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. reshaping their offerings, and that goes double for a show that turns a minor character from a two-year-old miniseries into a five-episode miniseries on Hulu and Disney Plus, and teases about another, less-than-upcoming show.
That’s a shame, because if you look further EchoThe show’s flaws do exactly the kinds of things that the current MCU is struggling with, the kinds of things that got everyone glued to superhero screens in the first place; Echo just trying to be a story about Echo.
Photo: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios
Echo The parts may be slow, the supernatural elements deserved a little more time, and a rushed denouement did it no favors, but what’s good about the show is exactly what’s good about superhero stories. The true climax of the series lies in Maya’s inner realizations, her rekindling of bonds severed in the past, and her discovery of the community and cultural legacy she is both embraced and beholden to. She doesn’t solve a problem simply because she was there at the time, but rather a problem that is inextricably linked to her. To fix it, she has to fix herself. If the show is slow, it is to ensure that the audience knows what is happening behind Maya’s silent face; its flawed elements are still in service of her emotional progression, and not a meandering plot. It may not always pay off, but at least it doesn’t end in CGI soup.
At the beginning of the story, Maya Lopez is lost, and at the end she is found, and lead writers Marion Dayre Amy Rardin admit that this is the biggest priority. This sounds simple and even trite, but it’s this deprioritization of basic character work that makes Phase 5 of the MCU feel so forgettable; that took all the spice out of the CGI soup.
Marvel Comics’ claim to fame, constantly repeated as Stan Lee and company’s greatest revolution in the superhero genre, was that when you read a Marvel story, the point of the characters wasn’t their superpowers, but the very personal reasons Why they use their power, and for what purpose. “With great power comes great responsibility,” “to protect a world that hates and fears them,” because “good isn’t something you are, it’s something you do.” This infamous Marvel character construct placed Spider-Man, Daredevil, the X-Men and all the rest indelibly into the pop cultural bedrock.
And it’s something the MCU doesn’t do that much anymore, although it’s a formula that has paid huge dividends for the franchise even in the last fallow years. WandaVision was a character study, until it succumbed to setting up the next multiverse Doctor Strange movie. Loki was strongest when it forced him to confront his own nature, and not an ever-changing set of time travel rules. Ms. Marvel was delicious and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3an ensemble film that nevertheless took the time to allow each of its leads to grow a little or a lot, was a hit.
And the shows that inspired the most Echo and the “Marvel Spotlight” designation, that of Netflix Daredevil, Jessica JonesAnd Luke Cage were, in their best seasons, in-depth character studies about people confronting their pasts. They had to be. There were no dangling movie storylines, familiar movie characters on the small screen, or promises that this would all tie into where the franchise was going – just a superhero character and their origin story.
Perhaps the people behind the MCU are too caught up in the macro of the multiverse to prioritize small-scale character issues. Perhaps it’s too easy to take a set of previously introduced superheroes and simply bounce them off a new villain like Kang or Flag Smasher. Perhaps screenwriters have taken the criticism of same-origin stories too harshly. But for whatever reason, Echowhen it rises above its shortcomings, it’s a throwback to an earlier, more reliably compelling MCU atmosphere – and not just because Daredevil shows up in it.